Photo: Mike van Sleen

By Sharon Hoyer

Ask me what I thought about the film “Cleo from 5 to 7” and I would tell you two things: that I remember very little save a woman walking around for a couple hours and that it’s absolutely brilliant. Big Dance Theater directors Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar were in a similar recognitive location when they picked up the script of “Cleo” to use as the framework for a new performance.

“We made the decision to work with a film script from the French New Wave era. The rule we gave ourselves was that we could work with the script but we could not watch the movie,” Mr. Lazar tells me over the phone. “Maybe somebody’d seen it years ago, but we were sufficiently unfamiliar with it so that nobody was dominated by their images of the film. Our memory of it was pretty distant at best. We were using the script as an artifact.” He adds, “I’m glad we did because it caused all kinds of fertile problems.” Read the rest of this entry »

Robert O’Hara, Jason Wells and Sam Marks/Photo: Brian McConkey

Steppenwolf’s sixth annual “First Look Repertory of New Work” includes readings of plays about family values in contemporary life—lesbian parenthood, recession mentality—but the three full productions running in rep are most striking for the way they look backwards to past history and plays. Robert O’Hara’s “The Etiquette of Vigilance” imagines the Younger family’s contemporary history in an updating of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.” Jason Wells’ “The North Plan” imagines an anarchic, not-so-distant American future that combines archetypal American dystopian elements with web 2.0 technology; a bureaucrat and an administrative assistant hack into a database that lists who will be persecuted by the new world order. And Sam Marks takes up the theme of artistic fame and the ironies of posthumous fame that have long been touchstones of American theater. We spoke with Marks about this year’s festival the week before it opened. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Alexndra Corazza

RECOMMENDED

Contemporary dance/Kabuki artist Yasuko Yokoshi has excellent timing. She comes to Chicago fast on the white-painted heels of revered Butoh company Sankai Juku; fortunate dance audiences have had their attentions freshly honed to the restrained and minute. Not to compare the two performances; Yokoshi is very much a Japanese American—Hiroshima born, in New York since 1981—with the attendant consciousness of displacement, complications of identity and the mutability of culture. Yokoshi, classically trained with postmodern predilections, collaborates with Masumi Seyama, a revered master of Kabuki Su-Odori—a less ostentatious, makeup-free form of Kabuki. Their last collaboration, an interpretation of Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” won Yokoshi a Bessie.

This newest work, entitled “Tyler Tyler,” uses a twelfth-century Japanese tale of warring clans to explore ideas of impermanence and power. The six-person cast—half of them American, half of them Japanese, and one American singer-songwriter playing Cat Power and Carpenters tunes, engage in a referential shuffle of cultural imagery quiet and powerful: the American man holding a fan, moving ever so slowly with elegance and grace still has a pistol on his hip. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 South Michigan, (312)369-8330. October 28-30, 8pm. $26-30.

Stephen Louis Grush and Mary Beth Fisher/Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

A scene late in the first act says everything about Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” and about Goodman Theatre’s powerful production. It’s a reconciliation between the larger-than-life (especially in her own mind) actress Arkadina, played to self-absorbed perfection by Mary Beth Fisher, and her overshadowed, would-be artistic son, Konstantin, depicted by the suitably brooding Stephen Louis Grush. Tender, gentle, we see the mother and child emerge in these two characters but then, an assertive inquiry tests the new waters of intimacy and soon the tenderness has turned into vicious conflict. Not only do the themes at play in this scene—intergenerational struggle, the capricious ways of the heart, the fight for the artistic soul and so forth—define “The Seagull,” so too the acting challenges in performing a scene with such a rapid yet precisely paced tonal swing that could so easily come off as forced or, even worse, laughable. Fortunately, director Robert Falls has gathered some of the finest actors working in Chicago—perhaps one of the best ensembles ever assembled on a local stage—and, not simply content to let them do what they always do, has rehearsed the play for seven weeks, double the normal time. The result is a Chekhov production to rival the finest anywhere (notably reminiscent of Maly Drama Theatre’s “Uncle Vanya” at Chicago Shakespeare in March), one where, with a minimal set and lighting (in fact, the first scenes are performed in full house lights), all the stakes are placed with the actors, who sit along a back bench when “offstage” to further emphasize their ownership of this production. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

The fiery all-female Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba returns to Chicago with a sampling of Cuban sabor—a little flamenco, a little Afro-Cuban, a little tango, a little ballet and contemporary dance—all performed with Rockette-like precision and showmanship. Quite literally: they take the stage as a kickline, setting an amped-up tone for two high-energy performances. Six musicians provide live accompaniment of heel-dropping, torso-rolling Afro-Cuban beats on congo and cajon; intricate strains of lush Spanish guitar accompany lyrical numbers. The massive company gets lots of costume changes: flaming red dresses with matching fans or white blouses with black pants or hip huggers with bared abdomens and long staffs, shifting through formations while stomping out clean, accelerating syncopations, their heads snapping right and left in perfect unison. It’s high-energy entertainment for all. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Auditorium Theatre, 50 East Congress, (800)982-2787. October 28 at 7:30pm and October 29 at 8pm. $30-69.

Katrina Miller, Robin Beaman, Rhonda Preston

RECOMMENDED

Anyone intrigued by the fact that this company has been able to break ground on a $16 million theater construction project, in this economy, is advised to check out “The Other Cinderella” and you’ll quickly see what makes them special. Founder Jackie Taylor’s first production—she’s the writer and director as well—when she started the company in 1976, it’s been updated and remounted many times by BET over the subsequent three decades. But the essence remains: a retelling of the fairy tale in a kingdom nearly wholly populated by people of African descent, some from the ‘hood, some from the palace, one that reworks what I’ve always disregarded as a child’s story into raucous adult entertainment (albeit still family-friendly). With a live funk-soul band putting the spirit into the all-original songs, ranging from soulful ballads to blues to funky jams (the show’s seventies origin predates rap, though the spirit of hip-hop is certainly present), and a hilarious script that plays freely with black stereotypes, “The Other Cinderella” simply rocks the house. A uniformly topnotch cast, highlighted by the charismatic Rueben Echoles as Page and Rhonda Preston as stepmother Theresa and the hilarious Katrina Miller as stepsister Margarite, brings an ebullient energy to keep things moving briskly. The step-family—Miller, Preston and Robin Beaman as stepsister Geneva —could be a show of their own (they could take a spot on “Saturday Night Live,” as is). Since their story takes on special resonance here—an unconventional family headed by a working-class single mother—you can’t really see them as evil, even when they persecute the gentle, ambitious Cinderella (played with Beyonce-like charm by Candace Edwards): they’re just too damn funny. (Brian Hieggelke)

At Black Ensemble Theater, 4520 North Beacon, (773)769-4451, through January 9. $45.

Caroline Heffernan and Phillip R. Smith/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Harper Lee novel that remains one of the most beloved books of recent decades, Steppenwolf for Young Adults is presenting Christopher Sergel’s dramatization for a short run of weekday matinees for schools with weekend performances for the public.

Wisely ignoring the also-beloved film adaptation, no easy task, Sergel and director Hallie Gordon give us the adult Jean Louise as a young adult writer (Carolyn Defrin) at a typewriter overlooking the stage, actually reliving in her mind’s eye the wonder and adventure that was her Depression-era childhood in Alabama. Very little of the novel’s exposition is dramatized in this whirlwind two-hour adaptation, which moves quickly to ground the events surrounding the trial of a black man accused of raping a young white girl in a segregated South. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Yonan, Hallie Cercone, Jarret Ditch, Cara Salerno/Photo: Brett Beiner

RECOMMENDED

Ordinarily, “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” is a throwaway show for regional theaters, allowing a large cast of dancers to take the spotlight and giving actors and singers some time off. Not so this time: the sumptuous Drury Lane production of “Seven Brides” is a wonder to behold on every level.

The 1954 film began life as a demonstration for the then-new wide screen process called CinemaScope: what better way to showcase what wide screen could do than to have no less than seven main characters, all with their own respective brides. The challenge for director Stanley Donen and choreographer Michael Kidd was to fill up the entire frame with some of the most elaborate and exuberant dance sequences ever put on film. Although an Aaron Copland-like score was provided by Adolph Deutsch and Gene DePaul wrote some nice songs for the occasion with lyrics supplied by Johnny Mercer, the film was conceived primarily as a CinemaScope showcase for dance. Read the rest of this entry »

Sandra Marquez and Ashley Neal/Photo: Art Carrillo

RECOMMENDED

Teatro Vista and Rivendell Theatre Ensemble reunite for the Midwest premiere of Quiara Alegria Hudes’ “26 Miles.” In suburban Philly, 15-year-old Olivia is up in the middle of the night throwing up in the bathroom, which wakes up her remarried Jewish father. Pining for her Cuban-American mother, Beatriz, she calls her, and she immediately comes and whisks Olivia away on a spontaneous, cross-country road trip. An intellectual zinester, Olivia takes after her father; even the destination she chooses, Wyoming, is a place she dreamt of seeing with him. And yet over the course of the journey the mother and daughter come to terms with their estrangement. Ashley Neal (Olivia) and Sandra Marquez (Beatriz) forge a relationship of poignant hills and valleys, and Keith Kupferer and Edward Torres round out the cast while contributing to the production’s stylish and whimsical design. Director Tara Mallen makes you forget that, of course, the car is just two chairs and a steering wheel. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

Teatro Vista and Rivendell Theatre Ensemble at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 West Chicago, (773)334-7728. Through November 21.

Greg Allen’s adaptation of Kafka’s “The Trial” is a fairly standard treatment for the Hypocrites: with a lot of poetic license, Allen replaces vast amounts of the original text with self-aware banter that constantly draws attention to its own recycled nature. What results is a play that’s much lighter than reading Kafka; the ominous, heavy tone of “The Trial” is replaced by something of a bedroom farce, with constantly slamming doors and sex jokes about how arousing an accused man is. Allen also plays up the connection between the plot of the novel—a man is tried for a crime neither he nor the audience know the nature of—and improv acting, and Brennan Buhl as main character Josef K. borders on precious in his adorable self-aware aiming-to-please showman/buffoon who slowly gains awareness and nihilism. The other actors handily take on the farce with sustained energy and intelligence. Read the rest of this entry »