Nearly a decade after it debuted at the Royal Court Theatre in 2013, Rachel De-lahay’s Routes has landed at Theater Wit for its American premiere. Presented by Remy Bumppo, Routes is a story of progressively intertwined, mirrored vignettes of two characters and the handful of people who will determine their respective fates. Olufemi (Yao Dogbe) […]
Tag: Vol. 51 No. 2
Posted inTheater Review
Adulting and its discontents
Though it’s called The Cleanup, Hallie Palladino’s new play, now in a world premiere with Prop Thtr under Jen Poulin’s direction, is all about messiness in the aftermath of the COVID-19 shutdown. Set at a nursery school co-op established by dedicated community mom Julie (Lynnette Li), the play traces the fallout when two of the […]
Posted inTheater Review
Catch the Clue bus
The game Clue taught me what “confidential” means, that a conservatory is just a fancy greenhouse, and that Miss Scarlett is always the right choice. Any armchair detective that could identify those little toy weapons in the dark with their eyes closed will enjoy this new stage adaptation of the 1985 movie based on the […]
Posted inTheater Review
Unearthing raw passions
Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about a rural Illinois family beset by delusion and dysfunction is brilliantly brought to life by AstonRep Theatre Company. Alcoholic patriarch Dodge (Jim Morley, who brought to mind Richard Widmark in a stellar performance) is permanently ensconced on the living room couch yelling to his wife, Halie (Liz Cloud). Few […]
Posted inTheater Review
Democracy under siege
Invictus Theatre Company delivers a solid, sometimes stirring, and strikingly relevant rendition of William Shakespeare’s 1599 tragedy. It’s the story of Marcus Brutus (played by Invictus artistic director Charles Askenaizer, who also directed), a well-intentioned aristocrat in the waning days of the ancient Roman Republic, who joins a plot by his fellow senators to assassinate […]
Posted inTheater Review
Luminous storytelling
Siena Marilyn Ledger’s brand-new two-person play, being produced here with 16th Street Theater and Dragonfly Theatre as part of the National New Play Network rolling world premiere program, is based on a deceptively simple premise. Luna, a quirky and precocious tween whose mother is undergoing cancer treatment, befriends Aaron, another cancer patient, also in the […]
Posted inTheater Review
Displacement and determination
Refuge, the wrenching portrait of a Central American woman’s effort to reach the U.S. receiving its midwest premiere at Theo Ubique, is less a play than a ritual with music enacting displacement, loss, and fear—but also love and the determination to go on. So my not understanding the two-thirds of the dialogue delivered in Spanish […]
Posted inTheater Review
Medieval love triangle, modernized
Music Theater Works (MTW) ambitiously takes on some of the problems with Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s formless and dated book, keeping our focus on Arthur (Michael Metcalf), Guenevere (Christine Mayland Perkins), and Lancelot’s (Nathe Rowbotham) love triangle. In her program notes, director Brianna Borger explains, “Our Camelot envisions a troupe of revelers outside […]
Posted inTheater Review
Murder, she wrote
Women love true-crime stories—so much so that SNL spoofed the fascination a few years ago with a song about women relaxing alone at home watching their favorite “Murder Show.” Fans of the podcast My Favorite Murder (aka “Murderinos”) are overwhelmingly female. When you’re raised from an early age to think that rape and murder are […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago rapper SoloSam finds new reflections in grief on Principles to Die By
We’ve all felt it at some point during the 19 months and counting of the pandemic: an anguish amplified by loss, even if we’ve been lucky enough that no one close to us has died from the virus or developed long COVID. (If your life since March 2020 has been absolutely untroubled, I have to […]
Posted inCity Life
When the hog butchers left
For just over 100 years, there was the smell. Writer Upton Sinclair called it “an elemental odor, raw and crude,” in The Jungle, his 1906 novel revealing the conditions of Chicago’s Union Stock Yards. “It was rich, almost rancid, sensual, and strong,” he wrote. “There were some who drank it in as if it were […]
Posted inMusic
Aimee Mann poignantly confronts mental illness on Queens of the Summer Hotel
Aimee Mann pairs her exquisitely crafted lyrics with unforgettable melodies, but her tunes often aren’t what you’d call light romps. The singer-songwriter started her musical career in the 80s as front woman of post-new-wave dance-pop band ’Til Tuesday, then went solo in the early 90s. On her tenth solo album, Queens of the Summer Hotel […]
Posted inCity Life
Taking the plunge
Early risers who wanted to greet the lake had a place to gather on Friday mornings this summer and fall. Friday Morning Swim Club, a group meetup for early morning swimmers, was created by five friends last summer and has become very popular over the past year. What started as a small gathering surpassed anything […]
Posted inArt Review
Between the flesh and the machine
Skin and stone, organic and sterile, hard and soft: juxtapositions aren’t new in art. This push-and-pull tactic has been done, and done again, but it’s not always executed well. New York-based artist Hannah Levy manages to push and pull her viewers in the right direction for her new solo exhibition, “Hannah Levy: Surplus Tension,” now […]
Posted inFilm
Eternals is a surprisingly genuine success
I went into Eternals, Marvel’s latest offering, fully expecting Ethnic Foods Aisle Feeling. What I found instead was genuine, delightful character development nestled inside of a complex and challenging narrative.