RECOMMENDED

King Theseus (Morocco Omari) is missing. Who will rule: young Prince Hippolytus (Anthony Fleming III) or his self-destructive stepmother, Queen Fedra (J. Nicole Brooks)? Vengeful goddess Afrodite (Tamberla Perry) forces Fedra to fall in love with Hippolytus, creating consequences when Theseus is found.

Brooks’ clunky adaptation of this Greek standard moves the story to a suddenly powerful, well-to-do Haiti yet that environment never influences the tale. The schizophrenic script vacillates wildly from classic form to bawdy slang. Brooks’ international shout-outs hamper the piece.

Thankfully, the performers rise above the script’s flaws to invest in the tragic tale. Omari brings the regal menace, Fleming balances cocky charm with poise and control and the double-cast Perry dazzles as a vicious deity and sassy lady in waiting. The ever-reliable Matt Hawkins’ fight choreography raises the stakes and Laura Eason’s direction avoids wallowing in exposition to breathe new life into an old story. (Lisa Buscani)

Fedra,  Lookingglass Theatre Company, 821 N. Michigan, (312)337-0665, through November 15.

Kevin Hope, Jason Huysman, Chuck Spencer, Greg Caldwell/Photo: Dean la Prairie

RECOMMENDED

Sixty years after its premiere, Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” continues to echo as a powerful reminder of the dark side of the American Dream. The two paths it represents—getting by on peer approval and likeability or on studying and hard work—remain permanent options. The bitterness and confusion that Willy Loman experiences when confronted with the truth that both he and his onetime star-high-school-athlete son who his future hopes become pinned on after his own fall apart are failures is something we have all witnessed to one degree or another, whether up close or from a distance. How many of us have headed to a high-school reunion only to find out that the most popular folks of yesteryear are today’s lost souls, but that the nerds that were constantly picked on are now CEOs?

Decades before American capitalism came to the brink of the cliff last year, Miller raised fundamental questions in this play that seem more relevant today than ever before. Read the rest of this entry »

Gillian Lynne circa 1981

By Fabrizio O. Almeida

I’ll admit it, I love “Cats.” And I don’t mean the furry kind.

As a theater critic, I recognize the contrarian nature of my admiration for a musical that many critics regard as little more than catnip for the masses, a musical that to some may constitute one of the kitschiest of all time.  But I grew up on the show—who in their thirties who liked musicals did not? It was the second musical I ever saw, and I would go on to see it all over the world, from London to New York to Paris to Mexico City (indeed, I understood especially well the joke that I heard someone make around that time, that in the 1980s and 1990s the sun never set on an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical).  I interned for the New York casting directors and witnessed grueling auditions, I was there when the Broadway production reached its 6,138th record-breaking performance in 1997 to become the longest-running show on the Great White Way, and I was there when it closed three years later. I’ve even danced it in a studio with cast members—however badly, given that I’m no professional dancer—and thus felt it in my bones. But my present admiration, which at one point may have been rooted in youthful nostalgia, is now grounded, I’d like to think, in the kind of balanced analysis that considers all the show’s elements crucial to the experience—not just the spectacle, not just the music—and places British choreographer Gillian Lynne’s work at the forefront of “Cats’” success over the past twenty-eight years that it’s now been on its paws.  Indeed for me, “Cats” is an extended ballet for the theater, and on these terms it not only succeeds, it hasn’t been given its due. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Sally Cohn

Having been born around the time of its premiere, watching excerpts from the revival of Lucinda Childs’ famous work “DANCE” is, to me, distinctly reminiscent of a particular aesthetic moment, like a haunting and beautiful and inscrutable dream riddled with flashed images from childhood. A black grid divides a white floor into squares. Dancers in modest, minimal white step briskly from one end of the stage to the other, traveling with half and three-quarter turns, taking light, low, buoyant leaps, crossing endlessly to the circular lilt of Philip Glass’ spinning score. Though rendered nearly anonymous by the uniformity of their costuming and choreography, the dancers, carried by momentum, betraying no effort in their ceaseless entrances and exits, seem at play—with their own lateral kinetic energy and with dancers projected on a transparent scrim at the front of the stage, who are dressed identically and dance in synch. There is a distinctive mix of geometry and playfulness in “DANCE,” like a chapter out of a Lewis Carroll novel: within the rigid confines of the meter, there is complexity and delight. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Ryan Robinson

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There are two things that come to my mind when someone says “mime.”  The first is Marcel Marceau, who is probably the person that most Americans think of despite the fact that very few of us ever had the chance to see the late (reportedly great) French mime artist during his lifetime. And then I think of “Tootsie,” that delicious 1982 comedy in which a dejected Dustin Hoffman, strolling through Central Park, pauses to observe a mime balancing on a curb and then cruelly tips him over, a gesture that probably represents most people’s attitude towards mime artists.

But after experiencing the one-man mime show, “Magical Exploding Boy” presented under the auspices of Chicago Physical Theater, I will now think of Dean Evans. With nothing more than a bare stage, chair and a few props, this professional actor, mime artist and clown, who has worked extensively with the Neo-Futurists and (quite impressively) studied with Marceau himself, holds your rapt attention—no exaggeration here—for fifty-five minutes straight, and ultimately delivers one of the most unique, enjoyable and physically accomplished entertainments to be seen in Chicago right now. Read the rest of this entry »

Sean Fortunato and Timothy Edward Kane/Photo: Michael Brosilow

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Tom Stoppard’s 1966 “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” his first hit play, is so chock full of language and irony that as long as you have two actors with chemistry, it can virtually stage itself. A topsy-turvy view of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” where the tragic tale of the Danish prince is perceived from the perspective of two minor and virtually interchangeable characters, the work is a favorite of theater cognoscenti in large part because the better you know “Hamlet,” the more enjoyable the piece becomes. (The reverse is more problematic since, for better or worse, “Hamlet” can never be experienced in quite the same way after having gone through Stoppard’s antics.)  Essentially, this is a riff on “The play’s the thing,” coined by Hamlet in the original, although ironically never explicitly said in Stoppard’s version. The dependence of Stoppard on Shakespeare often leads to a tongue-in-cheek approach where the characters are playing with the audience and each other with such narcissistic appreciation of the cleverness of what they are uttering that the work becomes dangerously self-aware.

Kudos to Writers’ Theatre artistic director Michael Halberstam for a staging that refreshingly recognizes that, particularly in a space as intimate as Writers Theatre, this play becomes a far more authentic experience and much funnier when the characters are not in on the joke that we, the audience, complete by our mere presence. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Drunken, obscene and kind of a jerk, Australian comedian Jim Jefferies offers the three most enduring qualities of a successful stand-up (along the fourth-most: funny accents!). While part of his current popularity stems from a well-reported incident at a Manchester gig in which he was punched in the face by an apparently not-amused spectator, we’ll assume he’s stayed near the top of the stand-up ladder with consistently funny sets. Whether he’s defending the double standard of men called “studs” for having sex a lot while women are called “sluts,” or casually discussing the lump on his penis (or as he calls it, “dick cancer”), Jefferies is the kind of guy who’s just looking to stir up a little trouble, get in people’s faces, maybe even provoke someone to jump on stage and start beating on him. And honestly, don’t you want to watch someone who elicits reactions like that? (Andy Seifert)

October 16 and 17 at Lakeshore Theater, 3175 N. Broadway, (773)472-3492. $15.

Caroline Heffernan/Photo: John W. Sisson, Jr.

An indulgent, unintelligent and fundamentally lazy production that rolls out one impotent creepy-suspense-thriller cliche after another for more than two painful hours. A couple on the brink of a divorce meet for one last night in the doll-filled home of the  clearly emotionally imbalanced husband, who heads laboriously and awkwardly for a psychotic nervous breakdown that includes a lot of bad singing and loud shouting as his moods shift incomprehensibly from mania to steel-eyed stone-cold killer. Yawn. Then there’s the Norman Bates-like trope with a dead daughter and a marionette; and for the last twenty minutes there’s a lot of running around with knives and guns in the dark that’s just as boring and suspenseless as the rest. It’s honestly hard to imagine why this production was made; the story and dialogue are not only trite and psychologically shallow, but the moments for comic relief fall just as flat.  Acting is valiant, but the characters are one-dimensional to the point of parody, and one wishes the show had just gone all the way and called itself a farce. The running time (which was supposed to be 1:45 but ran for over 2 hours and 15 minute when I saw it) begins to explain the molasses pacing. (Monica Westin)

At DCA Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph, (312) 742-8497. Through November 8.

Usman Ally/Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

Professional wrestling is theater—a label I’m sure its many adherents would dismiss—but playwright Kristoffer Diaz has singled out this quality amidst the pomp and brawn and exuberantly insane energy and wrassled it to the mat.  Yeah, motherfuckers.

Victory Gardens has had an iffy track record with play selection in recent years (“Blackbird” being a notable exception). And yet, holy crap: This show is at Victory Gardens.  Stop and think about that for a moment.  Cast member Usman Ally says the same thing in his blog: “Subscribers better hold onto their oxygen tanks and their hearing aids, and everyone else better hold onto their asses!”  No kidding.

A world premiere, the production is a hugely successful collaboration with Teatro Vista, and director Edward Torres has done something very interesting here.  The play has the bones of a storefront show, but Torres hasn’t lost his mind working with Victory Gardens’ comparatively sizable budget.  Don’t get me wrong, this thing looks good—and no doubt it cost a pretty penny.  The production wouldn’t work without major style and flash (the design team has done a bang-up job, and the use of video here is canny), but Torres has found a way to retain the play’s smart-alecky, big thumping heart within the flash and outrageousness of its staging.

What you get is a vivid world fueled by hip-hop and a slap of testosterone.  Smart and comically astute, the play tackles everything from racial stereotypes to the business of show—tossing off blatantly offensive clichés, and then allowing its lead character to call them out with a simple, “Really?”  (The play is getting a slew of productions, by the way—it opens in Philly later this month and in Minneapolis in the spring.) Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Carl Wiedemann

After three years of work and a five-month delay, Peter Carpenter’s dissection of the Reagan era opens at the Hamlin Park Fieldhouse. In an excerpt presented last week in The Other Dance Festival, dancers pantomime slow-mo action-film deaths, like pre-teens in a parking lot after a “Die Hard” screening. Their mock machine-gun sounds fade as they fall in step, marching and repeating a gestural phrase conveying God and country, pivoting like clockwork gears. In the foreground, one dancer crumples slowly to the floor to be gathered in a protective embrace by Carpenter in a rubber Reagan mask, his head lifted at the sound of the marching company.

Carpenter talked with me about resistance, fragility and finding sympathy through the creation of art.

Why Reagan?

I’ve been obsessed with Reagan since 1994 when he disclosed his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in the New York Times. I remember having this ambivalent reaction of both sorrow and a feeling that some poetic justice was done, because of the people I knew who had died of HIV/AIDS, having seen them go through dementia. Originally I was thinking there’d be a film component, but it seemed appropriate for it to be just live, as opposed to film and video which were Reagan’s mediums. Read the rest of this entry »