Here’s the press release from Harris Theater:

PHILIP GLASS’ AMERICAN FOUR SEASONS, MARK MORRIS’ PROVOCATIVE NEW FULL-LENGTH DANCE OF ROMEO & JULIET, CHICAGO DEBUT OF SANKAI JUKU DIRECT FROM JAPAN, HARRIS DEBUTS BY GRAMMY® AWARD WINNERS BRITISH TENOR IAN BOSTRIDGE AND VIOLINIST GIDON KREMER,

RETURNS OF PERFORMANCE ARTIST LAURIE ANDERSON WITH CHICAGO PREMIERE, NATIONALLY ACCLAIMED SPHINX CHAMBER ORCHESTRA,

BALLET HISPANICO, AND SOLO PERFORMANCES BY ALAN CUMMING AND

JOHN WATERS AMONG HIGHLIGHTS

OF PREMIERE-PACKED HARRIS THEATER PRESENTS 2010-2011 SEASON Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Joan Marcus

RECOMMENDED

Hit shows don’t come any bigger or fatter than “Billy Elliot—The Musical.” Technically, it’s a stunner.  Choreographically, it’s beautiful to behold, and the dancing is energy incarnate. And the sweet, simple and sentimental story of a coal miner’s young son who becomes a ballet dancer against the odds has been translated from the screen—the feel-good movie of the same name is from 2000—to the stage with admirable aplomb. But after all the hype, the fact remains that “Billy Elliot—The Musical” is simply not a great musical. It’s a great theatrical experience and a great dance show, but one that’s sadly been saddled with an undistinguished score and unmemorable music. Read the rest of this entry »

By Dennis Polkow

For many of the even most seasoned opera goers, Gioachino Rossini was thought of as a “one-hit wonder.” “It’s true,” agrees Italian opera scholar and University of Chicago professor Philip Gossett. “For a very long time, ‘The Barber of Seville’ was the only Rossini opera you got to hear consistently in America. But this is a composer who wrote some forty operas and they were all extremely successful.”

Overtures to Rossini operas have always been staples of the concert hall and popular culture—the Lone Ranger, for instance, rode out both on radio and television to Rossini’s overture to “William Tell”—but the last time, say, that Chicago had a chance to hear a full performance of Rossini’s “Moses in Egypt” that Chicago Opera Theater will be reviving this weekend was back in 1863, when Abraham Lincoln was president.

Why the delay? Read the rest of this entry »

Julie Kent and Marcelo Gomes/Photo: Gene Schiavone

RECOMMENDED

Ask anyone who has never seen a ballet to describe what they imagine it looks like and they’ll most likely talk about a chain of wispy ballerinas in shimmering white tutus strung together by the arms, flanking a slightly wispier ballerina in a slightly whiter, shimmerier tutu who, along with a male partner in tights, defies commonly understood laws of gravity and physiology. In short, they’ll describe “Swan Lake.” America’s cultural idea of ballet has been defined in no small part by Tchaikovsky’s 1876 masterpiece, and in great part by the American Ballet Theatre—the 70-year-old New York-based institution that once had Baryshnikov at its helm. ABT returns to Chicago with full orchestra to fill the Civic Opera with the kind of spectacle and virtuosity it was built for, performing one of the best-known ballets with choreography by artistic director Kevin McKenzie. The engagement opens with a Wednesday night program of works by American choreographers Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor and Jerome Robbins. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Dr. (800)982-2787. April 15-18. $20-125.

Kimberly Franck and Joe Schlotter/Photo: Bryan Cohen

I once took someone who had never seen Chekhov to a production of “Uncle Vanya” and afterwards asked them what they thought. Through laughter, they told me, “So they’re like a bunch of self-absorbed, hyper-articulate narcissists who don’t realize how tragically funny they are—it’s like ‘Seinfeld’.” He was right. But the thing about Chekhov’s characters is that they also have great inner lives—no matter how stilted—and through intellect or emotion (or comedy) ironically exude a great appreciation for living, so much so that watching a good “Vanya,” like any great production of Chekhov, makes you want to do more with your own life the moment you step foot outside the theater. That may or may not be achievable but, to paraphrase Harold Bloom on the subject, good Chekhov makes you want to at least try. The self-absorbed and bland characters in “Chekhov Kegstand,” author Bryan Cohen’s “irreverent take on ‘Uncle Vanya’” at Gorilla Tango Theatre, inspire zilch, even as they sit around and blabber about missed chances here, lost opportunities there and spouting whatever banalities on college life Cohen feels deserves the “Chekhovian” treatment. Read the rest of this entry »

"Pure"/Photo: Sara Davis

By Valerie Jean Johnson

Dancer, choreographer, director, designer, artistic director—when I ask John Jasperse how he balances the many roles he plays within his eponymous dance company, he laughs, pauses and slyly replies, “You don’t wanna know.” The truth of the matter is that Jasperse wouldn’t have it any other way. In the twenty-plus years since he founded the John Jasperse Company/Thin Man Dance, this acclaimed artist—who brings his newest work, “Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies,” to the MCA this weekend—has been meticulously immersed in all aspects (creative, technical, and administrative alike) of developing each of his performances. “I juggle all of those things, I just do them,” he says. “As far as the artistic process, it’s a bit easier in some way because I don’t feel like all these [aspects] are different things. I feel like making work is making work—and light, and changing volumes of density in the space, and how you think about constructing physical space, it’s the same questions, they’re all interrelated.” He adds, “I’m really opinionated about all that stuff, so it’s very difficult for me to let it go.”

But Jasperse has certainly not cultivated a reputation as an auteur—on the contrary. “[John’s] always been the consummate collaborator, really open to ideas,” extols Yolanda Cesta Cursach, Associate Director of Performance Programs at the MCA who first brought Jasperse to Chicago in 2002 with “Giant Empty.” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Watching willowy stems en pointe in Chicago usually means a journey downtown, into the cavernous golden belly of the Auditorium Theatre and the attendant pomp associated with classical dance (including a sizeable ticket price for the sweet seats). Among the few exceptions are performances by Elements Contemporary Ballet, the young Evanston-based company that presents new dance works in the classical vein with impressive technicality and grace. For the next two weekends, the eleven-member company presents an evening-length program in the intimate Ruth Page Center, including a new work by artistic director Mike Gosney and a company premiere by guest choreographer James Gregg from the innovative and sexy BJM Danse Montreal. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn (312)337-6543. April 9-10 and 16-17 at 8pm. $20-25.

RECOMMENDED

“Resurrection Blues” was Arthur Miller’s next-to-last play before his death in 2005 and, reportedly, the playwright had been tinkering with it right up until the end. I can believe that.

Miller’s contemporary tale is set in an unnamed Latin American republic in which political insurgency is brewing, thanks largely to a sermon-spouting figure (here amusingly christened Ralph) whom the locals swear can walk through walls and light up like a giant Christmas tree. (We, the audience, never see Ralph, but are, along with the characters in the play, periodically subject to his incandescent glory, a stage effect warmly evoked by Chris Corwin’s dramatic lighting design.)  The ruler of this republic, a dictator suffering from erectile dysfunction (“resurrection” blues, get it?), thinks he can squash the uprising by crucifying (literally) this mettlesome messiah. And when an American pharmaceutical conglomerate pays $75 million for the exclusive rights to broadcast the crucifixion, within which it will plug “dignified” advertising spots for everything from athlete’s foot to underarm deodorant, the general dreams of the financial boon to his third-world country that will underwrite everything from plumbing to clean drinking water to accessible dentistry for the nation’s hard-working prostitutes.

If this sounds like an enjoyable acid-tongued critique of the media and consumerism, that’s because it is. If it sounds like a modern-day parable concerned with religion, faith, politics and morality, that’s because it’s also that. Not surprisingly then, the tone of the piece fluctuates—oftentimes erratically—between the extremes of satire and melodrama, its characters presenting themselves one moment as intellectual philosophers propounding the kinds of big ideas for which Miller is famous, and the next as comic buffoons cracking a lame joke that wouldn’t be out of place on a television sitcom. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Toward the end of his life, Harold Pinter became as well known for his political activisim as his plays, with outspoken essays and public interviews in which he made increasingly provocative attacks on political figures; at the same time, his plays became much shorter and more overtly concerned with themes of totalitarianism, torture, and oppression. Slimtack Theatre works with three of these short pieces, all dealing with violent oppression in an unnamed country. The plays are heavy-handed, to say the least, with scenes straight out of Kafka and Orwellian nightmares of powerless prisoners who seem to have committed no crimes, and abusive guards who get off on torture. But director Mike Rice understands that it’s the sick enjoyment not just of violence, but of language put to evil, violent uses that’s the most disurbing, and from which the biggest threat comes. The actors embody this sadistic language, with a particularly strong Trey Maclin as an alcoholic despot who, in a series of meetings with an imprisoned family in the final and strongest play “One for the Road,” attempts to use language to both terrify and seduce his prisoners. The basement in which the minimalist production takes place is as strong as another character: dusty and cold, with low ceilings and the sounds of water pipes in the background, it’s the perfect space in which to embody Pinter’s late work—and Pinter would have approved of its underground ethos. (Monica Westin)

Slimtack Theatre performs at 1142 W Lawrence, (773)469-5608. Through May 1.

RECOMMENDED

The formula is simple: a live theater version of the so-bad-it-has-a-cult-following action flick starring Keanu Reeves as an undercover FBI agent investigating surfers who rob banks while wearing masks of former U.S. Presidents. The show stays true to the cheesy and often unintentionally hysterical writing, with monumentally energetic acting and surprisingly smart technical theater (on a shoestring budget, they bewitchingly enact surfing, skydiving, car crashes, bank robberies and an epic storm). But what keeps the show afloat is the casting of an audience member to play Keanu Reeves’ character Johnny Utah (there’s a quick audition), and the audience’s relationship to its lead as he stumbles through his lines, at least as well as Reeves, is so responsive and enthusiastic it’s almost heartwarming. The show is BYOB, and it’s entertaining enough to keep drunk folks focused on the show, but you can be both sober and unfamiliar with the film to enjoy the spoof. (Monica Westin)

At New Rock Theater, 3931 N. Elston, (866)811-4111. Open run.