Before Martyna Majok won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for her drama Cost of Living (which was planned for this season at Victory Gardens before the board decided to close up shop at the Tony Award-winning theater), her plays got airings with small companies around Chicago. (She graduated from University of Chicago in 2007.) Red […]
Tag: Steppenwolf
No country for old men
Harold Pinter’s 1974 play No Man’s Land occupies the territory between his earlier “comedies of menace,” such as The Birthday Party and The Caretaker, and the more overtly political work he’d create in the 1980s (Mountain Language, One for the Road). But it’s primarily a comedy of language, at least in Steppenwolf’s current intriguing staging […]
Another Marriage marks a promising playwriting debut
During the years that I’ve seen Kate Arrington onstage at Steppenwolf, “chameleonic” is the adjective that most often comes to mind. From show to show, she never seems to play the same type, slipping into the skin of characters so seamlessly that I have at times had trouble recognizing her initially. Which, paradoxically, makes her […]
The broken double helix of pain
Donnetta Lavinia Grays’s play is about the limits of love—both in what it can accomplish, even when it feels infinite, and in what it can tolerate before it disappears. Monique (the protean Ayanna Bria Bakari) shows up at her sister’s house with her 11-year-old daughter in tow and an undisclosed agenda. (Daughter Sam is played […]
The lies of others
I’m just going to get the obvious adjective out of the way right now: Rajiv Joseph’s Describe the Night, now in its local premiere at Steppenwolf under Austin Pendleton’s direction, is definitely Stoppardian. As in much of Tom Stoppard’s work, the story spans decades—1920-2010, to be precise. And also as in Stoppard, an object (in […]
In the room with Frank Galati
Actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, and professor Dr. Frank Galati died on January 2, 2023, but his impact on those he worked with and loved (they were one and the same) and his legacy are imperishable. He won two Tony Awards in 1990 for adapting and directing The Grapes of Wrath, and was a nominee in […]
Mourning and celebrating in the same breath
Him (Jennifer Lim) coughs on the smoke of the incense she lights as she bows to a temporary altar in her kitchen in Carrollton, Texas. Ma (Wai Ching Ho) is propped up on a hospital bed, where she is unceremoniously dying. Sophea (Francesca Fernandez McKenzie) isn’t around, but is it her fate or her fault? […]
Looking back at some of the best productions and biggest stories of 2022
During 2020, my running joke was that, although there weren’t any plays happening, there was always plenty of drama to report on in Chicago theater. In fall of 2021, we started seeing some theater return, though the season was cut short by last December’s COVID surge. (Not to be confused with the one we’re currently […]
Mosque4Mosque upends stereotypes
Mosque4Mosque is not a monolithic representation of the Arab American Muslim experience, and perhaps that’s exactly the point. Written by Omer Abbas Salem and directed by Sophiyaa Nayar, this charming production challenges all preconceived notions of a play about an Arab American Muslim family. In this sitcom-esque dramedy, Ibrahim (played by Salem) and his family […]
’Well done, Gloria Allen’
Black trans icon Mama Gloria is remembered for living an extraordinary and full life.
First Lady fantasia
Right before the pandemic shutdown in 2020, TimeLine Theatre presented James Ijames’s sorrowful and powerful Kill Move Paradise, in which a group of Black men murdered by the police gather in a purgatorial afterlife, where a fax machine spits out an ever-growing list of more Black people killed by the state. At the same time […]
The business of circus
Balancing Acts: Unleashing the Power of Creativity in Your Life and Work (HarperCollins Leadership, January 2022, $28.99) by Daniel Lamarre is a book for those who need creative inspiration. Part business memoir and part self-help/motivational, the appeal of this book will land squarely on the aspiring businessman who needs an icon. It not only celebrates […]
Art and appropriation
Of the two plays exploring race that Steppenwolf has on stage right now—King James and WHITE—the latter definitely stands out for being not only funnier, but more complex and satisfying in its critique of race, privilege, and power. Written by James Ijames and directed by Ericka Ratcliff, Definition Theatre’s production is a delightfully silly yet […]
It’s become a different world
We see a show and later learn that it had to close abruptly. We can empathize with the actors’ disappointment and distress because we can visualize their faces and recall their voices. But how has the pandemic impacted those we see only briefly in the lobby as we enter or don’t see at all? How […]
Plays in a pandemic
By the time this year ends (it is gonna end, right?), Reader critics will, by my count, have reviewed 69 live theater and dance performances. That’s far less than in most years, but a veritable cornucopia after the onstage famine that began in March 2020. But just when we think it’s safe to go back […]