Author: Colin Douglas
The Need For Love and Forgiveness
Bottle Fly
In Jacqueline Goldfiner’s latest play, Ruth and Penny are a recently coupled pair of lesbian lovers. They’ve traveled to Florida’s Everglades to start a business raising bees and selling their special honey. The couple is renting room and board above a ramshackle bar, owned by Rosie and her husband Cal, a hardworking offshore oil rig foreman. They are raising and caring for K, an emotionally disturbed young adult who Rosie and Cal found wandering alone through the swampland. K stutters and can barely speak; but in her beautiful alto, she croons classic love songs from the 30’s and 40’s. Goldfiner’s one-act drama is a sweet story about how we all have a similar need for love and forgiveness.
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Don’t Feed the Plant
Little Shop of Horrors
Audrey, Seymour, Orin, Mr. Mushnik and all the other crazy characters from this 1982 rock musical horror are back in Chicagoland. And just in time for Halloween, too! Based upon Roger Corman’s low-budget, darkly humorous sci-fi film from 1960, composer Alan Menken (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,” SISTER ACT) and his longtime writing partner, the late, great playwright/lyricist Howard Ashman, initially created this cult classic for Off-Off-Broadway. But due to its popularity, the musical found its way to Off-Broadway, and then eventually made its way onto the Great White Way in 2003. The musical comedy was also adapted for the silver screen and became a popular 1986 film. A worldwide favorite, wherever and whenever this satirical Motown-style musical is produced, the show is alway a huge hit. Music Theater Works’ Fall production, presented with savvy staging and a topnotch cast by Kyle Dougan, is no exception. But the production does have a few problems.
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I Wish
Into the Woods
In stories, as in real life, everyone wishes for something better. Sometimes the wishes come true, but not without a cost. There’s always consequences for our actions and a price to pay. As each of us follow our chosen path to fulfill our wishes, we impact those around us. Because, as one of the most beautiful songs from this score reminds us, “No one is alone.” As each of the characters leaves his or her comfort zone and heads into the woods to make a wish come true, risks will be taken to achieve the goals. And after all that happens in this musical, because life goes on, we’re always looking ahead and hoping for something more. So at the end of the show, one of the characters expresses that eternal feeling, “I wish.”
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Baby, Let’s Get Good!
Some Like It Hot
After innocently witnessing a Mafia murder, Joe, a saxophone player and his partner, Jerry, a bass player, come up with a risky plan to escape Chicago before they’re rubbed out. The musicians are broke so they need to earn some fast cash to survive. But it’s 1933 and the Depression is on. There are no jobs for instrumentalists— except, perhaps, in an all-girl jazz band that’s about to tour the country, eventually ending up in sunny California. Does this plot sound familiar? Well, as the song says, “Baby, Let’s Get Good!”
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A Play in Letters
Dear Elizabeth
Beginning in 1947, the intimate thirty-year friendship between two brilliantly talented writers becomes the subject of Sarah Ruhl’s work, “DEAR ELIZABETH: A PLAY IN LETTERS. Adapted in 2012 from Words in the Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, Ruhl’s play fills in the blanks. The two 20th century literary giants’ epistolary relationship began when American poet Elizabeth Bishop wrote a fan letter to fellow poet and contemporary, Robert Lowell. More than 400 pieces of correspondence connected these two writers over three decades. Their relationship was close and almost romantic, but remained strictly platonic throughout the years. Although the pair never married, they shared a love, along with a profound admiration and respect for each other’s works. Robert wrote to Elizabeth, “I seem to spend my life missing you,” which sums up how close they were until Robert’s death in 1977.
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A Near Miss
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
Prolific playwright Lynn Nottage is known for her challenging and often forgotten stories, focusing her works on members of the African-American working class community. She’s also known as the first and only woman to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice. RUINED and SWEAT have earned her that illustrious accolade, followed by such other excellent dramas as INTIMATE APPAREL, MLIMA’S TALE, CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY and the book for MJ THE MUSICAL. BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK, one of Lynn Nottage’s lesser known plays, is now in an interesting new production by Artistic Home. The production is a rare near miss. And the play itself just doesn’t seem to be in the same league as Ms. Nottage’s other plays.
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Just in Time for Halloween
Bram Stokers’ Dracula
Bela Lugosi’s name is synonymous with the character of the aristocratic vampire king, Dracula. The actor rose to fame, both on stage and in film, playing this iconic role. The popularity of Dracula and vampires in general is still going strong, even to this day. There are, to date, well over 200 films that feature the Transylvanian Count, as well as many plays, musicals and even operas. Prolific American playwright Steven Dietz’s faithful adaptation of the novel kicks off BrightSide Theatre’s lucky 13th Season, just in time for Halloween.
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Food, Wine and Relationships
Dinner With Friends
Writer Donald Margulies, a Yale Professor of English and Theatre Performance, has a great many plays to his credit. They include such dramas as THE LOMAN FAMILY PICNIC, SIGHT UNSEEN, COLLECTED STORIES and BROOKLYN BOY. Several of these plays have garnered a variety of accolades and awards, such as Margulies’ 1998 DINNER WITH FRIENDS, the current production by Bluebird Arts. This Pulitzer Prize-winner for Drama in 2000 opens the company’s sixth season of presenting intimate stories about real people and their relationships. In this production, the talented Chicago-based theatre company truly lives up to their artistic goal.
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Overstuffed and Overwhelming
Becky Nurse of Salem
Distinguished writer, poet, professor and essayist Sarah Ruhl is one of America’s most highly-respected and often-produced playwrights. She’s created some of theatre’s finest plays, such as IN THE NEXT ROOM (OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY), THE CLEAN HOUSE, EURYDICE and the soon to open in Chicago, DEAR ELIZABETH. Ms. Ruhl is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater, a Tony nomination for Best Play and a two-time nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. In other words, Sarah Ruhl is undeniably a recognized and talented writer. But in her 2019 play, currently having its Midwest Premiere by Shattered Globe Theatre, the gifted playwright overwhelms her audience with far too many ideas.
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A True Winner
Primary Trust
Have you heard of Eboni Booth? She belongs to an elite group of distinguished playwrights that include Edward Albee, Thornton Wilder and Tennessee Williams, and more recently Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lynn Nottage and August Wilson. Ms. Booth is the greatly deserving recipient of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her glorious one-act, PRIMARY TRUST. And, if that accolade wasn’t enough, consider that this deeply moving 80-minute play, which premiered in New York at the Laura Pels Theatre just last year, also won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play. And now the Goodman Theatre is presenting this sparkling theatrical gem in its Chicago Regional Premiere. And this play, particularly this production, is indeed a true winner!
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