Reviews Category
A Limited Vista
¡Bernarda!
The new production by Teatro Vista at Steppenwolf’s intimate 1700 Theatre, ¡Bernarda!, is a play by Emilio Williams based on the classic Andalusian drama by Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, La Casa de Bernarda Alba.
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If Music Be the Food of Love…
Twelfth Night
The Summer has come and gone, Halloween has passed on and now the cold, wintry winds are blowing. It’s the perfect season for a holiday in the warm Caribbean isles. Guest director Tyrone Phillips, a first-generation Jamaican American and Chicago artist of many talents, has reimagined William Shakespeare’s perfect comedy set on a tropical island. And, taking his cue from the play’s opening line, “If music be the food of love, play on,” Mr. Phillips has filled his spectacularly colorful, comic production with a generous amount of song and dance. And love, don’t forget love, which seems to be everywhere for every single character.
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Being Alive
Company
Happy 35th birthday, Bobbie! The festive celebration will soon be shared by Bobbie’s married friends, all crammed into her tiny Manhattan apartment to throw a surprise party for their single friend. Throughout this wonderfully re-imagined, mellifluous musical, filled with new surprises and laugh-out-loud hilarity, and some heartbreaking sentiment and truths, Bobbie decides that maybe it’s time to make a big change in her life, which she sing in her plaintive, “Marry Me a Little.”
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Un-Poe-etic
Into That Darkness: The Corrosive Hours of Edgar Poe
Into That Darkness: The Corrosive Hours of Edgar Poe is a labor of love one-man passion project written and enacted by Jacob Mundell that brings Edgar Allan Poe to life through dramatizations of his letters and book reviews, as well as a few of his poems.
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Neighboring on Disturbed
Right Now.
For those of you who remember their dreams, you’ve probably had some unsettling dream experiences where you’re talking to, say, your sister, and suddenly, without warning or volition, you realize that she has actually been, all along, an old boss or your high school gym teacher.
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A Ghost Story
Household Spirits
Just in time for Halloween, Theater Wit is presenting a ghost story that’s being advertised as a dark comedy. It’s not. Oh, there’s a ghost, a creepy, life-sized rag doll who mysteriously speaks, and a dysfunctional family of folks who collectively have enough problems to fill three plays. And that, in addition to being well over two-and-a-half hours long, is the biggest problem with Mia McCullough’s latest play. The script is overstuffed with so many topics, issues, ideas and themes that it’s difficult for the audience to fully grasp all of them. But a comedy this isn’t, although there are a few witty lines, unexpected situations and humorous side-eyed glances that provoke a chuckle, now and then. This play is a sad drama about a group of related people, each coping with different difficulties and trying to deal with grief.
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A Romantic Fairy Tale in Tartan
Brigadoon
As the lights dim, the haunting skirl of bagpipes fill the air of Music Theater Works’ magical, magnificent Fall production. A brief blissful and beautiful overture suddenly transports us to the Highlands of Scotland. Performed by musical director Michael McBride’s incredibly talented 8-member offstage orchestra, this symphonic sampler is followed a gorgeous a cappella Prelude, sung by an ethereal chorus that both charms and sets the scene for the romantic fairy tale in tartan that’s about to unfold.
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In Praise of Women
A Little Night Music
Hi ho, the Glamorous Life! It’s here! BrightSide Theatre’s 12th year, collectively entitled A Season of Passion, opens with a bang. Well, perhaps not exactly a bang, but definitely an explosion of glorious music and delightful storytelling, all presented by a cast, orchestra and team of creative artists bursting with talent. Superb and sumptuous, BrightSide’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s glorious, Tony Award-winning musical is absolutely magical.
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Puttin’ On the Ritz
Young Frankenstein
Mercury Theater Chicago closes its 2023 season with an explosion of talent, music and comedy. With each new production, Artistic Director Christopher Chase Carter has upped the ante at his theater and presented some of the Windy City’s finest talent. The productions have ranged from the motivational “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill;” to the touching and educational “Big River;” and the always highly entertaining, such as “Clue.” This demonically driving production of “Young Frankenstein” is one of Mercury Theater’s finest, to date. To quote Irving Berlin catchy classic that highlights this production, L. Walter Stearns’ cast and artistic team most definitely pulls out all the stops and are truly “Puttin’ On the Ritz.”
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A Man of Parts
Frankenstein
The Joffrey Ballet adaptation of Mary Shelley’s landmark novel Frankenstein, now in its Chicago premiere at the Lyric Opera, should not come as a surprise to anyone, given that this ballet received its world premiere at London’s Royal Opera House back in 2016. Still, it’s a little startling to contemplate the notion that anyone could have ever concocted such an esoteric production and managed to pull it off successfully. Even after seeing it, I was still left wondering whether it ever even did make sense or could make sense to produce a ballet about the mad ambition of an inadvertent monster maker.
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