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Most of us would agree that Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score for “Evita” is their best, and this is saying something when you consider their other musical-theater achievements as a duo (“Jesus Christ Superstar”) or individually (“Chess” for Mr. Rice; “Aspects of Love” for Mr. Lloyd Webber).  And most of us would agree that Hal Prince and Larry Fuller’s original production of the show, first seen in London in 1978 and on Broadway the following year, is one of the most perfectly realized stagings of any musical within the last 20 years.  I was fortunate to see this version at the age of 15 in Paris, during its 1989/1990 World Tour starring Florence Lacey, Broadway’s final Eva.  And subsequently ten years later, via a production starring then-unknown Raul Esparza as Che, who stole the show from his Eva in a National Tour slated for Broadway but that ended on the road prematurely.  So going into director Fred Anzevino and Theo Ubique’s revival of “Evita,” boasting a band of three with a miniscule cast of ten performing in a tiny café setting, I fear I was prepared to be less than overwhelmed. Read the rest of this entry »

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) is surely one of the ballsiest presenters in town, even if their latest show is all about the absence of said balls. Here comes “Monsters and Prodigies: The History of the Castrati.” Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes, the Mexico City-based troupe, brings a play/opera that explores the eighteenth-century practice of castrating boys before puberty to preserve the soprano ranges of their voices and promises a “witty and sarcastic spin on Baroque opera.” Sounds pretty funny, right? I’m in for any show that describes itself as “madcap” and boasts a centaur, Napoleon Bonaparte and Siamese twins, one an opera critic and one a surgeon specializing in castration. Performed in Spanish with English supertitles, the show’s castrato is played by Javier Medina. Childhood leukemia resulted in a damaged larynx for Madina and left him with a soprano vocal range. With or without all its parts, this production has a lot of nerve. (William Scott)

March 20-22 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago, (312)397-4010.

Madeline Long and Joel Ewing/Photo: Sebastian Aguirre

It is not that LiveWire Chicago Theatre’s production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Wonder of the World” is bad.  If only it were that easy. The problem is that many of the actors are just too young for their roles.  Pace and timing in this well-constructed comedy is pretty sharp but I found myself wanting the whacked-out characters to exude a little more life experience.  The story follows Cass Harris (Madeline Long) as she flees her mundane life married to Kip (Joel Ewing), a buttoned-up protector type with a secret fetish.  She makes her way to Niagara Falls and into a web of suicide, private investigators and a very special tour-boat captain.  Cass and Kip have been married for seven years and I just did not get that.  Both leads play the characters’ neurosis with charm but much of the show’s maturity feels manufactured.  (William Scott)

LiveWire Chicago Theatre at The Side Project Theater, 1439 W. Jarvis, (312)533-4666, through April 5.

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Second City-trained sketch/stand-up comic Jeb Cadwell is an easy guy to cheer for, the lovable dorky type who seems genuinely excited when his audiences respond positively and a go-getter whose 2006-07 “Overdrive Tour” (including 400 shows in 365 days) easily establishes him as the hardest-working man in stand-up (and, quite possibly, a robot). Cadwell’s on-stage persona presumably mirrors his off-stage personality, a cheery, always-smiling kind of a guy, very Seth Meyersesque but completely void of any smugness. Subject matter roams from “Sounds of the Rainforest” albums, shopping for jewelry at “Jared” and the real definition of “make-up sex”—masturbating with Noxzema. But his routine’s most endearing jokes focus on the on/off relationship with his father: “My dad was like, ‘Cut your hair, you’re starting to look like a girl.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I look like a girl … but I make love like a woman.’” (Andy Seifert)

March 19 & 20 at Lincoln Lodge, 4008 North Lincoln, (773)248-1820, 9pm.

Sienna Harris, Kathy Logelin, Michael Perez

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You’ve got to hand it to Oak Park Festival Theatre. In the height of the iPod era, this steadfast suburban playhouse (now in its thirty-fifth year) manages to stay afloat by producing classic works inside a historic eighteenth-century mansion, (at least when the weather’s too cold for its outdoors venue in Austin Gardens). The theater even serves dainty tea and cookies in the elegantly restored library during intermission—an endearing touch that somehow feels more authentic than kitschy.

So it follows that “Arms and the Man,” written in 1894 by George Bernard Shaw, sits comfortably in this grandiose, antique space. The play, set during the 1885 Serbian-Bulgarian war, centers on the wealthy Petkoff family and the miscalculated romances that brew inside their Bulgarian estate. Betrothed to a Gaston-esque “war hero,” the family’s daughter Raina (Sienna Harris) instead falls for a raggedy enemy soldier (Adam Breske) who crawls through her bedroom window seeking refuge. With a brazen bout of courage (and lust) Raina convinces her mother to hide the charmer in their mansion for a single night. But when the mysterious soldier shows up at the family estate after the war’s end the women of the house have some ‘splaining to do. Read the rest of this entry »

“The Secrets Project,” Genesis Ensemble’s interactive debut work, explores the compelling topic of confidences: what should you share and when? Who should you share it with? Unfortunately, the piece lacks the necessary details that make a secret compelling in the first place.

Several vignettes begin with potential: an ensemble member who works with homeless teens struggles under the weight of their secrets; one performer’s parent conceals his alcoholism. But the stories aren’t given room to grow; they’re fragments of conflict. The group’s interactive efforts are successful; they include the audience without intimidating it. But the piece’s tone needs variety and the stage pictures created to support the text detract from it.

It’s refreshing to see a new troupe try something so ambitious; creating original work can be difficult as a group finds its footing. Here’s hoping Genesis Ensemble’s next outing is a little more specific and focused. (Lisa Buscani)

Genesis Ensemble at Peter Jones Gallery, 1806 W. Cuyler, (614)214-3747, through March 28.

Theatrical candy, occasionally delicious but more often a bit cloying, the Court’s seeming answer to seasonal affective disorder is a psychological thriller that delivers less suspense than laughs at its own campiness. The story itself, involving con artists invading an apartment and the blind, petite and spunky woman-child who outwits them in their own game, is very fun, with smart writing and a perfect pace. However, the acting is uneven, running the gamut from John Hoogenakker as a frenzied psychopath to Emjoy Gavino as the flighty heroine, affected and somewhat silly in her seeming attempt to channel Audrey Hepburn, who played the role in the film. For all its banter and suspense-driven plot, the show gets dragged down in awkward moments resulting from this lack of focus, making it not just fluffy but treacly, and the best moments arise when the show seems utterly aware of how ludicrously dated and frivolous it is and lets the audience in on the joke. (Monica Westin)

“Wait Until Dark” plays at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, (773)753-4472, through April 6.

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Nobody knows anything. So we fudge and cheat and rely on shorthand cues to get by, boxing our experiences into compartments. People are idiots and we think: Why is it my job to educate you? We stereotype the world while it stares and judges and stereotypes us right back.

Forget post-racial America; we live in a most-racial America—a nation at once curious and bumbling, absurdist and inspiring. A place where misperceptions are commodified and commercialized and available On Demand. We make a fetish of our differences but chafe when someone is stupid enough to single them out. “What’s your problem?”

To some extent, “American Ethnic” (developed for Remy Bumppo Theatre Company’s thinkTank program) does the very thing it decries, pointing a finger at the media and calling it “other.” But see, we are blogs and YouTube and Facebook, and if you think these things aren’t media—if you think theater isn’t media—you’re kidding yourself.

That said, this is one helluva show. Three writer-performers occupy the stage like they’re standing on the ledge of a building: Usman Ally (seen last fall at ATC in “Celebrity Row”), local rap artist and playwright Idris Goodwin and Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, a Chicago native and spoken word performance artist now based in Brooklyn. Read the rest of this entry »

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The 1993 film adaptation of “A Bronx Tale” was so memorable that it became difficult to imagine how such a compelling story full of such colorful and contrasting characters could possibly have originated as a one-man show back in 1989.  Then-relatively unknown actor Chazz Palminteri wrote it based on his 1960s New York childhood as a tour de force for himself, since he was receiving such minor roles at the time and had been fired from his supplemental job as a bouncer.  Robert De Niro was so wowed by the show that he went to Palminteri for the film rights, but Palminteri shrewdly held out—reportedly turning down offers up to and including one million dollars—calmly insisting that he write the screenplay and star in the film.  De Niro eventually gave in on the condition that De Niro co-star and for the first time in his career, also direct.  A career of playing tough guys and gangsters and even an Oscar nomination later, Palminteri has come full circle and resurrected the one-man version two years ago on Broadway (the original had only played off-Broadway for four months) under four-time Tony Award-winning director Jerry Zaks to success so immense that a national tour is in progress, currently playing downtown. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Goodman:

FOUR WORLD PREMIERES, A BROADWAY-BOUND DOUBLE-BILL,
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN’S GOODMAN DIRECTORIAL DEBUT AND
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS HIGHLIGHT GOODMAN THEATRE’S 2009/2010 SEASON

Note: On June 26, Goodman announced that Joan D’Arc had been dropped from the new season and replaced by the solo performance show, Stoop Stories. Click here for more information.

(March 12, 2009 – Chicago, IL) Artistic Director Robert Falls proudly announces a diverse line-up—from musical hilarity and classic yarns, to memory pieces and family dramas, to stories with ethnic roots that reflect today’s world—in Goodman Theatre’s new 2009/2010 season.

The madcap Marx Brothers musical Animal Crackers, book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, directed by Henry Wishcamper, launches the season in the Albert Theatre (September 2009). Next, Falls and Brian Dennehy team up again for a Broadway-bound double-bill of Eugene O’Neill’s Hughie directed by Falls, and Samuel Beckett’s one-man-show Krapp’s Last Tape (January 2010) helmed by Canadian director Jennifer Tarver. In March 2010, Rebecca Gilman’s Goodman commission, A True History of the Johnstown Flood makes its world premiere production. Finishing the season in June 2010—and launching the fifth biennial international Latino Theatre Festival—is Karen Zacharías’ The Sins of Sor Juana, directed by Henry Godinez, following one of the legendary figures of Mexican arts and literature. Still to be announced is one Spring 2010 production directed by Chuck Smith in the Albert Theatre (now updated to include this production of The Good Negro). Read the rest of this entry »