Greta Honold and Tom Hardy/Photo: Liz Lauren

Expectations were especially high for the world premiere of Brett C. Leonard’s “The Long Red Road” at the Goodman, thanks to the Chicago directing debut of Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the casting of rising British film and stage star Tom Hardy in a leading role written for him. And I am pleased to say that the set and lighting design meet those expectations, with the Owen Theatre converted by Eugene Lee into a sprawling thrust stage that squeezes right up to the audience, devouring seats and eliminating the opportunity to establish any distance from the tortuous fare unfolding upon it. It’s a magnificent fusion of two separate households headed by two brothers in two separate states (literally and metaphorically), including not only bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens, but also their places of occupation, a barn and a bar, respectively, the latter where the alcoholic brother Sam spends much of his time communing with the bartender. The homes are interconnected, and characters pass each other like ghosts, suggesting the invisible ties that perpetually bind, even strangle, families. And Edward Pierce’s lighting design is a simple marvel; lamps, across the vast stage, turn on and off to signal the flow of action; the beginning and the end of scenes on a set with no boundaries.

If only the play lived up to its setting, or even its opening, where the audience is greeted by the characters Sam and Annie enjoying a graphic and vigorous shag. Read the rest of this entry »

Great Small Works' "Marcovaldo Planets"

By Monica Westin

It’s a big weekend for Seth Bockley. In addition to his highly-anticipated performance promenade “The Twins Would Like to Say” with Dog & Pony opening at Steppenwolf Garage on Sunday, Bockley has curated the impressive lineup of artists at Links Hall’s Toy Theater Festival this weekend.

Bockley champions toy theater for its populist roots in nineteenth-century paper theater, which could be made in anyone’s living room as a precursor to television. The form has morphed from living-room entertainment to a cheap, DIY way of making performance that Bockley loves because it’s “not rarefied art.” We spoke to Bockley about this form he wants to be reclaimed as an everyday act.

Toy theater seems to be an exciting and increasingly popular form lately—I’m thinking of companies like Great Small Works, who I know are going to be part of this show. Why do you think there is such a strong interest in toy theater today? When did you personally become interested in the medium?

I became interested in toy theater, and puppetry more generally, through work with Redmoon back in 2004 during my mentorship with Frank Maugeri, now the artistic director there. I originally was more interested in writing and had no intention, really, of getting involved with puppetry, but through seeing what Frank was able to do with the medium, I became extremely excited and interested in this form of storytelling. So oddly, I had become involved as a writer for puppet theater, which was a strange thing to be, and our collaboration allowed me to see the potential of this form. I see it as a form that can both be in dialogue with and in competition with cinema—working with puppetry is closer to the work of a filmmaker rather than a theater director. One of the many cool things it allows is a way of performing animation—performing film really—by other means. Read the rest of this entry »

"Bahok" rehearsal/Photo: Liu Yang

By Sharon Hoyer

Choreographer Akram Kahn has gained renown for cross-pollinating contemporary dance with kathak, a traditional Bengali dance form. His work “Bahok,” an ensemble piece forged from the experiences and histories of eight dancers from around the globe, plays this weekend at the MCA. I spoke with Mr. Kahn over the phone about the piece.

How did the idea for Bahok originate?
It starts from an experience I had in Japan. I was staying in a hotel where a world conference was taking place. I was in the lift and a Japanese woman came in wearing a kimono, an African gentleman came in wearing a traditional African outfit and a couple came in wearing suits. I wanted to ask the Japanese woman about the clothes she was wearing, what the markings on them signified, but the lift was quite small, everyone was looking up at the ceiling and it was rather awkward. The lift went up and I thought that I couldn’t communicate with this woman because maybe she doesn’t speak English or maybe she would think I was being rude, or that I was a stranger imposing on her personal space. And the lift got stuck. After about a minute, everyone starting panicking, including me, speaking different languages. And it occurred to me that in a moment of crisis that we shared together, here comes a situation where everyone has to communicate. I wanted to explore this in my own work.

The body is our home. And the subject is home: what does home mean to us? I realized my body carries my tradition, it carries my religion, it carries my education, it’s a political body. It’s many things. I wanted to explore with different dancers from different cultures: how does that operate? There’s a South Indian guy who has studied martial arts but also contemporary dance, there was the National Ballet of China, but now we have other ballet dancers from Hong Kong, we have a South African dancer who is contemporary-trained but also has strong African tradition of dance, we have Spanish contemporary dancers. So in a way I was using the lift experience, seeing where we would take that using our bodies. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Groves

RECOMMENDED

Aaron Copland used to routinely credit Berlioz for having virtually created the modern symphony orchestra.  Until Berlioz, composers wrote for orchestra as if it were basically an enlarged string quartet with winds used for timbral contrast and with strings and winds having very separate and clearly identifiable roles. It’s as if composers had only been painting in primary colors. With Berlioz, however, the full palette of the tone-color possibilities of the orchestra exploded with his daring blend of instruments in various combinations that created new sonorities that composers such as Mendelssohn and Rossini found incomprehensible and offensive; they actually assumed that he didn’t know any better.

This in part explains why it took the ultra-conservative and Italianate-centered Lyric Opera some half a century to present a single work by Berlioz. And once the company was ready psychologically to risk it a few years back for the Berlioz bicentennial, the expense of doing so scared it off in the wake of the economic downturn following 9/11: we still have yet to hear the promised “Benvenuto Cellini” that was forsaken for the box-office safety net of Gilbert & Sullivan.

The company decision to present a staged version of Berlioz’ oratorio “The Damnation of Faust” this season was a fairly safe one in a town where the piece had been a virtual party piece for Solti and the Chicago Symphony, even having been used as the basis for a memorable European tour that was the only time that the CSO Chorus went along. Still, the musical challenges of the work are enormous, way beyond anything Lyric had attempted since first mounting Wagner’s “Ring” cycle in the 1990s. The artistic resources of the company would be fully put on the line, admirable during a time of economic uncertainty. Read the rest of this entry »

Emanueal Buckley/Photo: Sharon Evans

Two NYPD officers, one white and one black, respond to a 911 domestic-violence call in a bad neighborhood, and a 16-year-old autistic African-American boy ends up dead. The story, about the complexities of racism and the impossibility of uncovering any objective vision of the truth, is nothing new—while playwright Andrew Case obviously has both passion for and knowledge about police corruption, it’s impossible to escape a sense of recycledness about the play. The writing is sometimes incisive; a beat reporter retells the story of the rape charges against Kobe Bryant by a white woman, concluding “Tell me what you believe about this case and I’ll prove you a bigot.” Unfortunately, these lines don’t add up to anything striking overall, and the only new addition to the genre that the show provides, a cop message board called “The Rant” wherein angry, racist tirades are posted, isn’t enough to make the production feel original. This sense extends to both heavily TV-influenced direction  and performances, by a “traitor” black cop, our beat reporter and a do-gooder Persian woman investigator respectively, that aim for archetypal but land firmly in cliché, especially when the characters yell at one another sanctimoniously. The show’s strongest element is the raw fury of newcomer Shariba Rivers performance as the boy’s mother, whose opening rant and version of the events is far more gripping than anything that comes after. (Monica Westin)

At Angel Island, 735 W Sheridan, (773)871-1442. Through March 28.

Josh Sumner & Katy Albert

Technology unites and divides us; nowhere is that more apparent than in the auditory spank bank of a phone sex line. In Randall Colburn’s ode to the long-distance wank, Victoria (Katy Albert) takes a job as an operator. Print model Crystal’s (Susan Myburgh) likeness serves as Victoria’s phone line identity; she  obsesses about meeting Victoria, as does Crystal’s boyfriend Tommy (Nick Mikula).

Colburn’s script weaves the relationships together with so-so results. The second act drags as Victoria’s attraction to Crystal goes nowhere. Crystal’s relationship with Tommy ends happily, we’ve no idea why.

The cast does what it can. Albert handles the fine line between sex kitten and cynic; Myburgh’s energy is eye-catching but her twitchy physicality threatens to overwhelm her sincerity. Mikula captures his character’s sexual struggle. Nathan Robbel’s direction and innovative blocking make the most of a minimal set. Too bad the script wasn’t up to their commitment. (Lisa Buscani)

The Right Brain Project at RBP Rorschach, 4001 N. Ravenswood, (773)750-2033. Through March 20.

The beginning and end of this non-Disney adaptation of the 1956 Dodie Smith children’s novel features trained Dalmatians and, every now and then, a couple of them make cameos, usually running across the stage. When they do, the audience “oohhs” and “ahhs,” but when the actual dogs are backstage, there is little onstage to hold our interest, human, canine or otherwise.  And that is a big hole, some two-hours-plus of a two-and-a-half-hour show.

When a show is being produced by a dog-food company, it’s a good bet that you are not in for your standard Broadway fare.  A human playing a dog comes out before the Act II curtain with a bag of said food, pretends to eat it and comments on how wonderful it is, creating in effect a live stage commercial within the fabric of a show.  But as peculiar as that is, the brainstorming session that cooked up the central conceit of this show must have been downright bizarre: let’s take real, trained Dalmatians and mix them in with unruly kids that are supposed to be Dalmatians by just dressing those kids in white shirts and shorts or skirts, with spots, of course. Read the rest of this entry »

The Joffrey Ballet’s return of Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella” is well danced but lacks magic. First performed by the company in 2006, this retelling of the classic never gets as dark as the original source material and never gets as frothy and bright as more modern adaptations. The talents of the stepsisters are much appreciated exceptions: hilarious brawling divas so specific in their detail that the fact they are played by men becomes secondary to their comedic ability. Thankfully they dominate a bulk of the ballet. It isn’t until the end of the first act that Joffrey’s female corps takes the stage as fairies and stars and the audience gets a real taste of the magic this company is capable of. When a dozen or so of these remarkable women perfectly execute the quick, intricate formations the power is breathtaking. In act two, the men get a chance to show off their virtuosity at the ball. But these moments aren’t enough to keep the ballet from dragging, and the spectacle (like the rest of the production) is not nearly as exciting as the anticipation it evokes. (William Scott)

At the Auditorium Theater, 50 E. Congress Pkwy, (312)902-1500. Through February 28. $25-$145.

LaNisa Frederick/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Dael Orlandersmith brings her slam-poetry-honed narrative to Pegasus, examining the bond and break-up of Alexis (LaNisa Frederick) and Jimmy (Brandon Thompson) in their harsh Harlem neighborhood.

There’s not much new here; Orlandersmith explores the stranger-in-my-own-land theme in other works and we’ve heard the story of a person saved by education before. But the evocative language dazzles as she shows us the bottom-line gimmicks New York life requires.

Thank God for Frederick; not every actress could keep up with the piece’s thick poetry. She brings a tough vulnerability that minimizes the melodrama and makes the show’s climax painful and plausible. Thompson and the multi-cast Caren Blackmore are strong and versatile but underused; the script forces Frederick to handle their dialogue as well as her own. More straight dialogue would create a respite from Orlandersmith’s torrential wordplay. We may have heard the story before, just not like this. (Lisa Buscani)

At Pegasus Players,  1145 W. Wilson, (773)878-9761. Through March 28.

There’s nothing new here: in a satire of middle-class social life, a group of English suburbanites get sloshed at a cocktail party, grope each other, fight with their spouses, and listen to terrible music. The play grew out of improvisation by actors in the original 1977 production,  and while the cultural and stylistic datedness of the work is fun, it’s unfocused as a series of jokes rather than a coherent theater piece. The gags are predictable from a mile away, and the narrative as a whole seems to drag from one somewhat contrived  scene to another (a cuckolded husband trying to talk about art while his wife seduces a sleazy ex-professional soccer player), as characters get drunker and drunker and lurch toward an inevitable farcical tragedy. Social commentary about relationships and petty ambition comes through, but it’s dated in a way that keeps it from feeling relevant, such as a brief discussion of the neighborhood becoming “mixed.” What saves the show is the acting; Kirsten Fitzgerald in particular as the materialistic bulldozer of a hostess adds a much-needed level of sharpness. As a vehicle for astute comic actors to play off of each other, it’s an amusing time, but like a bad party, the show goes on just a bit too long. (Monica Westin)

At A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells, (312)943-8722. Through May 23.