RECOMMENDED

“You’re jealous, I’m in the Axis of Evil, and you’re not.” — that’s how Iranian stand-up comedian Maz Jobrani likes to break his ethnicity to his audience. A regular fixture on the Middle Eastern “Axis of Evil Comedy Tour,” Jobrani’s show unabashedly exploits the social baggage attached to his Iranian heritage, playfully poking fun at stereotypes, deriding the stupidity of political leaders, and goofily depicting the pratfalls of racism. Jobrani doesn’t shy away from depicting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad drunk-dialing George W. Bush, doesn’t back off in ridiculing the absurdity of people that think he has inside information on gas prices or the never-ending news coverage of Middle Eastern protesters burning things. “They always show the crazy guy, burning the American flag, screaming ‘death to America!’ Just once show us doing something good,” he pleads. “Just once show us baking cookies or something. Cause I’ve been to Iran, we bake cookies. Never gonna happen, though. Even if they did that, they’d follow it up with, ‘This just in, a cookie bomb just exploded.’” (Andy Seifert)

February 14 at Lakeshore Theater, 3175 N. Broadway, (773)472-3492, 7pm and 9:30pm. $29.50.

Caroline Rau as Rabbi Shea Hecht/Photo: Johnny Knight

Memorably described as “Performance Art’s answer to the historian Studs Terkel,” Anna Deveare Smith burst onto the theater scene in 1992 with “Fires in the Mirror,” her documentary account of the 1991 riots that rocked Crown Heights, Brooklyn, after a car driven by a Hasidic Jew accidentally ran over and killed a 7-year-old black boy, and after a group of black men—in retaliation—stabbed another Hasidic Jew from the community to death. From the victims’ family members to opinionated bystanders, from civil rights activists to noted academics, Deveare Smith conducted dozens of interviews and then regurgitated these verbatim on the stage through a mosaic of unedited monologues. Director Ann Filmer’s concept for her revival, which opens 16th Street Theatre in Berwyn’s second season and which carries the blessing of Ms. Deveare Smith herself, is to distribute the performing duties of “Fire’s” twenty-six characters among four women of various ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, and therefore testing a thread that runs through all of Ms. Deveare Smith’s investigative journalism as theater pieces: when it comes to presenting the words of others, who has the right to speak for whom?

Filmer’s undeniable passion in the presentation of this material, as well as the piece’s topicality and gripping subject matter, make a good case that everyone can have this right, especially if the message is important enough. And so I experienced no difficulty seeing a Caucasian woman playing the Reverend Al Sharpton, or an African-American woman speaking for a male Hasidic rabbi—like all the portrayals adopting the speaker’s cultural patois, unique speech rhythms and vocal idiosyncrasies. It’s all part and parcel of an urgent theatrical discussion that the Chicago theater community is having with the country (Wooster Group’s “Emperor Jones” in blackface at the Goodman earlier this year, American Theater Company’s Caucasian cast “Topdog/Underdog” premiering this month, are just two more examples). My only reservation is with Filmer’s choice to imbue the production with a lot more “acting” than I think it needs. Whereas Deveare Smith’s original presentation of the material must have surely been a whirlwind tour de force experience—ninety minutes I have been told by those who saw it—Filmer’s production, clocking in at more than two hours, ultimately draws unnecessary attention to the fact that many of the monologues are in actuality dense and meandering affairs that test one’s concentration. Whereas Deveare Smith’s spaghetti theory of dramaturgy approach to the material—throw everything at the audience and see what sticks—would have benefited from a quick and simple presentation style allowing the viewer to take what they will, Filmer’s focus on painstakingly setting up each scene as a small play truncates the overall rhythm and transforms the material from a collage of feelings into a series of important-sounding civic lessons.

That’s not to say that Filmer’s hard-working and confident quartet of actresses don’t give their all to this piece. They do. And more. As well, there’s no denying the searing theatricality that dazzles the eyes and ears: smart projections; crisp chiaroscuro lighting; a moving score and gritty song selection that captures urban American circa the early nineties; all of this amounting to—at least intellectually—a satisfying evening in the theater. Still, while the experience hasn’t been hurt by this approach, I can’t help but wonder: has it been helped? (Fabrizio O. Almeida)

At Berwyn Cultural Center, 6420 16th Street, Berwyn, (708)795-6704. Thu-Fri 7:30pm/Sat 5pm & 8:30pm. $16. Through Feb 28.

Nicole Wiesner and Coburn Goss/Photo: Christopher Shinn

Real-life dysfunction sucks. But as New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood recently put it, “What might appall us in reality—the unearthing of duplicity or betrayal—can delight in drama.” Or so you hope.

Which brings us to Christopher Shinn’s “Dying City,” receiving an impeccably designed if starchily executed production at Next Theatre in Evanston. To exist in the world of this play is to be wandering a field of land mines. Not a single relationship here functions as it should. Too bad you don’t believe a minute of it.

A single actor (Coburn Goss) plays identical twin brothers: Peter is the self-involved actor; Craig is the straight-laced military man. A third character, Kelly (played by Nicole Wiesner), is Craig’s wife. She is a therapist by trade, but a lousy tactician when it comes to handling these velvet-gloved manipulators. Both brothers project their pathologies onto this woman as if she were a science experiment. It’s all disguised as love or concern or the desire for connection, and Kelly takes the bait.

Their secrets and lies unfold on a raked stage (Jim Davis is the scenic designer), tipping the actors forward—it’s as if any moment, the characters will tumble over the ledge into an abyss of their own making. It’s a canny visual that suggests there’s more to this production than there really is.

Craig has died in Iraq (we see him in flashbacks) and a year afterwards Peter shows up on Kelly’s doorstep to hand down a reckoning prettied up by his politesse and faux naïf ponderings about who Craig really was.

But the production itself (directed by Jason Loewith) lacks focus and psychological snap. Neither actor, I think, is quite right for their roles; very little here feels true or dangerously close to something resembling life. This more like “life.” But what is this play really about anyway, once you strip away the cat-and-mouse façade? Judging by this production, not much at all. (Nina Metz)

At Next Theatre in the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes in Evanston, (847)475-1875 ext. 2 or nexttheatre.org. Thu 7:30p; Fri-Sat 8p, Sun 2p. $23-$38. Through March 8.

RECOMMENDED

Based on personal observation, men tend to unfairly tag all-female comedy groups with a few predictable prejudiced stigmas. “Oh geez, here we go,” the narrow-minded male thinks. “Another overtly feminist, ceaselessly male-bashing act that focuses on periods, male chauvinism and pseudo-’Vagina Monologues’ tangents.” Not so for The Kates, a collective of Chicago female comediennes, actresses and musicians, who may occasionally take a shot at the opposite sex, but refuses to make it their identity. Rather, The Kates just happen to be a particularly talented assortment of girls, a rotating cast featuring, among others, stand-ups Cameron Esposito, Kelsie Huff and Amy Sumpter. Occasional gender-specific humor comes up—being fondled by an 8th grader, magazines that ask “what’s he thinking about your orgasm face?”—but all in the natural course of observational humor or sprawling monologues, and as a result the whole production has an informal, almost campfire-storytelling feel. Big ups to Huff, whose hosting duties included bubbly, caffeinated-influenced introductions and doling out free cupcakes (!) with an infectious joyousness that makes you happy to be alive. (Andy Seifert)

At Mercury Cafe, 1505 W. Chicago, (312)455-9924, the first Saturday of every month, 7pm, and at The Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, (773)293-2665, the last Saturday of every month, 7 pm.

Shel Silverstein was a naughty man.  When he wasn’t writing beloved children’s literature he was publishing naughty cartoons and contributing to Playboy.  “An Adult Evening of Shel Silversein” is a string of his short plays that captures the author’s musings on topics nowhere near where the sidewalk ends.  Sex, marriage, bureaucracy and a dead pony for a 13-year-old girl all get a little stage time. This play is hilarious, at least as written.  In the hands of  The Shadowmen and director Lavina Jadhwani something happened. The positives are many.  The cleverly constructed paper set by Matthew Buettner creates a versatile playground out of Silverstein’s drawings.  Christine Ferriter’s lighting design is subtle and detailed. Regrettably though, a few of the actors don’t understand where the humor is.  Scenes like the aggressive interrogation of the man responsible for the phrase “Have a nice day”should be  played with absolute sincerity.  Instead, it is screamed at the audience. In the end a few bad performances overpower the better ones and leave me wanting to see the show again with different people. (William Scott)

At Raven Theatre Complex, 6157 N. Clark Street, (866)811-4111, through February 28.

Here’s the press release from Joffrey Ballet:

ASHLEY WHEATER, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE JOFFREY BALLET, ANNOUNCES ITS 2009-2010 SEASON: “LEGENDS”

Season to feature two world premieres by James Kudelka and Jessica Lang;
two classic story ballets: the Company Premiere of Lar Lubovitch’s Othello, and the return of Sir Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella; and the timeless tradition of Robert Joffrey’s The Nutcracker! Read the rest of this entry »

Batsheva Dance Company may be one of the most fascinating companies in the world.  If  that is so, then Ohad Naharin, the company’s artistic director, must be one of the genius choreographers of that world. Naharin’s work is familiar to Chicago.  His “Minus 16” has become an audience favorite in Hubbard Street Dance’s repertoire.  Based in Tel Aviv, this weekend the Israeli company will be at Auditorium Theatre bringing selections from ten of Naharin’s  best creations in a program called “Deca Dance.” I caught up with Brett Batterson, Auditorium’s executive director and a man who shares my excitement for this company.  We put together this short list of just a few reasons to go see Batsheva.

1. “Anyone who creates a new style of movement and has it accepted around the globe is obviously unique,” says Batterson.  The style is called Gaga and it was developed on the bodies of this company so no one does it better. The company’s Web site describes it like this: “At once we, the users, can be involved in moving slowly through space while a quick action in our body is in progress.”  The best way I know to describe it is it has characteristics of one of those inflatable waving tubes you see by car dealerships…but beautiful.

2. “The company is not afraid to try new ideas in their work and challenge the status quo a little bit.  For instance, Batterson explains, “the upcoming performances at the Auditorium include some brief nudity and mature language, but both are used to emphasize the message of the work.  It is not about simply shocking the audience or as an attempt to be hip and trendy.”

3. “The company helps build bridges between Israel and other communities around the world,” Batterson feels.  It has been fifteen years since Batsheva came to Chicago and it seems to be an opportune time.  Just when the entire world could use a few bridges.

If you want to know more, visit Batsheva’s website (batsheva.co.il), or go on opening night (February 7) for the opportunity to hear Naharin speak at a post-show discussion. (William Scott)

At Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Parkway, (312)902-1500. February 7 & 8, $30-$89.

I never saw the Broadway production of the musical “Xanadu” but I imagine it was far superior to the sloppy seconds that Chicago audiences have been given at the Drury Lane Theatre at Water Tower Place, courtesy of Broadway in Chicago.

Like any respectable musical-theater queen there’s a big place in my heart for the 1980 film “Xanadu.” The late legendary Gene Kelly, whose participation must have been predicated on the notion that “Xanadu” would help usher in another period of great MGM-style movie musicals—on roller skates! Olivia Newton-John’s comical attempts to execute Kenny Ortega’s ballet-inspired opening number, especially whenever lead muse (and one time Fosse-muse) Sandahl Bergman would dance into the shot! Michael Beck’s scenery-chewing performance! Whether you wore out your VHS copy watching it in delightful disbelief with friends growing up (as I did), or sang along to it at Sidetrack’s on a Musical Monday night (as I also did quite regularly in the earlier part of this decade), “Xanadu” was an experience.

I don’t know that the stage show offers any experience, let alone anything that might even qualify this as a fun and fabulous guilty pleasure. Clearly, the biggest problem is with Christopher Ashley’s direction. You can’t force camp, and yet every half-assed joke and lame visual pun has been overly telegraphed and repeated to the point of ineffectiveness. I did laugh a few times: Elizabeth Stanley’s breathy delivery of some stupid lines; the thick Australian accent. But overall I found the ninety-minute intermission-less stage experience tedious, dull and uninspired. And yet the creators seem content to justify their crude commercialization—I certainly would not call it clever adaptation‚—of the original material by using “Xanadu” to make an ironic comment on the paucity of creativity and intelligence that saddled the musical theater in the 1980s. Can you say, pot, kettle, black? And then there’s the obligatory snide remark towards composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who of course is responsible for everything that’s wrong about the musical theater today, as well as his roller-skating Broadway musical spectacular, “Starlight Express.” To the creators of “Xanadu” I can only say this: I’ve seen “Starlight Express,” in London, New York, Las Vegas and in Germany, and you, “Xanadu,” are no “Starlight Express.”

But whatever the show’s ultimate artistic merits, the second-rate production values of the Chicago staging are disconcerting, especially on the heels of such polished tours like “Jersey Boys” and “Wicked.” (And even when compared against Drury Lane’s other tenant in its suburban venue, “Miss Saigon.”) Clearly, this is a big misstep for Broadway in Chicago, and I don’t see ”Xanadu” running long or appealing to many theatergoers. Because if this camp-loving, ELO-listening, gay roller-skating lover of “Starlight Express” thought it was crap, what hope is there for you to like it? (Fabrizio O. Almeida)

At Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place.  Check broadwayinchicago.com for showtimes.  $25 – $87.50.  Open Run.

Sennichimae Blue Sky Dance Club by Tsuyoshi Koishihara

RECOMMENDED

The first time I saw an anime, some fifteen years ago, I felt as though I were watching a dream projected on the screen; while beautiful and obviously symbolic, the movie was weirdly indiscernible to me: the images, narrative structure and character motivations were somehow off—so deeply different, deeply other, from any foreign film I’d seen. There was something I should grasp, but couldn’t grab hold of for the unfamiliar rhythms of the story. The first experience watching contemporary Japanese dance can elicit a similar reaction—a gorgeous, magical bewilderment as the western mind churns to decode temporally elastic, slow-to-near-imperceptible movements or sustained, balls-out tantrums—transformative meditations on the grotesque and transcendent. This weekend, the Dance Center of Columbia College offers a sampler platter courtesy of three extraordinary Japanese companies: Nibroll, which presents the latter; Sennichimae Blue Sky Dance Club, masters of the former; and the breath-suspending Baby-Q, whose collaborative “E/G Geometria” revives the maligned term “performance art.” Each group presents an excerpt from evening-length performances—digestible chunks that will doubtless ease the disorientation described above, but will not, I very much hope, amputate each piece before it clutches at the divine.

Six members of Nibroll will perform part of “Coffee,” an unrelenting frenzy of grasping, shoving, screaming and—yes—occasionally pouring coffee, before massive projections of birds in flight, animated scenes of a city besieged by a giant fluffy monster and film of a toddler spilling her milk. Clusters of mobiles hang above agitated dancers in street clothes who collide, collapse and drag one another across the stage. The frenzy is followed by Butoh-based Sennichimae Blue Sky Dance Club in an excerpt from “End of Water.” The juxtaposition is like witnessing a fifteen-car pileup and then retreating to an empty field to watch a flower bloom. Molasses-paced Butoh can place high demands on an audience, but a receptive viewer is rewarded in kind; the snail’s pace locomotion and spare gestures are so deeply generated that it makes classical European dance look unmotivated and frivolous. The program finishes with an excerpt from “E/G Geometria,” a collaboration of noise music, brilliant lighting design, solo movement by the captivating Yoko Higashino, and a touch of robotics that converge in an atmosphere of a Japanese horror film. Haunting, stunning, dreamlike. To experience the vision, don’t try to figure it out. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan, (312)369-6600. February 5-7, 8pm. $24-$28.

By Fabrizio O. Almeida

“Here’s the story. I’d been playing Hamlet for the RSC [The Royal Shakespeare Company] for two years and I had finished it. And when you do something like that people ask you very, very serious questions. ‘Now, what’s the next great mountain you’re going to scale? What’s the next great role?’ And the first thing I was offered was five days—it might have just been four—on this new ‘Star Wars’ movie. And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a funny idea to come off of ‘Hamlet’ into that. I’ll do it straight away.” The role was Imperial Commander Moff Jerjerrod in 1983’s “Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi,” and the man discussing his career is British actor Michael Pennington, on the phone from his home in London ten days before his scheduled arrival into Chicago for “Sweet William,” his one-man Shakespeare show at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. The “Star Wars” saga continues…

“And I did this very, very small part—I never thought twice about it—and now get a regular mailbag from fans who’ve downloaded pictures off the Internet and want them signed. They don’t want them personalized, of course, because they’re going to sell them. So always I personalize them.” 4,000 miles away, Pennington’s mischievous chuckle registers loud and clear.

The saucy sense of humor is refreshing, especially coming from a man considered to be a stalwart of the classical British stage. Indeed, he was part and parcel of an unusually rich vintage of serious Shakespeare interpreters (including Judi Dench, Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart) who helped cement the reputation of the RSC in England and around the world throughout the 1970s. And his Hamlet—which in 2008 was cited by British theater critic Michael Billington of the Guardian as one of the top ten defining performances of that role of all time—was the subject of Pennington’s 1996 book, “Hamlet: A User’s Guide,” a part performance diary and part analytical riff on the role. Not surprisingly, it’s this lifelong fascination with Shakespeare, that began at the age of 11 when his parents first took him to see “Macbeth” (“I was extremely unwilling to go and yet the subsequent two hours changed my life”) and is responsible for some 20,000 performance hours over a forty-year career, that informs “Sweet William.” “I’m really accounting for my own lifetime with him, trying to say some things about the man that perhaps come as a surprise, as well as do some pieces which aren’t necessarily the most familiar or expected ones.”

You might say “Sweet William” also brings Pennington full circle back to Chicago. “There is a little bit of a trail running back about twenty years as far as Chicago and I are concerned,” explains the actor. “Back in the late 1980s, when I had my English Shakespeare Company (ESC) with [co-director] Michael Bogdanov, we came and played our seven play history cycle [“The Wars of the Roses”] which was quite a big success. It was the first time I really experienced the warmth which Chicago extends to visiting theater companies if they think they’re good. We played the Auditorium. It was absolutely wonderful and I always remember it as a real highlight of what was in fact a three-year tour altogether.”

The more Pennington goes on, the more he sounds like a Chicago theater vet waxing nostalgic. When discussing the ESC double bill of “Twelfth Night” and “Macbeth” with which he toured a few years later, he remembers them playing at the Blackstone Theater, now the Merle Reskin. (“It was up on Wabash somewhere.”) And when, in 1995, he directed American actors in a new production of “Twelfth Night,” he recalls that Chicago Shakespeare Theater was then called the Chicago Shakespeare Repertory, and that they performed at the Ruth Page Theater. Pennington, who subsequently returned to Chicago to celebrate the opening of CST’s new home on Navy Pier, considers “Sweet William” a sort of follow up to all this. Or, as he simply puts it, “The latest development in a gentle but long-lasting relationship with Chicago and with Barbara Gaines’ [Chicago Shakespeare Theater artistic director] company in particular.”

Still, an insider’s knowledge of the Loop isn’t the only surprising thing coming out of Pennington. On the old guard: “As much as I admire and have regard for the great actors of the past—and I knew Gielgud and Olivier and Richardson—any old-fashioned style of playing or production that fails to keep pace, or that lets itself fall behind is going to lose its audience.” On Shakespeare’s relevance today: “It is relevant today. But there are things that are a little uncomfortable and not relevant today. But something about him seems to speak to us all the time. I mean, I haven’t taken the time to look but you’ll find something about Barack Obama in Shakespeare somewhere.” On American verse-speaking as being inferior to the British: “I would repudiate that on the whole. You have as much right to this language as we do and there is an American way of speaking this stuff which is absolutely as good as the English way.” On being part of the exclusive Hamlet club: “To be honest with you, I don’t often go and see Shakespeare and I haven’t seen a ‘Hamlet’ for years. I’m afraid that’s battle fatigue.” And, of course, on “Star Wars” conventions: “I draw the line at them, I’m afraid. Actually, I don’t even know the story of the films so I suppose I’d be regarded as a bit of a heretic.”

And what if those “Star Wars” geeks made a pilgrimage to Navy Pier? “I’d be very happy about it. Yes, maybe we’d turn a nice profit for Barbara. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m glad people are aware of me for some reason or another.”

“Sweet William” plays at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand Avenue, (312)595-5600, through February 22nd.