Reviews Category
A Celebration of Life
The Gospel at Colonus
The Court Theatre closes its 2022/2023 season with what can only be described as a jubilant musical and dramatic celebration of life. I defy audiences to sit quietly, casually and passively just observing this pulsating production. If you aren’t clapping your hands, you’re bobbing your head to the beat; if you’re not actively participating in the kind of call-and-response tradition found in a Pentecostal Church service, you’re at the very least emotionally engaged. Theatergoers will find themselves filled with exultation at this ancient story brought into the twenty-first century. And if none of these things apply, you might want to check your pulse.
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A Play More Timely Today Than When it Premiered
What the Constitution Means to Me
If you were lucky enough to see the world premiere of Heidi Schrek’s What the Constitution Means to Me at the off-Broadway New York Theatre Workshop back in 2018, in its subsequent Broadway incarnation, or in the Prime Video special, be forewarned that the first Chicago-based production of the play currently onstage at the TimeLine Theatre Company is now a very different piece of work.
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The Butterfly Effect
Tango
When a small, seemingly insignificant occurrence causes or contributes to other, larger and more dramatic events, we call this the Butterfly Effect. At one time, it used to be referred to as Chaos Theory. This belief that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings might actually create tiny changes in the atmosphere that would bring about something catastrophic, like a tornado or a typhoon, is a more poetic turn of phrase. Such a phenomenon is the premise of Joel Tan’s two-act drama, now having its American premiere at PrideArts.
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To Tell the Truth
The Whistleblower
James A. Garfield, the twentieth President of the United States, once said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” In his new comedy, prolific playwright, Itamar Moses seems to have decided to take this idea and run with it. The Tony Award-winning book writer of the musical “The Band’s Visit” poses this query: What if you told everyone the whole truth about everyone and everything? What would their reactions be to your complete candor? And, as a result, how would your own life change?
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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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