Reviews Category
Searching for Connection
The October Storm
After the success of “The Last Pair of Earlies,” Windy City playwright Joshua Allen’s first installment of a promised dramatic series, Raven Theatre is presenting the Chicago premiere of the second play in his Grand Boulevard Trilogy (the third drama has been commissioned for next year). Once again set in the same, three-flat apartment building as his first play, Chicago’s Southside becomes another character in this drama. This play, set in the 1960’s, is again about change and how people cope with it. The drama’s also about how we spend our lives desperately searching for a connection with someone or something and, when it happens, how we deal with it.
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From Baby Phase to Empty Nest
MotherFreakingHood
Today, we are celebrating National Mother’s Day; but every Thursday through Sunday, through mid-June, is Mother’s Day at Mercury Theater Chicago’s Venus Cabaret Theater. In an hilarious, toe-tapping tuneful musical, with book, music and lyrics by Julie Dunlap and Wilmette, Illinois’ Sara Stotts, the challenges and joys of motherhood are celebrated with humor. Three smart women of different ages and from varied backgrounds experience everything that being a mother entails. Told through a series of short scenes or episodes, each punctuated by a delightful, effervescent pop/rock song, the two-hour production, including intermission, takes these wonderful women from “Baby Phase” to “Empty Nest.”
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Opposites Do Attract
Hatefuck
In the final hours of a party to promote a fellow writer, given by Imran, a successful Muslim author, he notices an attractive woman standing alone on the other side of the room. Imran recognizes that, like him, she’s also Muslim. Layla is a liberal literature professor at Wayne State University who accuses Imran of spreading sensationalized antiMuslim stereotypes through his popular, but violent, sexist novels. She taunts him and hurls insults at the cocky, young writer and he, not to be sneered at, returns the favor. As the verbal munitions fly fast and furious something unexpected happens. Imran and Layla find themselves sexually aroused and, before you know it, they’re ripping off clothing and rolling round together in passion. Obviously this is proof that opposites do attract.
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Will and Will
Gender Play
Sometime between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, William Shakespeare, or Will to his friends, wrote an incredible 38 plays and 154 sonnets. Centuries later, this beloved playwright, the Bard of Avon, is still regarded by most actors, directors and avid theatergoers as the “Goat” (the greatest of all time). As proof of Shakespeare’s continually enduring popularity, his plays are still being produced and enjoyed worldwide, well over 400 years later. But, exactly why is that?
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Citizen of the World
Antonio’s Song/I Was Dreaming of a Son
Antonio, a young Latino man, speaks to us and to himself as he relates an event that shamed and shocked him to his core. While attempting to take care of Mark, his active, five-year-old son, he found himself in a quandary. The problem was that Antonio was at work and in a time crunch. As a choreographer and theatre artist, he’d rented a studio for three hours to create a movement piece, but his little boy, his “baby,” didn’t understand his Daddy’s need to concentrate on his art. With time running out and Antonio’s patience strained to its limits, little Mark’s loud distractions finally provoke him to frustration and anger. He suddenly grabbed Mark, shook and slapped him and screamed profanities at the cowering little boy. When he raised his fist to strike the crying child, Antonio suddenly realized what he was doing and wondered how a loving, caring father could suddenly become this out-of-control tyrant?
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Rock On!
Airness
What the heck is “Airness”? Well, according to prolific playwright Chelsea Marcantel, it’s the state of being so dedicated to and lost in a particular activity that a person loses all his hangups and finds himself feeling so free and uninhibited that he revels in a state of pure joy. And in this new production of Ms. Marcantel’s much-lauded production, first enjoyed at the 2017 Humana Festival of New American Plays, at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the audience will come to understand this sensation.
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She Shall Overcome
From the Mississippi Delta
The late Ida Mae Holland took the first name Endesha later in life, as a tribute to her African roots. She earned a bachelors degree in African-American Studies at the University of Minnesota, followed later by a Masters and a PHD degree in American Studies. She wrote six plays, one of which was adapted from her memoir, From the Mississippi Delta. Dr. Holland won the Lorraine Hansberry Award, as a playwright, and taught at the State University of New York, in Buffalo, then became a professor of theatre at the University of Southern California. If someone had told the young Ida Mae Holland that these impressive accolades and achievements would eventually be a part of her future, she would’ve told them that they were crazy. But, to paraphrase the Pete Seeger folksong and the words of Martin Luther King, although Ida Mae didn’t know it at the time, She Shall Overcome.
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Speaking From the Heart
The Language Archive
George is a devoted scientist in every sense of the word. His career is his entire life. As such, George is passionately involved with the recording, cataloging and documentation of every spoken language that has ever existed. He’s the head of an institution called The Language Archive. It’s a library of manuscripts and recordings of the spoken word that seeks to preserve every system of communication in history, particularly those that are dead or dying out. George is an expert in his field but, despite being so learned and fluent in most of the 6,900 languages of the world, it’s ironic that he finds it impossible to communicate when speaking from the heart.
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Waitin’ For the Light to Shine
Big River
Based upon Mark Twain’s classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, this American classic is either revered or condemned. The novel still appears on high school summer reading lists but, thanks to a recent rise in literary censorship in conservative areas, is also banned in some areas. The story unfolds like a Southern version of Candide. Like Voltaire’s novel, it’s about a young man’s journey toward self-discovery. Episodic and peppered with pain, humor and lots of eccentric characters, Huck travels on and learns valuable lessons about life and the human race.
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From Murder to Musical
London Road
A well-earned standing ovation to the brilliant, unbelievably talented and absolutely engaging cast, director, musicians and artistic team who brought this show to life at Theater Wit. In Shattered Globe Theatre’s grand finale to their 2022-23 season they are proudly presenting the U.S. premiere of this fascinating theatrical work. It’s not your typical musical and, as such, a production that might not appeal to everyone. But it’s an intelligent and truly inventive piece of theatre that earns an overused word I generally hate, but really applies to this show: Amazing!
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