Reviews Category
Great Balls of Fire
Million Dollar Quartet – Marriot Theatre
Inspired by a true story, and under the splashy and spectacular direction of James Moye, a slice of rock and roll history has been brought to life in the Marriott Theatre’s brilliant 2019 season opener. This joyful and infectiously likable show will introduce a lot of great music to younger audiences, but it’ll be a fond trip down memory lane for many other theatergoers. It’s chock full of nearly two dozen popular rock and roll and country-western hits. Based on an actual, previously little-known event from the archives of recording history, Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux created this little jukebox musical that has, since its 2006 Florida premier, taken on a whole life of its own.
Read More
Non Sequiturs Ricocheting Everywhere
The Realistic Joneses – Shattered Globe and Wit Theater
Much like an episode of “Seinfeld,” nothing really happens in this one-act by Will Eno. We glean a little bit of information about each of the four characters but there’s not really a story, per se. The author of such other noteworthy plays as “Thom Paine (Based on Nothing),” “Middletown” and “Title and Deed,” Eno’s 2014 comedy took home a Drama Desk award and earned the title of Best Play on Broadway by USA Today. The New York Times warned audiences “not to come to this play expecting tidy, clearly drawn narrative arcs or familiarly typed characters.” The dramatic comedy feels more like a contemporary Theatre of the Absurd offering with its plethora of non sequiturs ricocheting everywhere. Eno’s actually crafted a single play out of a series of short scenes that almost feel like a series of Second City comedy sketches. However, the developing relationship between two couples adds up to a bizarre plot, of sorts, and an authentic portrait of real life.
Read More
Having It All
Dada Woof Papa Hot – About Face Theatre
In Peter Parnell’s comic drama, which first opened at Lincoln Center three years ago, we get a realistic look at how the Marriage Equality Act of 2015 has altered the lives of many gay and lesbian couples. Its passage seemed to promise the same idyllic life and privileges that heterosexual couples had been enjoying for decades. Gay couples would now be able have it all but, as Parnell shows us, that new life comes with its own set of problems, considerations and complications.
Read More
Vampires Around Us
St. Nicholas – Goodman Theatre
He begins his 90-minute monologue by confessing to the audience, “When I was a boy, I was afraid of the dark.” Interestingly, this unnamed character, a drama critic, makes his living by sitting alone in darkened theatres, observing actors who are bringing to life the characters a playwright has created on the page. Has this writer, who admits to being a cruel commentator on productions about which he has little knowledge, overcome his fear of the dark? Or has he simply learned to endure that which scares him the most and join their ranks?
Read More
Sardines and Slamming Doors
Noises Off – Windy City Playhouse
As elderly housekeeper Mrs. Clackett begins exiting while balancing the telephone, a newspaper and a ubiquitous plate of sardines, she suddenly stops (as does her Cockney accent) and she begins questioning herself. “I take the sardines? No, I leave the sardines. No, I take the sardines…” Audiences unfamiliar with Michael Frayn’s laugh-a-minute farce begin to wonder if the actress (Amy Carle, brilliant as Dotty Otley playing the character of Mrs. Clackett) has lost her way…or her mind. And indeed her character does have problems with all her lines and stage business, but that’s the gimmick behind this play-within-a-play. A so-so farce entitled “Nothing On” is being rehearsed by a third-rate British theatrical company, but the audience only comes to understand that this is a rehearsal when Lloyd, their hard-working director (nicely played with manic mastery by handsome Mike Tepeli) interrupts Dotty’s muttering to provide some much-needed direction from the auditorium aisles. The “dress rehearsal” (or is it “the technical”?) continues to stop and start as each new problem arises. With them come new complications and even broader laughter.
Read More
Violence and Its Aftermath
Cardboard Piano – TimeLine Theatre Company
In small church in northern Uganda, as New Year’s Eve ushers in the new millennium, two young girls prepare to celebrate by secretly exchanging marriage vows in a faux wedding ceremony. Chris is the rebellious daughter of strict, conservative missionary parents; Adiel is a feisty, but romantic African teenager, who’s smitten with her. Their lesbian love, not to mention an unheard of racial relationship, are both taboo and strictly forbidden in Uganda. The couple’s secret union will culminate in a night of sexual romance, before they flee from this repressed country to a city where being gay doesn’t mean persecution and punishment. However, as might be expected, their idyll is about to be violently interrupted.
Read More
The Original American Girls
Little Women, the Musical – Brown Paper Box Co.
This musical is exactly what we need today. Although the show originally opened on Broadway back in 2005, it speaks strongly to what America wants to hear right now. It portrays a loving, tight-knit, resilient family trying, against all odds, to survive during the Civil War. They must endure poor economic conditions, illness, romantic complications and a myriad of trials and tribulations we still face today. The play may be set in the mid-nineteenth century, but it’s a universal story about a community of people who care for each other, and it carries a message that still rings true today.
Read More
Fuente Ovejuna
Fuente Ovejuna – City Lit Theater
In 1476, in the Spanish village of Fuente Ovejuna, the villagers rebelled and killed the military commander using the village as his base. Don’t worry; he really, really had it coming. He harassed, kidnapped, and assaulted the women in the village, treating them as little more than livestock. If someone tried to stop him, he had them tortured. When the King sent an investigator to find out who murdered an official, the townspeople, even under torture, would only say that “Fuente Ovejuna did it.” With no one person he could prove a case against, the king pardoned the town. The play recounting these historical events was written by Lope de Vega in 1612, and this week, an adaptation of that play gets its premiere at City Lit.
Read More
All Flash, No Substance
The Lightning Thief – Broadway in Chicago
The Lightning Thief, based on the young-adult Percy Jackson novels, premiered in a musical adaptation this week at the Oriental Theatre. The story focuses on young Percy Jackson, who discovers that the pantheon of Greek gods is not only real but his father is really Poseidon, the god of the sea. It follows that, as so many teenagers with secret powers have done before him, he and his friends must go on an arduous quest. He must save the life of his mortal mother and get back Zeus’ stolen lightning bolt before it is used to start a war between the gods. So, you know, regular teenager stuff…
Read More
Second Chances
Burning Bluebeard – The Ruffians and The Neo-Futurists
On December 30, 1903, the newly built Iroquois Theatre in downtown Chicago caught fire during a matinee performance of Mr. Blue Beard, a pantomime fairy tale. Over six hundred people were killed. In addition to the fire itself, many people were killed as panicked crowds stampeded the doors, to find them either locked or only able to open in and thus pinned shut by the crowd trying to flee. Originally premiering in 2011 and now remounted each Christmas season, Burning Bluebeard sees the ghosts of the performers trying to finish their doomed show.
Read MoreRECOMMENDED SITES
