Familiar Patterns

Between Riverside and Crazy – Redtwist Theatre

Humanity’s greatest strength is that we can adjust to anything. No matter how terrible a situation, we can almost always find a way to survive. Humanity’s greatest weakness is also that we can adjust to anything. Because we have learned to survive in even a terrible situation, we’ll stay there because the familiarity feels safe. Change, even it’s for the better, is terrifying. That pattern plays itself out several times with several people in Redtwist’s new production of Between Riverside and Crazy, the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning play.

Credit Where Credit is Due

Photograph 51 – Court Theatre

In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick published a model for the DNA molecule that would eventually net them and a third collaborator a Nobel Prize. Largely unknown for several decades after that accomplishment is that a large piece of the research that their model built on was done by a British scientist named Rosalind Franklin and the painstaking x-ray photography work she had refined. Court Theatre’s new production of Photograph 51 is the dramatization of Franklin’s work.

In the Blood

In the Blood – Red Tape Theater

In the Blood is a loose adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter by Suzan-Lori Parks. It premiered in New York in 1999. Like the novel, the play focuses on a woman named Hester who is punished by a hypocritical society for bearing children out of wedlock.

A Lesbian Love Story

I Know My Own Heart – Pride Films & Plays

At the age of 50, Irish-born Canadian novelist, short story writer, screenwriter and playwright Emma Donoghue is finally having her first theatrical drama premiered in the United States. Ms. Donoghue’s name may be familiar to some theatergoers as the author of the novel, and subsequent Oscar-nominated screenplay, for Room. She’s a prolific writer of various genres, whose works often explore the sometimes unnamed, hidden love between gay women. In this play, Donoghue was inspired by the secret coded diaries of early nineteenth century gentlewoman, Anne Lister.

You’re Invited

Southern Gothic – Windy City Playhouse

I went to the worst party I’ve ever attended last night. The caterer got in an accident, so we were left with Spam and crackers for food. Absent food, everyone hit the bar a little earlier and a little harder than they probably should have. And, of course, the night spawned more than one screaming argument.

I had a ball.

Great Balls of Fire

Million Dollar Quartet – Marriot Theatre

Inspired by a true story, and under the splashy and spectacular direction of James Moye, a slice of rock and roll history has been brought to life in the Marriott Theatre’s brilliant 2019 season opener. This joyful and infectiously likable show will introduce a lot of great music to younger audiences, but it’ll be a fond trip down memory lane for many other theatergoers. It’s chock full of nearly two dozen popular rock and roll and country-western hits. Based on an actual, previously little-known event from the archives of recording history, Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux created this little jukebox musical that has, since its 2006 Florida premier, taken on a whole life of its own.

Non Sequiturs Ricocheting Everywhere

The Realistic Joneses – Shattered Globe and Wit Theater

Much like an episode of “Seinfeld,” nothing really happens in this one-act by Will Eno. We glean a little bit of information about each of the four characters but there’s not really a story, per se. The author of such other noteworthy plays as “Thom Paine (Based on Nothing),” “Middletown” and “Title and Deed,” Eno’s 2014 comedy took home a Drama Desk award and earned the title of Best Play on Broadway by USA Today. The New York Times warned audiences “not to come to  this play expecting tidy, clearly drawn narrative arcs or familiarly typed characters.” The dramatic comedy feels more like a contemporary Theatre of the Absurd offering with its plethora of non sequiturs ricocheting everywhere. Eno’s actually crafted a single play out of a series of short scenes that almost feel like a series of Second City comedy sketches. However, the developing relationship between two couples adds up to a bizarre plot, of sorts, and an authentic portrait of real life.

Having It All

Dada Woof Papa Hot – About Face Theatre

In Peter Parnell’s comic drama, which first opened at Lincoln Center three years ago, we get a realistic look at how the Marriage Equality Act of 2015 has altered the lives of many gay and lesbian couples. Its passage seemed to promise the same idyllic life and privileges that heterosexual couples had been enjoying for decades. Gay couples would now be able have it all but, as Parnell shows us, that new life comes with its own set of problems, considerations and complications.

Vampires Around Us

St. Nicholas – Goodman Theatre

He begins his 90-minute monologue by confessing to the audience, “When I was a boy, I was afraid of the dark.” Interestingly, this unnamed character, a drama critic, makes his living by sitting alone in darkened theatres, observing actors who are bringing to life the characters a playwright has created on the page. Has this writer, who admits to being a cruel commentator on productions about which he has little knowledge, overcome his fear of the dark? Or has he simply learned to endure that which scares him the most and join their ranks?

Sardines and Slamming Doors

Noises Off –  Windy City Playhouse

As elderly housekeeper Mrs. Clackett begins exiting while balancing the telephone, a newspaper and a ubiquitous plate of sardines, she suddenly stops (as does her Cockney accent) and she begins questioning herself. “I take the sardines? No, I leave the sardines. No, I take the sardines…” Audiences unfamiliar with Michael Frayn’s laugh-a-minute farce begin to wonder if the actress (Amy Carle, brilliant as Dotty Otley playing the character of Mrs. Clackett) has lost her way…or her mind. And indeed her character does have problems with all her lines and stage business, but that’s the gimmick behind this play-within-a-play. A so-so farce entitled “Nothing On” is being rehearsed by a third-rate British theatrical company, but the audience only comes to understand that this is a rehearsal when Lloyd, their hard-working director (nicely played with manic mastery by handsome Mike Tepeli) interrupts Dotty’s muttering to provide some much-needed direction from the auditorium aisles. The “dress rehearsal” (or is it “the technical”?) continues to stop and start as each new problem arises. With them come new complications and even broader laughter.