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One of the most memorable moments from last summer’s Global Rhythms festival was a solo performance by a musician from Brazilian body-percussion troupe Barbatuques. Slapping, snapping, yawping and stomping, the artist gave a performance full of humor and charm, producing more simultaneous polyrhythms than should be possible with only one set of arms and legs. The piece was a teaser for an upcoming evening-length show by the entire company (imagine this times fourteen!) scheduled for the Harris Theater later in the season. It was to be Barbatuques’ U.S. debut, arranged thanks to the Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s artistic director (and Chicago’s unofficial percussion ambassador to the world) Lane Alexander. Sadly, the performance was postponed due to last-minute visa complications.

Now the paperwork is straightened out and Barbatuques will perform instead at the more intimate MCA Stage as a part of the CHRP National Tap Day concerts. Read the rest of this entry »

Conner, Abercrumbie, A.C. Smith

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When August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” appeared more than two decades ago, the idea of an African-American playwright reflecting the African-American experience was still largely a novelty. Here, at last, were fully developed black characters not as imagined by white writers, but an attempt to chronicle the journey of a people attempting to adjust decade-by-decade to the realities of post-slavery America where true freedom still remained largely elusive.

The struggle reflected in “The Piano Lesson,” the 1930s entry in Wilson’s ten-play twentieth-century cycle, is one of legacy, magnificently symbolized in an elaborately hand-carved upright piano uniquely tied to a family’s past and drenched in the blood of its ancestors. Read the rest of this entry »

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As a longtime composer of musicals, Jerry Herman had written his share of love songs for such legendary shows as “Hello, Dolly” and “Mame,” but none quite like he wrote for his 1983 show “La Cage aux Folles.”  Written during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, the musical, based on the 1973 French farce play and the famous 1978 French-Italian film, sought to serve as an antidote to longtime gay stereotypes that were intensifying during the crisis. In retrospect, the work reveals that adapter Harvey Fierstein was heavy-handed in having every gay character in the show be patience, virtue and understanding personified, and every heterosexual be a Reagan homophobe on a witch hunt; even the son of the gay couple is seduced by the attitudes of his fiancée’s right-wing family, who are made into caricatures so stereotypical as to be right of Dick Cheney—the father of a lesbian daughter, by the way.  Being a mainstream Broadway enterprise, the original staging was careful never to show the gay couple kissing or embracing, but times have changed, and with the debate over gay marriage raging across the country, director Stephen M. Genovese shrewdly realizes that the most effective way to stage this show now is to have the two couples—gay and straight—show the same amount of love and affection for each other to make the point that love is love, no matter what form it comes.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Challenging but breathtaking expressionist theater from Polish literary sensation Dorota Maslowska. A Polish soap-opera actor, slumming it, takes too many drugs at a party and runs off, in a costume of destitution and blackened teeth, with a pregnant young mother. She’s as irresponsible as he is, but living with the terrible conditions of existence that he’s affecting, and on their epic nightmarish journey through Poland, the differences in their real lives turn out to be deadly. The play begins somewhat indulgently with the two holding up a car and spouting surrealist rants and terrible paranoid hallucinations, but it quickly settles into a gorgeous and off-balanced abstract piece about identity, class and xenophobia. Director Max Truax, whose “No Darkness Round My Stone” this fall at Trap Door showed off his mastery of European stylization, guides “Romanians” in a fluid but unsettling way between playful dark comedy and stark minimalism, and he pulls truly inspired performances from the entire cast (especially Tiffany Bedwell as the chameleon-like pregnant girl, equal parts victim and monster). But the most striking element of the production is its use of chairs, which compose each scene and serve as stand-ins for absent figures, becoming incredibly loaded with meaning by the terrifying last scenes. Technically unnerving as well, with gorgeous use of ambient noise and creepy filmstrip projections that add to the dream logic of the show. (Monica Westin)

At Trap Door Theatre, 1655 West Cortland, (773) 384-0494. Through June 27.

David Dastmalchian

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Ah, the Heartland in decline.  There’s nothing quite like a romp through the rotting fruited plain. Shattered Globe Theatre’s “Buried Child” is a tragic look at “good” people with bad secrets.

Vince (David Dastmalchian) and Shelly (Helen Sadler) arrive at his family home to a family that can’t recognize him; the couple proceeds to dig through their sordid past. The ensemble’s bench is deep; Gerrit O’Neill makes troubled son Tilden’s pain palpable and Maury Cooper’s Dodge is a sour slice of lemon. Linda Reiter’s Halie frantically pursues the bourgeois trappings due her; Reiter has cornered the market on slappable shrews. Steve Scott’s direction keeps the show from mucking around in melodrama and makes rebirth seem possible.

Radical personality shifts in some characters are never explained, but it’s Sam Shepard, so who cares? The man puts the English language in a death lock; he knows how to express the inexpressible. (Lisa Buscani)

Buried Child at the Shattered Globe Theater at the Greenhouse Theatre Center, 2257 N. Lincoln. Through July 17.

Here’s the press release from Strawdog: (Updated August 4, 2009)

STRAWDOG THEATRE COMPANY ANNOUNCES
22ND ANNIVERSARY SEASON THEMED “Why We Fight”

Strawdog Theatre Company of Chicago announces their 22nd anniversary season of presenting “the whole wide world in a little black box,” with the three mainstage plays focusing on the theme of “why we fight”:  the Midwest premiere of Matt Pepper’s St. Crispin’s Day, Curt Columbus’ translation of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and David Harrower’s translation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Soul of Szechuan. The productions run Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m.

These productions, plus ongoing late night offerings, are presented at Strawdog’s space in the heart of Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood at 3829 N. Broadway Street. Adult single ticket prices are $20 (single gala night tickets are $40 each, closing night tickets are $30 each); preview tickets are $10, student and senior tickets are $15 (with ID); and $15 tickets are available for groups of ten or more.  Season flex-passes are $50 for three admissions and $100 for six admissions, benefit performances count as two admissions. (All benefit performances include post-show reception with refreshments). Admission for Strawdog Late Night programming starts at $5 and varies for visiting artists. Tickets are available at 773.528.9696 and www.strawdog.org Read the rest of this entry »

Steppenwolf announces that the Broadway engagement of Tracy Letts’ “Osage” follow-up, “Superior Donuts,” is opening at a TBD Shubert house on October 1, juiced by the producers behind “Osage,” Jeffrey Richards, Jean Doumanian, Chicago’s Steve Traxler and Jerry Frankel, and helmed by ensemble member Tina Landau, who did likewise for its world premiere at the Stepp home on Halsted last summer. Casting has not been announced, but Michael McKean, Lenny on the hit seventies sitcom “Laverne and Shirley,” turned in a noteworthy performance in the Chicago production and might have just enough celebrity appeal to reprise.

Tucked away in a fall season announcement for American Theater Company, the mid-size company decimated by the departure of virtually its entire ensemble in March, is this bit of news: ATC’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” a co-production with About Face, is the company’s highest grosser this season, and is on track to be ATC’s biggest hit ever. You can almost hear the “touché” out of the camp of artistic director PJ Paparelli. Of course, the whole season has that feel, from the “get” of the Chicago premiere of “Urinetown” creators Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis’ “Yeast Nation (the triumph of life)”—already bumped from this season—to the very fact that the season is taking place at all.

Here’s the press release from ATC:

AMERICAN THEATER COMPANY ANNOUNCES ITS 2009-10 SEASON
WITH FOUR PLAYS THAT CELEBRATE THE AMERICAN FAMILY; SECOND EXTENSION OF HEDWIG; GROUNDBREAKING NEW DOCUMENTARY PLAY

Chicago, IL— American Theater Company proudly announces Season 25, which includes the Chicago Premiere of Yeast Nation (the triumph of life) by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, directed by Artistic Director PJ Paparelli; the Chicago Premiere of Lisa Loomer’s Distracted, also directed by PJ Paparelli; and the World Premiere of Welcome to Arroyo’s, written by Kristoffer Diaz and directed by Jaime Castañeda. Back for the holiday season is It’s a Wonderful Life: The Radio Play, directed by Jason Gerace.  Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Provision:

PROVISION THEATER Announces Long Term Lease of Theater Complex and its 2009-2010 Season

Chicago – May 19, 2009 – Provision Theater announced today that it has signed a four year lease for the theater complex at 1001 W. Roosevelt Rd. in Chicago.  The complex includes a 200 seat theater, scene shop, dressing rooms, box office, and administrative offices.

“We are very excited about this important step for Provision.” said Tim Gregory, Provision’s founder and Artistic Director, “Having a long term lease with this incredible facility will provide us with a solid base of operations from which to grow our organization.  We are also looking forward to becoming an integral part of our new South Loop neighborhood.” Read the rest of this entry »

Matthew Worth and Jennifer Johnson/Photo: Liz Lauren

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No one is going to confuse Benjamin Britten’s “Owen Wingrave” with his setting of “The Turn of the Screw,” that’s for sure. Although both are based on Henry James novellas, “Screw” is not only better known as a work in and of itself, but Britten’s music for the work is more accessible. “Wingrave” is a late Britten piece: so late, in fact, that it was written for television, a medium that barely existed when Britten was writing his early operas. Britten was old, ill and was considered old-fashioned and was therefore experimenting with different musical styles and techniques, including the use of musical “cells” that would become the trademark of Minimalism, and 12-tone technique which serves to give “Wingrave” some of its ambiguous sound, although the work never leaves tonality altogether. Read the rest of this entry »