RECOMMENDED

Project 891′s first full-scale production examines the Leopold and Loeb case, one of the Jazz Age’s most notorious criminal trials. John Logan’s script delves into minds of two murderers dedicated to committing the perfect crime.

Leopold (Ron Popp) and Loeb (Matt Hays) murder a local boy and shortly confess; their trial then becomes a forum for the death penalty debate.  Popp captures Leopold’s arrogance and tenderness; Hays’ high-energy approach occasionally misses opportunities to express his character’s depth.

Michael Rashid’s rapid-fire direction keeps the action moving; while the pacing sometimes overwhelms the ensemble, the show’s energy stays lively.  Film designer Jim Vendiola’s  integration of found footage from the era and new work created for the production gives the show extra depth. Anatomical murals and birds of prey portraits lend the set the same clinical coldness that was Leopold and Loeb’s worst enemy. (Lisa Buscani)

Project 891 Theatre Company’s “Never the Sinner: The Leopold and Loeb Story” plays at the Chemically Imbalanced Theatre, 1420 W. Irving Park, through August 2.

RECOMMENDED

Chicago Improv Festival’s “Storybox” is a new kind of improv—the kind where each actor is both a storyteller and a role-player in a play which they spontaneously create themselves, along with seven other people who each have their own ideas about how the story should go. In a Mad-Lib type effort, eight people cooperate to tell a different story every performance—a story in which none of them have complete creative control, and where none knows for certain what will happen next. Together, they work—as a team—to produce a coherent, compelling narrative. It’s as if a person were trying to tell a story off-the-cuff at a campfire, and had a large group of friends to help them out. Unlike other improvisational shows, the focus here is not only on getting laughs, but is more about taking the audience on an emotional journey through the often serious dilemmas in the lives of characters portrayed. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

If you think you can put jazz dance in a box, Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs have something for you to see when Chicago once again convenes the Jazz Dance World Congress, a four-day festival  of the world’s best jazz dance.  Each night’s program will feature a work from Giordano Jazz Dance as well as five or six other dance makers.  With local companies as diverse as Muntu Dance Theatre, DanceWorks Chicago, Chicago Tap Theatre and River North Chicago Dance, audiences can be assured jazz dance will be explored from every angle.  Add work from Philadelphia, Buffalo, Las Vegas and international flavor by Japan’s Masashi Action Machine, Mexico’s Cuerpo Etereo Danza Contemporanea, and Korea’s POZ Dance Theatre and you get a first rate, world-class festival.  The festival sold out when it was sat down in Chicago in 2007, so don’t wait until you get to Harris Theater to get your tickets. (William Scott)

The Jazz Dance World Festival performances will be held at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph, (312)334-7777, July 22-July 25 at 8pm. $45-$60.

RECOMMENDED

At first, Atlantic City-based comic Butch Bradley seems like a poor man’s Lewis Black—lots of incredulous outrage, with arms flailing about and pointing angrily at hypothetical subjects. But give him a little more credit than that: many of Bradley’s outbursts are directed at such harmless topics that the punch lines include a hint of irresistible non-sequitur goofiness. “I don’t want to be killed by a first-time killer,” Bradley quips about his apparently inevitable homicide. “I want the guy to be good. They have to start somewhere. I don’t want any amateurs.” Bradley leaves to the imagination why he thinks he’s going to be murdered, and why he prefers a precise professional to kill him. It’s the same deal in a bit about spiders just showing up in his car when the doors are locked (“I don’t even mind if he wants a ride, just ask me,” he says)–Butch rarely explains why he’s ranting on the particular minutia of life he’s targeted. And it’s that lack of coherent logic that makes his routine pretty entertaining. (Andy Seifert)

July 21-26 at Zanies, 1548 N. Wells, (312)337-4027.

Genevieve Thompson directed "Grapes of Wrath" at ICT this spring

If you want to see a play at Infamous Commonwealth Theatre, you’ll have to wait six months. In a recent press release, the theater announced that it will not be producing until January, citing the need “to focus on internal administrative changes,” after the recent resignation of artistic director and founder Genevieve Thompson. During her tenure, Thompson was awarded a Jeff Citation, and was a two-time winner of the After Dark Award for outstanding directing. Thompson’s successor, artistic director Chris Maher, says that Thompson has made his job much easier, laying a “sturdy foundation” for the company to build upon in the future. Maher assures those who love ICT that he will not radically change the company: “It would be silly to change things for my ego because ‘I’m in charge.’” Although he does not plan on making significant changes in how the theater operates, Maher says that he and his staff need “time to adjust” before they try to put on another production. “We’re sturdy financially so to take the six months and not to rush into things just seemed like the best idea.” Read the rest of this entry »

Jackie Taylor

If you want to see new plays by local playwrights writing about sexy topics—and who wouldn’t?—the Black Playwright Initiative’s “Sex in the Summer in the City” series at Black Ensemble Theater might be just the ticket. Executive director and founder Jackie Taylor promises that the series—which features three one-act plays discussing African-American sexuality—will be stimulating. “They are a look at an aspect of African-American life that we don’t get to see very often,” she says.

All plays in the series are directed by Daryl Brooks, and each introduces audience members to a different playwright, with his or her own perspective on human sexuality. The series begins with Wendell Etherly’s “A Love Misplaced,” which dives right in and tackles incest, revolving around the role that sexuality plays in family life. Etherly, an Illinois Arts Fellowship Award-winning playwright, depicts the painful Read the rest of this entry »

Extending the legacy of theater on Belmont Avenue, Theater Wit is moving its headquarters to 1229 West Belmont in 2010, promising to renovate and revive the former Bailiwick Arts Center, and to reestablish it as “one of the exciting venues on the Off-Loop scene,” Theater Wit artistic director Jeremy Wechsler says. Theater Wit will share the space with local stalwarts Bohemian Theatre Ensemble, Shattered Globe Theatre and Stage Left Theatre, and Wechsler says that this sharing will produce a special kind of community, allowing the theaters to bring together “their entire variety of audiences and artistic vision[s].” Rather than competing, the theaters will cooperate, cross-market and share responsibilities for building upkeep. “Under the current economic climate, I think the best way we can all prosper as arts organizations is to consolidate our efforts,” Wechsler says. Bailiwick Repertory Theater left the space after fifteen years when theater “repair and upkeep had become too taxing,” as it says on its Web site. Stage Left managing director Laura Blegen says that having multiple theaters use the same space helps to avoid this problem, that “resource sharing… is very helpful” nowadays. Wechsler notes the importance of working together: “None of us believe that theater is in competition with itself. The best inducement to see another play is to have just experienced a great evening in the theater.”

Blegen says that, for Stage Left, the decision to move was partly strategic. Noting the large seating capacity and convenient location of the theater, Blegen says, “It will bring us room to bring people in, and provide accessibility so people can get to us.” By moving in with other theater companies, Blegen says that Stage Left would be “creating almost a theater district on Belmont”—the Theatre Building is next door—and she said that this sort of environment “creates a kind of energy” that motivates the artistic process. (Ilana Kowarski)

By William Scott

Tupperware may seem an odd choice of subject matter for a company of eager young theater artists, but the iconic storage product’s history holds a spirit of revolution that seems to ooze from The New Colony (TNC). And so comes “Tupperware: An American Musical Fable,” a new musical as the final show in a bold, often sold-out inaugural season for TNC.

Artistic director Andrew Hobgood and co-creators James Asmus and Julie Nichols have crafted a love letter to the power of female ingenuity. The story is that of a housewife daring to take big chances to lift up her family and herself. She does this in the faces of people telling her that women have a more traditional place. These women of “Tupperware” come from a very personal place for Hobgood. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Muntu Dance Theatre is about origins, manifested in the carefully researched rhythms and dances from across Africa the group constructs and evident in the fierce pride with which founding member Babu Atiba speaks about the company. Appropriate then, that the next Muntu performance goes to the cradle of civilization for source material. Guest choreographer Abdel Salaam, artistic director of the New York-based Forces of Nature, portrays courtship rituals from Kemet, a region of ancient Egypt, in his new work “Bride from the South.” Just watching a three-inch-square, slightly fuzzy video clip from a rehearsal for “Bride” makes the pulse thud and the head bob. Atiba calls “…the Beginning” a family affair (that family being not only the African and African American clans, but the human one—the title of the company means “essence of humanity” in Bantu); it’s nearly impossible to stay in your seat during a Muntu performance—nor should you. Get out to the Harris this weekend and experience one of the most viscerally thrilling dance companies in the city. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph, (312)334-7777. Sat, July 11, 7pm. $25-50.

Manny Tamayo’s “Dead Wrong” is a murder mystery that is impossible to solve, because it simply doesn’t make sense. By the end, it is not only unclear why many people were killed, but also frequently impossible to know who killed who, which means that many of the clues the audience was given were either dead-ends or didn’t add up. The last scene attempts to tie up all the loose ends, but instead is confusing and hokey, with a corny plot twist that drew laughs from audience members and caused a person in the front row to exclaim “What?!” Part of the fun of murder-mystery plays is trying to figure out a puzzle but, in this case, it is impossible to know whether you got it right, because key questions are left unanswered. Read the rest of this entry »