Chicago Theatre Review

Author: Kevin Curran

The Face of an Honest Man

March 10, 2019 Comments Off on The Face of an Honest Man

Doubt – The Gift Theatre

Doubt, the Pulitzer Prize winning play and basis for the film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, is being given a Chicago revival by The Gift Theatre at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theatre. It centers on St. Nicolas, a parochial school in the Bronx in 1964, and its principal, the stern Sister Aloysius and a new progressive priest, Father Flynn. One of Sister Aloysius’ teachers, Sister James, comments that Flynn is paying special attention to one boy, Donald Muller, the school’s first black student. Sister Aloysius becomes convinced that something inappropriate is happening and embarks on a crusade to stop him.

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Puppet Masters

March 4, 2019 Comments Off on Puppet Masters

Ariodante – Lyric Opera of Chicago

Ariodante, premiering this week at the Lyric, is story of a medieval Scottish prince and his betrothed, Ginevra. The Evil Duke (Are there any non-evil Dukes in opera?) is Ariodante’s rival for Ginevra’s hand. She spurns him, but since women weren’t really allowed opinions at this time, the Duke carries on, tricking Ariodante into believing Ginevra has been unfaithful. Ariodante is heartbroken and Ginevra faces execution for a sin she did not commit. The Duke now plans to intervene to save her, winning the King’s favor and her affections.

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All Torn Up

March 1, 2019 Comments Off on All Torn Up

I Wanna F#!&ing Tear You Apart – Rivendell Theatre

Rivendell Theatre is giving Morgan Gould’s I Wanna F#!&ing Tear You Apart its Midwest premiere this month. The story centers on Samantha, a self-described fat woman and Leo, her gay best friend and roommate. They have been friends since college. Now roommates in New York, they are trying to jump-start writing careers in between bingeing reality television and fighting over who left an empty soda bottle in the refrigerator.

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Pride and Prejudice

February 25, 2019 Comments Off on Pride and Prejudice

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde – Promethean Theatre Ensemble

One of the oldest maxims of the theater is that you can create drama by letting the audience know something the characters don’t, at least not yet. It’s what gives historical dramas their bite. We know what’s going to happen, but we aren’t bored as long we’re invested in the characters unknowingly marching to their doom. That truism is on full display in Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s restaging of it’s 2016 production of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.

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The Opera You Didn’t Know You Knew

February 19, 2019 Comments Off on The Opera You Didn’t Know You Knew

La Traviata – Lyric Opera of Chicago

Before seeing the premiere of the Lyric’s new production of La Traviata at the Civic Opera House this weekend, I attended a preshow lecture about the history of the show. I learned that though it is now considered one of the finest operas ever written and a staple of many companies’ repertoires, it actually flopped on opening night amid composer Verdi’s battles with censors demanding edits and an opera house that wouldn’t cast the roles of its young lovers with actors who were…well…young. A couple of years later, some edits and better casting made the show the hit it has remained but, while I was listening to the lecture, I couldn’t help but think how hard it is to picture how classical works were received in their own time. They didn’t come into the world at stuffy or sophisticated pieces — they were the popular culture of their day, and inspired as much passion in their audiences as Hamilton or Dear Evan Hansen do in ours. Fortunately for this show, once the curtain went up the gap was easy to bridge.

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Almost

February 19, 2019 Comments Off on Almost

Requiem for a Heavyweight – The Artistic Home

Requiem for a Heavyweight started life as a television play in 1956 by a pre-Twilight Zone Rod Serling, starring Jack Palance as an aging boxer. It was adapted into a film in 1962 with Anthony Quinn. This week, it is adapted into a stage version at The Artistic Home. The story focuses on ‘Mountain’ McClintock, a heavyweight boxer who spent his career always almost, but never quite, winning the championship, and is now too injured to continue boxing, and his manager Maish. It is revealed in the opening scene that Maish bet against Mountain in his final fight to get the money he needed to buy the contract of a young up-and-comer, Mountain’s replacement. Seeking any work he can get, he meets Grace at an employment agency and begins a tentative friendship.

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Chicago Musical Theatre Festival

February 5, 2019 Comments Off on Chicago Musical Theatre Festival

5th Annual Chicago Musical Theatre Festival – Underscore Theatre Company

Producing a new musical is hard. Nearly impossible. The time, the energy, and the cost make it a daunting task. It’s part of the reason most new Broadway musicals are revivals of classics or adaptations of known, successful properties. There’s no other way to ensure a show will make back its investment. To counter that, Underscore Theater Company is dedicated to nurturing new works in Chicago. For the fifth year, they take submissions from writers around the world and give a chosen few productions over the course of three weeks. By pooling backstage resources like sound and lighting equipment and crews, new musicals can be more economically staged, and hopefully reach a wider audience.

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Familiar Patterns

January 29, 2019 Comments Off on 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.

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Credit Where Credit is Due

January 27, 2019 Comments Off on 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.

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In the Blood

January 27, 2019 Comments Off on 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.

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