Frank Galati (center) and the cast of Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s production of The Tempest/Photo: Michael Brosilow

By Dennis Polkow

No.  Shakespeare. Ever.  Despite Steppenwolf being the oldest ensemble theater in Chicago, there has curiously been no Shakespeare performed by the company across its nearly thirty-five-year existence.  Until now, that is, with the staging of the Bard’s last play, “The Tempest.”  Why the long drought in the first place, and why end it now?

“Ever since I’ve been in the ensemble,” says Tina Landau, Steppenwolf ensemble member since 1997, who is directing “The Tempest” and is upstairs during a company dinner break two hours before the first preview of the show, “many ensemble members have been longing to do Shakespeare.  Five years ago, I pitched ‘The Tempest’ as one of three plays that I most wanted to do and through a confluence of the right timing and the right season—particularly with this year’s overall theme of the imagination—it finally all came together.” Read the rest of this entry »

Jennifer Avery and Steve Key/Photo: Liz Lauren

The sixties were defined by passion: to stop an unpopular war, to create lasting social change. It was a fervor that almost pushed an entire generation of youth to madness. That passion is completely missing from Victory Gardens’ “Class Dismissed.”

An act of civil disobedience forces Ron (Aaron Roman Weiner in a REALLY distracting wig) and Pete (Steve Key) to retreat with their friends to Ron’s Vermont family home. There, the group encounters infidelity, unplanned pregnancy, terminal illness, creative failure, disloyalty and financial betrayal. Jeffrey Sweet’s script is awash in conflict, yet each life-changing obstacle receives nothing more from the text than a detached, tepid “oh well.”

The cast tries valiantly to recreate the humanity and humor of the era: Jennifer Avery is appealing as the sardonic hippie-chick; the ever-reliable Marc Grapey can make throat clearing funny. But the sixties’ success can be measured by its conflict resolution. This bunch does nothing. (Lisa Buscani)

At Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln, (773)871-3000. Through April 26.

Here’s the press release from AROT (updated August 13, 2009):

A Red Orchid Theatre’s 2009-2010 Season to feature

The World Premiere of Craig Wright’s Mistakes Were Made

Featuring Oscar Nominee Michael Shannon;

Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party

and the return of the holiday hit,

A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant

CHICAGO, IL—A Red Orchid proudly announces its revised 2009-2010 season, featuring the World Premiere of Craig Wright’s Mistakes Were Made, directed by Dexter Bullard and featuring Ensemble Member and Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon and Ensemble Member Mierka Girten; the return of the smash holiday hit, A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant featuring members of the A Red Orchid Youth Ensemble & guests; and Academy Award nominee and Palme d’Or winner Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party, directed by Shade Murray, to feature an all-Ensemble cast.

Flexible Season Subscriptions are on sale now through the A Red Orchid box office,

(312) 943-8722 or www.aredorchidtheatre.org Read the rest of this entry »

“There was such a great energy in the theater; the performance was so magical,” Antonio Douthit says about dancing for President Barack Obama and his family earlier this year.   The young dancer from St. Louis has been with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) for five seasons now and from the time he signed his contract he has been living dream moments like this one.

AAADT is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary through 2009.  Since its inception, the company has become one of the most recognizable names in American dance. A U.S. Congressional resolution recently recognized the institution as a vital “American Cultural Ambassador to the World.” Barbie  even got into the action this year with the first doll inspired by a dance company. Generations of young people, specifically young African Americans like Douthit, have grown up with the solitary dream of one day joining the company of modern dancers known for their strength , athleticism and grace. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Todd Rosenberg

RECOMMENDED

Hubbard Street offers a diverse palate this weekend, with revivals and premiere pieces ranging from the elegant to the primal. In the former category, place the revival of Artistic Director Jim Vincent’s “counter/part,” a blithe roundel that playfully weaves classically inspired choreography into Bach’s contrapuntal tapestry, and Danny Ezralow’s “SF/LB,” which matches Bernstein’s score in stylish, urbane theatricality. In the latter belongs the Chicago premiere of Andrea Miller’s “Blush”—fierce, passionate, with grey-and-leather uniformed costuming and a rock score that evoke a post-industrial landscape, leaving plenty of space on stage for flushed emotions to reach the boiling point. Rising star Alejandro Cerrudo’s “Off Screen” will be performed for the first time; the preview clips reinforce Cerrudo’s fast-growing reputation for soulful, fluidly sensitive choreography. Also on the program is a revival of Lucas Crandall’s fun, stompy, be-booted “Gimmie.” (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph (312)850-9744. April 1 & 2 at 7:30pm, April 3 & 4 at 8pm and Sunday, April 5 at 3pm. $25-86.

Dana Black and James Elly/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Israeli-born playwright Motti Lerner’s “Pangs of the Messiah,” at Silk Road Theatre Project, focuses on a religious Zionist family living in a West Bank settlement in 2012.  When a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians is finally reached, the members of this Jewish family must choose between fighting for their home and abandoning it.  This dilemma reminded me of David Hare’s “Via Dolorosa” (1998), which more than any other article or book on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for me crystallized a lot of the questions at the heart of the problem.  In that piece Hare asked:  what matters more, “stones or ideas”?  And what defines a person, “where they live or what they think”?  Lerner’s drama, whose uneasy family dynamics, bickering and subsequent clash of varied views is no less than Israel’s political, personal and emotional history writ small, goes one step further to ask:  If you are a true Jew, and place your humanism over your politics, are you betraying your country?  Your family?  Your faith? Read the rest of this entry »

Holly Thomas & John Kahara/Photo: Michal Janicki

RECOMMENDED

A few years ago in the New York Times, critic-at-large Margo Jefferson published a smart essay about the difficulties of appreciating the avant-garde.  In it she wrote that while an encounter with this kind of theater was rarely “love at first sight,” audiences needed “to learn to love—or at least understand—being provoked and disoriented.”

I can think of few other theater companies in Chicago, large or small, who consistently provoke me (as a critic) and disorient me (as an audience member) like Trap Door Theatre, a small company artistically helmed by the indomitable Beata Pilch.  And whenever I lament being unable to afford a trip to Scotland for their annual Edinburgh Theatre Festival, I remember that challenging fringelike fare is as close as my backdoor courtesy of Trap Door.

Challenging and fringelike—as well as provoking and disorienting—are just a few adjectives to describe Trap Door’s latest offering, “Horses at the Window,” by exiled Romanian playwright Matei Visniec.  The piece is a triptych of sorts, with three similarly structured scenes as microcosms for three centuries of war (1699; 1745; 1815) and each showcasing a woman losing a male loved one to battle and the ensuing flood of complex emotions (love, loss, alienation, fear) that result.  It’s a robust piece of zany theater that has been directed with flirtatious aplomb by Romanian Guest Director Radu-Alexandru Nica, who has expertly exploited his actors’ bottomless reserves of energy, suppleness and breath control (let’s just say, you wouldn’t want to challenge these folks to a game of Twister). Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Lois Greenfield

RECOMMENDED

Delfos Danza’s introspective, near-mystical approach to dancemaking has yielded not only a repertory of unflagging nuance and truthfulness, but also seems to have practically instilled the company members with the power of flight. The seven dancers gather and distill kinetic energy from the atmosphere, careen, tumble, hurtle across the stage, leaping and diving into one another from NBA altitudes. This celebrated Mexican company (awarded the best in the country by the Critics Union) brings a collection of five pieces, showcasing the choreography of founders Victor Manuel Ruiz and Claudia Lavista along with two other company members, entitled “Rincones de Luz” (Light Corners), to close out the Dance Center’s remarkable season with a roar. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan Ave, (312)369-6600. April 2-4, $24-28.

Jessie Mueller and Sean Fortunato

It’s always great to see an area theater get the first post-Broadway rights to a show, and in the case of “Curtains,” Drury Lane Oakbrook is deservedly presenting the first regional theater staging of the work less than nine months after it closed on Broadway last June.  Of course, the fact that the show went straight to regional theaters rather than have a big, splashy national tour with its star David Hyde Pierce—who won the Tony Award last year for Best Actor in the show—and has even already been licensed for college and high school performances so soon, might tell us something.

Like “Robbin’ Hood!  A New Musical of the Old West,” the show-within-a-show that “Curtains” satirizes, this is a show that never seems to quite get off the ground.  The fact that this is the umpteenth Broadway show to satirize the making of a show within an actual show since “The Producers” doesn’t help: there are such better examples of this genre out there.  For starters, “Robbin’ Hood!” is not credible even as a bad musical with good or even bad intentions; you have to buy that the show-within-a-show could actually pass for, well, a show, and said show has to be bad enough yet clever enough as a show and yet somewhat still reflect the qualities of a Broadway musical.  Likewise, the characters in the show who are supposedly Broadway musical personnel have to reflect some awareness of the form they are satirizing.  Read the rest of this entry »

Ashley Brown, Katherine Leigh Doherty, Alexander Scheitinger and Gavin Lee/Photo: Joan Marcus.

With the economy going to hell in a handbasket, how could any of us resist a show that suggests that, rather than invest your money, you might as well throw it to the birds and go fly a kite?  What could be interpreted as subversive back when the 1964 Disney movie first came out sounds like virtually sage advice today.  It’s worth noting that when British author P. L. Travers wrote the first of her “Mary Poppins” books back in 1934, the Great Depression was going on across both sides of the pond.

The stage production of “Mary Poppins,” the national tour of which just opened in Chicago, is a curiously potent mix of Travers plus Disney meets Cameron Mackintosh.  Read the rest of this entry »