Here’s the press release from Writers’:

Writers’ Theatre announces 2010-11 Season

Season to feature world premieres by Keith Huff and Brett Neveu,
Shaw’s Heartbreak House and Masteroff,
Bock and Harnick’s She Loves Me

Artistic Director Michael Halberstam,
William Brown and Gary Griffin slated to direct

Glencoe, IL—Writers’ Theatre Artistic Director Michael Halberstam and Executive Director Kathryn M. Lipuma announce the company’s 19th season, which includes Joe Masteroff, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s She Loves Me, directed by Michael Halberstam with an all-star Chicago cast; the world premiere of Brett Neveu’s Do The Hustle, directed by William Brown; and George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House, directed by William Brown.  As a limited engagement, currently available only to Writers’ Theatre Subscribers and Members, Gary Griffin will direct the world premiere of Keith Huff’s The Detective’s Wife. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Hubbard Street’s Spring Program bursts with fresh material, showcasing the versatility and talent of the company. The program includes a world premiere by rehearsal director Terence Marling, punnily entitled “At’em (Atem) Adam”—references to the colloquialism “up and…”, the German word for breath and the Biblical first man. Marling provided the outline for the piece, but freed his cast to invent specific movements. His inviting score is comprised of music by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Edgar Meyer, amongst others.

The evening opens with a much-anticipated world premiere by the very gifted Alejandro Cerrudo—Hubbard Street’s first choreographic fellow—set to a piano transcription of Philip Glass’ opera “Orphee.” The piece was created for Hubbard Street 2—the company’s junior-varsity league, comprised of dancers between the ages of 17 and 25. Cerrudo’s new work explores contrasts of darkness and light, with emphasis on partnering work of the HS2 dancers. Read the rest of this entry »

Turk Miller, Mary Marro/Photo: Scott Vehill

RECOMMENDED

Although just about everyone knows John Ford’s 1952 Technicolor tribute to his Irish homeland, “The Quiet Man,” his 1935 Dublin-set film “The Informer” is not seen as often these days though it was revolutionary in its time, and is often considered the director’s finest film by Fordaphiles. Made on a shoestring budget, Ford made low cost into high art by taking the lack of sets and scenery and shooting them in a highly stylized shadow-filled Expressionistic fashion in the manner of German filmmakers F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. The thick fog of the film becomes the foggy thought process of its central character Gypo Nolan, a court-martialed IRA member in  1922 Dubin who informs on his best friend to the British for twenty pounds so that he and his girlfriend can have passage to America. The film won four Academy Awards, including Ford’s first Best Director Oscar as well as a Best Actor Oscar for Victor McGlaglen as Gypo.

Charles Pike’s world-premiere theatrical adaptation pays homage to the Ford film in that it does not seek to delve into the source material of the movie—originally based on Liam O’Flahtery’s 1925 novel of the same name—but functions as a riff on how to take much of the content and context of the film and make it stage-worthy. Gypo was often at a loss for words in the movie and Ford, who had spent most of his career at that point making silent films, allowed actions and symbolism to speak for him. Thus it is rather curious to have the stage Gypo, written for veteran character actor Turk Muller, come out and wax poetic about anything and everything with the audience as if he were a lost chapter from a Frank McCourt novel. Read the rest of this entry »

Jeremy Trager and Courtney Crouse/Photo: Johnny Knight

The eighties rock musical “Chess” concerns a World Chess Championship between an American and a Russian and the woman who comes between them, but has nothing to do with the actual game of chess. Instead, it has everything to do with love, as well as chess as a metaphor for rival nationalities and the way politics crush the individual.

In London’s West End it was an operatic, completely sung-through affair, heavy on the kitsch and KGB plotting, and featured dazzling multimedia effects including an entire stage that lit up, tilted and rotated like a giant chess board. On Broadway, playwright Richard Nelson revamped the show into a serious drama laced with vague political overtones. (It was still something to behold; twelve three-sided towers on a revolving turntable swiveled, swept in and out and constantly repositioned themselves into location after exotic location in service to Trevor Nunn’s brilliant and non-stop cinematic vision.)

Theo Ubique is offering the Broadway version (without the spinning towers and scene changes, of course), the only version that is currently available for licensing in America, and it’s the version I’ve seen acted on college campuses, in regional theaters and in amateurish community-theater productions around the country. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

As every art singer and lieder lover knows, Schubert’s “Winterreise” (“Winter’s Journey”) is indeed a journey, an epic narrative that depends on the singer and the pianist to “tell” its story over twenty-four songs. So why not make this explicit and actually “stage” what is going on in the text and music?  That is the deceptively simple thought behind Chicago Opera Vanguard’s staging of “Winterreise.”

Director Eric Reda gives us a bleak, dark, in-the-round setting with two spinet pianos and DVD projectors situated across from one another and surrounding the audience, separated by white translucent material suspended from the ceiling that will be transformed and constantly relit along the journey. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Ravi Deepres

The transformation of cognition into physical grace is an alchemy practiced by every dancer, but choreographer Wayne McGregor has spent more than ten years with his company Random Dance putting the machine under the microscope to better understand the technicalities of the art. With consultation from neuroscientists, psychologists, linguists and experts in robotics, McGregor probes the elusive divide between mind and body—and what better close to the Dance Center’s “Science, Technology and Dance” series than McGregor’s “Entity,” a work inspired by the place where the intangible and mechanical meet: within the human body.

Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

The company that did it first does it again this weekend at the Auditorium Theatre. The Tchaikovsky Ballet Theatre, founded in Perm in 1870 and dedicated to performing Pytor Illych’s works, rolls into Chicago with their production of Maurice Petipa’s 1890 original. “Sleeping Beauty” is widely considered Tchaikovsky’s best ballet and this is the company that originally staged it—needless to say they take it seriously. Principal dancers Natalia Moiseeva-Poleschuk and Sergey Mershin have a small armory of competitive ballet awards between them and the full company headcount is around sixty-five bodies. There will be spectacle and tulle aplenty, along with the superhuman virtuosity one comes to expect from Russian ballet: a satisfying fairy tale showpiece for lovers of the classics. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Parkway, (800)982-2787. Saturday, March 20 at 7:30pm and Sunday, March 21 at 2pm. $32-87.

Photo: Viktor Vassiliev

RECOMMENDED

It’s easy for Chicagoans to take great ensemble acting for granted. After all, we get it in abundance thanks to the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. But in reality, you could count on one hand the number of great theatrical acting ensembles in the world, and among them surely is the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg. On par with seeing Moliére done by the Comédie-Française in Paris, or Strindberg performed by the Dramaten (Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre), the prospect of experiencing an authentic Russian-language production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” by the Maly ensemble is one of those rare theatergoing opportunities that doesn’t come around too often. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Porchlight:

Porchlight Music Theatre
Announces its 2010–2011 Season Featuring
Sunday in the Park with George, Meet John Doe, The King and I
and Miracle on 34th Street Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Bailiwick:

Bailiwick Chicago Announces Details of 2010 Spring / Summer Season

Chicago, Illinois – March 10, 2010 – Bailiwick Chicago’s Executive Director Kevin Mayes announced the final details for the theater company’s 2010 Spring / Summer Season., which includes a concert reading of a new musical entitled BLOOM to be performed at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts on April 16th and 17th; FUCKING MEN*, the Chicago premiere of a new play written by Joe DiPietro which will begin previews on June 18th at Theatre Building Chicago; and Elton John and Tim Rice’s AIDA, which will begin previews on July 1st at American Theatre Company. Read the rest of this entry »