Author: Colin Douglas
Stories That Kids Will Gobble Up
The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show – Chicago Children’s Theatre
As the lights dim a gentle voice reminds adults to silence their cell phones; but our host also gives permission to the show’s target audience, ages 2-7, to join in telling the stories, if they’re so moved. It’s a “no shushing production,” much to the delight of both the children and their parents, because it’s so hard to keep quiet when you’re hearing stories that are so familiar you just have to add your own voice. And kids will certainly gobble up the stories they’re about to experience.
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A Musical Daisy Chain
Hello Again – Theo Ubique
If it’s true that sex sells; this show should bring in a fortune. However, you would never know from the innocent title of this curious little 90-minute musical that it depicts just about every form of sexual expression known to man. And, in the intimate Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre, that means you get simulated sex practically in your lap. Younger and more sensitive audiences should be warned that Michael John LaChiusa’s 1993 musical is a mature, explicit treatise about how people have used sex as power throughout every decade of the 20th century.
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Lost in Space
X – Sideshow Theatre
It’s haunted house season again. As Halloween approaches, all over Chicagoland the scary habitats are popping up everywhere. The holiday has turned into a month-long celebration of all things eerie, just as Autumn begins to nip the air. But in this latest Chicago production by British playwright Alistair McDowall, known for such unsettling dramas as “Brilliant Adventures” and “Pomona,” he’s created a new kind of haunted house. Tension builds as ghostly apparitions appear and ominous events occur. Strange sights and sounds torment and terrify the crew as the astronauts and the audience find themselves helplessly lost in space.
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Artistic Challenge or Ego Stroking
Bernhardt/Hamlet – Goodman Theatre
Sarah Bernhardt was the most famous female actor in the entire world. She was a celebrity, a new concept that Madame Sarah created for herself. She was a self-made professional artist who had played every major female character in classic dramatic literature. However, by 1899 Miss Bernhardt, now in her 50’s, had tired of always playing ingenues. She forcefully announces to famed playwright Edmund Rostand, her married lover, that she “will not go back to playing flowers” any more. “I was never a flower. Playing an ingenue was always beneath me. It’s beneath all women.” And, thus, Sarah Bernhardt defends her decision to play Hamlet.
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A Fusion of Culture, History and Athletics
The Great Leap – Steppenwolf Theatre
Saul is a San Francisco basketball coach. A divorced father of a young daughter, his “family” is his team. He loves them, protects them, nurtures them and wants only the best for them. But, more than anything else in life, Saul wants to beat the Chinese basketball team in Beijing. Back in 1971, Saul was sent to China to help polite, good-natured gentleman, Wen Chang, a Communist official, understand the finer points of basketball and assemble his own winning Chinese team. Flash ahead to 1989 and Saul is about to bring his own talented team of American players to Beijing to challenge Wen Chang’s highly competitive team.
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Talking with the King
The King’s Speech – Chicago Shakespeare Theatre
The story of how Albert Frederick Arthur George, the second son of King George V, unexpectedly inherited the throne and became King George VI is common knowledge to any Brit or English history buff. But a secret has been revealed that Albert, who was nicknamed Bertie, stuttered so badly that he was constantly teased, both by his father and his older brother, Edward. Bertie was made Duke of York and, as such, didn’t have to speak very much in public, plagued by his crippling speech defect.
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Finding Your Home
Peter and the Starcatcher – Citadel Theatre
Seventeen actors pour down the aisles and flood a stage filled with rough wooden scaffolding, draped by sheeting, and backed by Eric Luchen’s array of chotchke-choked shelving. Amidst the chaos and cacophony, each actor takes his or her turn narrating what will ultimately become a unique, story theatre prequel to Sir James M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy. Employing rapid-fire dialogue, an abbreviated prologue sets the tone for the next two-and-a-half hours. The actors shift between telling the tale and portraying a myriad of characters in this creative, sometimes funny production by Rick Elice, adapted from the children’s novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.
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Teenage Dream
Mother of the Maid – Northlgiht Theatre
As with the musical “Titanic,” the audience attending Jane Anderson’s latest play knows pretty much how this story about Joan of Arc is going to end. It’s the journey to the tragic climax that makes all the difference. The author of “The Baby Dance” and “Defying Gravity”, applies a unique approach with this mythic legend. She tells the story from the perspective of Isabelle d’Arc, Joan’s peasant mother. Isabelle pops in and out of the drama, sometimes acting as an omniscient observing narrator, but most often as a concerned mother and farmer’s wife. The dialogue is often anachronistic, sometimes employing present-day mannerisms, contemporary phrases and unexpected four-letter words. The result is the backstory of Saint Joan, told with a modern flair.
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What About Love?
The Color Purple – Drury Lane Theatre
Love’s transformative and healing power can redirect a person’s life. A feeling of positive self-worth can bring an individual full circle, from subservience and hopelessness to independence and confidence. The Color Purple, Alice Walker’s beloved, 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, follows the journey of Celie, a downtrodden young African-American girl, living in rural Georgia during the early to mid-twentieth century. Her story is incredibly inspiring because Celie rose from a depraved childhood to an abusive married life, finally becoming a strong, independent woman, able to stand on her own two feet.
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Against-the-Odds Peacemaking
Oslo – Broadway in Chicago
Prior to the world witnessing Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Leader Yasser Arafat coming together in peace on one historic day in 1993, a lot of confidential meetings and secret arrangements had taken place in Oslo, Norway. In playwright J.T. Rogers’ riveting drama, the audience becomes totally immersed in this somewhat fictionalized, yet fact-based backstory, of the events that led up to the Oslo Peace Accords. The end result of this against-the-odds international peacemaking effort became the negotiation of a momentous peace treaty between Israel and Palestine.
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