Chicago Theatre Review
Tilting at Windmills
Circus Quixote
Lookingglass, one of Chicago’s finest and, probably, the most inventive and creative theatre company in the Windy City, has finally returned. After a pause in operations in 2023 to reorganize and create a new business model, the company is thankfully back and better than ever. The venue also sports a sparkling new look inside the Water Tower Pumping Station. The Theatre now features a spacious, newly reimagined lobby that offers plenty of seating and a variety of coffee and potent potables for purchase. But, best of all, Lookingglass Theatre Company is continuing to produce exciting, inventive and stimulating entertainment. And for its premiere production, the company reopens with CIRCUS QUIXOTE, a show in the style of one of their most popular shows of the past years, LOOKINGGLASS ALICE.
Read MoreAn Autobiographical Drama
The Cave
Sadieh Rafai’s autobiographical drama is laced with humor and plenty of moments from real life. The thing that makes this play so unique is that Rafai depicts a family story about told through the eyes of a young Palestinian-American teenaged girl. Dema, played with extraordinary depth and understanding by Aaliyah Montana, has a lot to cope with, not the least of which is simply surviving puberty.
Read MoreThe Neo-Futurist Theater can tell you HOW TO BE COOL
On the top floor of a building in Andersonville, you’ll find the 37-year-old Neo-Futurist Theater. Founded in 1988, The Neo-Futurist aesthetic demands that everything that transpires in their theater be non-illusory, which is to say that they pretend nothing; actors only play themselves. It makes for an intimate and immediate experience that feels unique. The home of the long-running late night show, The Infinite Wrench, a collection of 2 minute long plays, this production is a “prime time production” directed by Anna Gelman. The theater space itself has an inviting, lived-in feel, there is art and the evidence of the production of art, everywhere. The lobby area outside of the theater looks like a college bar circa the early 2000s. Audience members mingled at tables and chairs, watching video screens set up on either side of the room.
We were invited into the theater once it was time for the show to begin. A long, narrow space, the room was stark: a projection screen was up on one end, with no other embellishment. The show began with writer, performer and Neo-Futurist Ensemble Member Neil Bhandari crawling into the space from behind the screen and lugging the biggest baggage (pun intended) I’ve ever seen.
Neil opens the brisk, hour long show with a narrated video essay on what it is to be cool. Iconic images and characters from the eighties and early nineties carried the audience on a nostalgic wave back to when Harrison Ford, the Goonies and Eddie Murphy were defining cool for American kids. He gets the audience involved in the musings, and together, a definition of “cool” is established. Once we know what we’re talking about, Neil recounts his own childhood desire to be cool, the motivations behind it, and the attempts to achieve it.
He bounces from monologue and dance to live music, costumes are changed on the spot on stage, and he sets up all the props or sets he might need while staying engaged with the audience. What begins as an examination of coolness turns into an exploration of insecurity, identity-building and the lies we tell ourselves as we try to make our way in the world.
Neil embodies much of the cool he describes: he’s funny and smart, he can play guitar and make fun of (and share) his eighth grade poetry with confident self-deprecation. As the hour continues, he also reveals the dark side of building an identity based on what others think of you. What at first seemed a cute kid’s journey into becoming an adult turns into an adult recounting the mistakes of an insecure kid, yearning to be cool. Smart, funny, talented Neil lists the kids who paid a price for his attempts at popularity. He mourns the loss of relationships, the loss of time, the loss of who he thought he could be vs who he was.
The evening is a funny, unexpected, melancholy and thoughtful treatise on what it means when the perception of others is what you chase, because you can’t stand your perception of yourself.
Recommended
Reviewed by Alina C. Hevia
Performances are held at The Neo-Futurist Theater, 5153 N Ashland, Chicago, IL 60640 from February 6th – March 1st on Thursdays/Fridays/Saturdays at 7pm. Tickets are PWYC – $20 and available now for purchase.
Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.
Does a Dream Dry Up?
A Raisin in the Sun
Take a look at the first line of Langston Hughes’ epic poem about the African-American experience, which he entitled Harlem. In the first line he raises the question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” He goes on to answer this question with more questions, including “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” Lorraine Hansberry was inspired by Hughes’ picturesque poetry and borrowed the line for the title of her play about an African-American family’s struggle for their right to a dream.
Read MoreAn Embrace of Passion and Hate
Fool for Love
Love and pain go hand in hand in Sam Shepard’s dark, 1983 drama. Sometimes it’s an embrace of passion mixed with hate. May is holed up in a rundown motel in the Mojave Desert when Eddie shows up. Portrayed by handsome Nick Gehlfuss, making his Steppenwolf debut, Eddie’s a good-old-boy, a cowhand turned stuntman, at least for the moment. He and May have a long and turbulent history together. Director Jeremy Herrin’s new production at Steppenwolf is guided with heat and an animalistic fervor that’s present from the very first moment. There’s also a feeling that we’re witnessing their relationship, not from its onset, but from the middle. A lot has happened before this one-act opens and, no doubt, their story will continue long beyond the final curtain. We find ourselves uncomfortably witnessing some kind of lovers’ battle that’s been ongoing for years. In between, we’re given a few sketchy details about the couple’s backstory and some hints as to where this tragic story may be headed down the road.
Read MoreFour Gripping Characters
Lobby Hero
Meet Jeff. He is a goofy, but really likable 27-year-old security guard/doorman who works the graveyard shift at a mid-income Manhattan apartment building. He left his Navy career under a cloud when he was caught smoking pot, and this latest failing disappointed Jeff’s father so much that the man stopped speaking to his son. Then his dad died and Jeff’s still carrying the guilt with him in everything he does. Struggling to pay off some debts, Jeff shares a small flat with his brother. However, he dreams of having his own place where he can cook and entertain. He also fantasizes about having a girlfriend, although the eccentric young man, whose mouth runs nonstop, has a hard time maintaining personal relationships of any kind.
Read MoreSome Kind of Wonderful!
Beautiful: The Carol King Musical
From a precocious 16-year-old from a Jewish family in Brooklyn, who skipped two grades in high school to study music at local Queens College, to her first published and recorded hit song, “It Might as Well Rain Until September,” we really get to know Carole King. She begins the show as a precocious teenage girl, who grows from being a likable and talented kid to become a wise and gifted young “Natural Woman.” “Oh, Carol,” I know that everyone agrees, you are absolutely “Some Kind of Wonderful!”
Read MoreShucked
Full of corny jokes, corny puns, and well….corn, Shucked is a musical-comedy unlike any other. Shucked, written by Robert Horn, Brandy Clark, and Shane McAnally, made its Broadway debut in 2023 and went on to receive nine nominations at the 76th Tony Awards — including one for Best Musical.
Read MoreThe American Dream
Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley
On February 18, 1965, at the Cambridge Union Society in Great Britain, a monumental event took place. An historic debate between James Baldwin, the rising author and leading literary voice of the American Civil Rights Movement, and American Conservative intellectual and staunch critic of said Movement, William F. Buckley. They argued a question that was on everyone’s minds. They debated, “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”
Read MoreThe Subject I Know Best
Frida…A Self Portrait
When Frida Kahlo was only a child she contracted polio. Then, at age 18, as she was heading to medical school, her life suddenly changed again. A severe bus accident left her permanently disabled and left Frida with a life of chronic pain. She spent many years bedridden in hospitals and at home. The young woman would undergo many painful surgeries, often performed by quack doctors who promised a complete recovery that never materialized. Not able to leave her bedroom and often alone, Frida filled dozens of notebooks with sketches. She briefly considered combining her love of art and science and becoming a medical illustrator. Then her father loaned her some of his oil paints and her mother created a special easel that Frida could use while in bed. And with a few strokes of paint, the young woman’s future began as an artist.
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