Monthly Archives: January 2019
Violence and Its Aftermath
Cardboard Piano – TimeLine Theatre Company
In small church in northern Uganda, as New Year’s Eve ushers in the new millennium, two young girls prepare to celebrate by secretly exchanging marriage vows in a faux wedding ceremony. Chris is the rebellious daughter of strict, conservative missionary parents; Adiel is a feisty, but romantic African teenager, who’s smitten with her. Their lesbian love, not to mention an unheard of racial relationship, are both taboo and strictly forbidden in Uganda. The couple’s secret union will culminate in a night of sexual romance, before they flee from this repressed country to a city where being gay doesn’t mean persecution and punishment. However, as might be expected, their idyll is about to be violently interrupted.
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The Original American Girls
Little Women, the Musical – Brown Paper Box Co.
This musical is exactly what we need today. Although the show originally opened on Broadway back in 2005, it speaks strongly to what America wants to hear right now. It portrays a loving, tight-knit, resilient family trying, against all odds, to survive during the Civil War. They must endure poor economic conditions, illness, romantic complications and a myriad of trials and tribulations we still face today. The play may be set in the mid-nineteenth century, but it’s a universal story about a community of people who care for each other, and it carries a message that still rings true today.
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Fuente Ovejuna
Fuente Ovejuna – City Lit Theater
In 1476, in the Spanish village of Fuente Ovejuna, the villagers rebelled and killed the military commander using the village as his base. Don’t worry; he really, really had it coming. He harassed, kidnapped, and assaulted the women in the village, treating them as little more than livestock. If someone tried to stop him, he had them tortured. When the King sent an investigator to find out who murdered an official, the townspeople, even under torture, would only say that “Fuente Ovejuna did it.” With no one person he could prove a case against, the king pardoned the town. The play recounting these historical events was written by Lope de Vega in 1612, and this week, an adaptation of that play gets its premiere at City Lit.
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All Flash, No Substance
The Lightning Thief – Broadway in Chicago
The Lightning Thief, based on the young-adult Percy Jackson novels, premiered in a musical adaptation this week at the Oriental Theatre. The story focuses on young Percy Jackson, who discovers that the pantheon of Greek gods is not only real but his father is really Poseidon, the god of the sea. It follows that, as so many teenagers with secret powers have done before him, he and his friends must go on an arduous quest. He must save the life of his mortal mother and get back Zeus’ stolen lightning bolt before it is used to start a war between the gods. So, you know, regular teenager stuff…
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