Here’s the press release from the Lyric:

Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 56th season
begins Friday, October 1, 2010, at 7:00 p.m.
Giuseppe Verdi’s MACBETH in a new production
by renowned Shakespearean Barbara Gaines
starring Thomas Hampson and Nadja Michael

Also next season: Carmen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Masked Ball,
The Mikado, The Girl of the Golden West, Lohengrin, & Hercules Read the rest of this entry »

Chaz Lamar Shepherd and Moya Angela/Photo: Joan Marcus

RECOMMENDED

There are several show-stopping moments in this all-new spectacular revival of “Dreamgirls,” but two particularly stand out: the eye-popping scenario when the cast is dancing in perfect circular formation with digital images of itself from above reflected against its own background Busby Berkeley-style, and the Act I finale where Effie White—played by newcomer Moya Angela—learns that she is being replaced as part of “The Dreams” and soars her way into the take-no-prisoners ballad “And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going” until she practically implodes. Usually audiences are running up the aisles at the end of an act, but on opening night at least, after standing and cheering, folks were still catching their breaths and basking in the afterglow of the remarkable energy even after the house lights came up. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: William Frederking

Self-identity can be a malleable thing; we tend to define ourselves by objects, situations and people we gather around us. And why not? It’s easier to present a correlation between personality and the concrete trappings of life than to reveal the fragile subjectivity that rules our individual experiences. Perhaps this is why Margi Cole, who presents two premieres this weekend with her company The Dance COLEctive, has an easier time talking about the piece that explores collecting than the one about identity.

“IMe,” a new work by Cole created in collaboration with Jeff Hancock, combines spoken text with movement to examine how we express identity. Originally conceived as an exploration of human relationships mediated by electronic socializing, Cole discarded the internet factor and distilled the subject to personal boundaries in general.

“It’s really about how we put ourselves in a forum and how we use that to define ourselves,” she says. “What we choose to show and hide.” The piece is for the full company and is set to music by Billie Holiday and Johnny Cash. Read the rest of this entry »

Krapp's Last Tape/Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

The constant level of high-quality theater to be had on both the Equity and non-Equity levels in Chicago is nothing short of astonishing, to be sure, but every now and then a performance comes along that manages to stand in a class all by itself. Such is the case with the double-bill of two one-act masterpieces by two fascinatingly different yet similarly iconic twentieth-century playwrights of Irish descent, Eugene O’Neill and Samuel Beckett, performed by a single extraordinary Irish-American actor—Brian Dennehy—who came up with the inspired idea of pairing and performing these two works together.

The Dennehy/O’Neill alliance originated under Robert Falls at Goodman nearly a quarter of a century ago and climaxed with last season’s O’Neill Festival which spotlighted the Dennehy/O’Neill/Falls “Desire Under the Elms.” In fact, Dennehy and Falls actually presented “Hughie”—a forty-minute work O’Neill wrote during the period of his greatest genius at the end of his life as part of a planned series of short plays that became a rara avis when he destroyed the other entries—just six years ago, at that time simply allowing it to stand on its own.

That experience proved inadequate enough that Dennehy began experimenting with adding another one-act to be paired with “Hughie” at other venues, initially settling upon a comedic Sean O’Casey opus that Falls came and saw and thought was a mismatch that trivialized O’Neill. It was Dennehy who finally came up with “Krapp’s Last Tape,” a forty-five-minute Samuel Beckett work also from the period of his greatest genius, as a bookend for “Hughie,” and that configuration was presented two summers ago at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, with Falls directing “Hughie,” Canadian director Jennifer Tarver helming “Krapp’s Last Tape” and Dennehy in both. A huge success, that experience has been enlarged and brought to Chicago, with New York and national tour aspirations. Read the rest of this entry »

Kendra Thulin, Caroline Neff/Photo: Lee Miller

RECOMMENDED

Human connection is difficult; putting aside inhibition and flaw to reach out to someone is daunting. Reconnecting after betrayal is damn near impossible.

Harper Regan(Kendra Thulin) wants to go home; her diabetic father is in a coma and she needs to say goodbye. A boss’ refusal to grant  time off awakens her sense of punk-rock  rebellion and sends Harper on a three-day odyssey full of unsatisfying assignations. She discovers dizzying truths about her family’s recent  fragmentation and tries to find the strength to put it all back together.

Thulin’s bedraggled vulnerability keeps the audience rooting for Harper, despite unorthodox behavior. Peter Moore captures the pain of her repentant spouse and Caroline Neff’s portrayal of their  disoriented daughter is emotionally rich. Marcus Stephens’ unfinished set reveals torn insulation that offers no protection and  wiring that connects to nothing, an apt environment for a family trying to find its way back. (Lisa Buscani)

At Steep Theatre, 115 W. Berwyn, (866)811-4111. Through February 27.

Technically, it’s a dazzling success. Mary Beth Fisher’s performance in the one-woman show is as agile, intellectually driven and illuminating as Joan Didion’s writing in the memoir, from which the play was adapted by Didion herself. And as adaptations go, it’s an astute one, directed gracefully and with some restraint by Charles Newell, who puts Fisher at a minimalist desk that floats against a sea of blackness, which she circles while performing her descent into deep pain and deeper anxiety. But it’s ultimately hard to recommend the show after having read the book, in which Didion, ever the journalist, turns her cool gaze onto her own grief during the year when both her husband and only daughter died in separate tragic and unforseeable ways. The triumph of the memoir is Didion’s clinical, academic, incisive approach to her experience; this play manages to convey a good deal of this philosophy, and does an especially effective job of hitting the notes of dark comedy that could have gotten lost, but it veers too often into confrontation and hysteria—when Fisher shouts “This will happen to you,” it’s hard to imagine Didion shouting this, or losing control, or pacing around in the eventually repetitive blocking, constantly readjusting a scarf as Fisher does throughout the piece. Then again, to make the obvious point that a one-person show must necessarily create some kind of dramatic arc, this might just be a genre problem: a memoir as delicately balanced and meditative as Didion’s just doesn’t hold up to the heavy hand of theater. (Monica Westin)

At Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, (773)753-4472. Through February 14.

RECOMMENDED

Athol Fugard’s most personal play, “Master Harold” examines the crippling effect of South African apartheid through a boy’s relationship with workers at his family’s tea room.

On a rainy day in Port Elizabeth, Willie (Daniel Bryant) and Sam (Alfred H. Wilson) prepare the tea room and regale young Hally (Nate Burger) with stories of  local ballroom-dancing championships, a graceful world without ugliness or awkward collision. They attempt to guide Hally through his inability to face his father’s disabilities and alcoholism, to no avail.

Wilson brings a zen calm and dignity to Sam, Hally’s substitute father figure. Bryant captures Willie’s sly, soothing comedy as the tea room’s peacemaker. Newcomer Burger’s energy is refreshing, but his performative style prevents him from bringing subtle nuances to the role. Timothy Mann’s set is a wedding cake of 1950s pastels; Jonathan Wilson’s direction drives the pacing to its unfortunate climax and inevitable confrontation. (Lisa Buscani)

At Timeline Theatre, 615 W. Wellington, (773)281-8463. Through March 21.

Robert Sella, Tracy Michelle Arnold; Tim Campbell, Chaon Cross

RECOMMENDED

What a brilliant stroke for Chicago Shakespeare Theater to present Noël Coward’s “Private Lives” the same season as it is presenting the Bard’s own “The Taming of the Shrew.” So much is the same and yet so much is different when it comes to the battle of the sexes, but one message remains intact for both: you always love the one you hurt.

This is the first-ever Coward production at CST, a significant development as there is often a Shakespearian snobbery when it comes to Coward that it would be hard to imagine Shakespeare himself accepting. Both, after all, were audience-pleasing pop-culture icons of their time who placed how a story is told—i.e., its language—first and foremost, even over the narrative itself, which is often mundane and predictable in both.  Experiencing Coward in a theater built for the Bard where the play is the thing makes for a remarkably satisfying contrast in playwrights of different centuries who are above all, wordsmiths.

Yes, within minutes of “Private Lives,” we all know exactly what is about to happen, even if we have never seen or read the play before. But the genius of Coward is that even though we know—perhaps even because we do know exactly what will happen—we relish in the expectation all the more, and can sit back and bask in the glories of Coward’s language. Read the rest of this entry »

Jennifer Tarver/Photo: Liz Lauren

This week Goodman opens its highly anticipated marriage of two one-acts about aging, regret and mourning lost choices:  Eugene O’Neill’s “Hughie” and Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape.” The lineup of artists involved is formidable: Robert Falls continues his collaboration with Brian Dennehy in “Hughie,” who plays against Joe Grifasi in this play about the ways we deceive ourselves in order to go on. This act about the tragedy of “just going on” culminates in “Krapp’s Last Tape,” Beckett’s masterpiece of a one-man show about an aging performer who confronts his early self through recorded diaries that painfully chronicle a lost love. “Krapp’s Last Tape” relies on the contrast between the youthful hope in the tapes and the decayed abjection of older Krapp—also played by Dennehy and directed by Toronto-based director Jennifer Tarver.

Tarver, who directed Dennehy in the play at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival two years ago, is no Beckett newbie. She garnered acclaim for her curation of five Beckett shorts in 2006, and with a background in music as well as dramaturgy, she’s an easy match for the musicality and rhythm of Beckett’s prose. Newcity talked with Tarver the week before previews about space, composition and the demands of directing Beckett. Read the rest of this entry »

"Moon Water"/Photo: Liu Chen-hsiang

By Sharon Hoyer

“Everything goes spiral. The spiral is the DNA of Tai Chi.”

I’m talking with Lee Ching-chun, the associate artistic director of Cloud Gate Theatre of Taiwan, about their celebrated piece “Moon Water,” coming to the Harris Theater this weekend. It’s 9pm Taiwan time and the sun is not yet up in Chicago—what better time than daybreak to discuss a dance form derived from the ancient martial art, exercise and meditation form Tai Chi Tao Yin.

Tai Chi training inspired Lin Hwai-min, artistic director of Cloud Gate and the choreographer of the company’s signature work. “He wanted to create a piece based on this energy training, to make it into a dance movement,” Lee says. The movement originated, as with any meditative practice, with the breath. Read the rest of this entry »