Hannah Whitlock, Jennifer Blood, Ingrid Lowery, Ethan Lupp & Dana Paulo/Photo: Brett Beiner

RECOMMENDED

“The Sound of Music” is one of the most often performed, and often one of the most poorly performed, musical-theater properties out there. Most productions simply ride the coattails of the movie’s immense popularity and employ a spunky guitar-slinging Maria and a gang of saccharine-sweet children. It was enough to make one critic infamously dub the property as “The Sound of Mucus.”

Well, not this time. Drury Lane and director/choreographer Rachel Rockwell are giving us a complete rethinking of the work that is such a fresh take, our level of involvement becomes such that an all-too-familiar show really does become a new experience. Read the rest of this entry »

In their latest entry, Geek Girl Burlesque has targeted the Indiana Jones franchise with its particular brand of striptease-infused parody. Indiana Jones (the sultry but tough Sadie Hotkins) and her sassy sidekick Shortround (Bella Canto) crash-land in a remote village and are quickly enlisted by the scantily clad locals to help recover their sacred statue (a purple vibrator) from the evil Pincha Nippol (Ellie Gator).

Clever choreography by director Stella Cheeks manages to make scenes as diverse as the plane ride (a bouncy flight never seemed so ideal), the snake feast and the collapsing walls equal parts silly and salacious. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: William Frederking

Rachel Damon’s project for four dancers, a year in the making with help from a Chicago Dancemakers Forum grant, begins simply enough: a greeting in one-word phrases to the audience (small; capacity is about twenty-five), then Damon and Ni’Ja Whitson roll two of three six-foot square walls to opposite sides of the stage. Behind them is Adriana Durant—dressed, as is the whole cast, in grey with three brown leather belts around the hips—who proceeds to quietly explore short movement phrases to a soundscape of water and wind, mixed live by Russell Weiss. She is soon joined by the compelling Marc Macaranas and the phrases grow longer, broader, more florid. Concepts of echo and amplification are introduced. As the piece unfolds, however, the echo becomes muddied, the message lost in the clamor. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Sheryl Mann

By Sharon Hoyer

As Julia Rhoads, director of Lucky Plush Productions, points out, marriage is not a popular subject for dances… or many other performance arts for that matter. The ambivalent states of trust and doubt, of taking on a new identity for oneself and for the world outside the marriage and of lifetime romantic fidelity are a lot harder to explore in a two-hour performance with any kind of depth or sensitivity than the purer emotions of, say, infatuation, grief, aggression or joy. Read the rest of this entry »

"Water Stains on the Wall"/ Photo: LIU Chen-hsiang

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A slanted stage clad in white is the blank page upon which choreographer Lin Hwai-min draws strokes of remarkable beauty. His brushes: the lithe, razor-thin, flawlessly controlled bodies of the Cloud Gate Theatre dancers. The title comes from a conversation between two Chinese calligraphy masters of the Tang Dynasty—one who takes inspiration from dramatic summer clouds, the other from water stains on the wall. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Anyone who grew up in the western suburbs since the 1920s knows about “Peabody’s Tomb,” as Mayslake was referred to for decades. The sprawling, wooded estate was built by coal baron Francis S. Peabody who died suddenly on the property while hunting in 1922 and was buried in an ornate chapel built right on the spot where he fell.

Peabody’s thirty-room Tudor mansion became a Catholic retreat house run by the Franciscan order called the Mayslake Retreat Center. But the mansion and surrounding property was considered haunted and it became a common dare to sneak onto the property and get a glimpse of Peabody in his glass coffin, urban legend said, with his money surrounding him, but not to be caught by the monks who monitored the property and who would make trespassers pray on their knees on a cold floor all night in the chapel.

“Searching for Peabody’s Tomb” takes all of this local lore and turns it into an interactive tour through the memorable mansion itself in search of the tomb of the man who occupied it some ninety years ago now.

Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

After its debut performance last year at the Odeum Sports & Expo Center in west suburban Villa Park, the Asylum Xperiment is back for a second jaunt in what is shaping up to be an annual Halloween tradition.

The Asylum Xperiment is a post-millennial incarnation of the short-lived but never-to-be-forgotten Asylum Experience in Berwyn in the late 1990s, a haunted house unlike any other that was steeped not in shock and gore, but in imagination and creepiness. The lines would run around the block at this time of year, surrounding the Victorian tower with a hearse in front of it as the lucky elite who were ushered in were slowly treated to disturbing and eye-popping scenes from room to room that were exquisite in their macabre detail, courtesy of Dave Link. Read the rest of this entry »

Bruce Arntson, Jenny Littleton/Photo: Doug Blemker

RECOMMENDED

Where sullen indie rockers mope in their music and, it seems, throughout their offstage lives, country musicians seem perfectly capable of belting out song after song on stage about the most depressing subjects—lost love, betrayal,  poverty—and then snapping back to chipper patter. They never seem to confuse life with performance.

It is this juxtaposition that provides the hilarious undercurrent for the honky-tonk that’s taken over the Royal George Cabaret, wherein past-his-smalltime-prime country legend Doyle teams up with his “third Debbie,” this one a young single mother freshly discovered performing at a VFW hall. Their stories of mutual heartbreak and often deluded dreams unfold as banter between  songs, a set list that has the audience howling uproariously at unabashedly honest tunes that work so well by pushing familiar themes into (just barely) unfamiliar territory, like “When You’re Screwing Other Women (Think of Me).” The catchy melodies and sharp lyrics are delivered by a couple of terrific country singers without a trace of the hipster irony that would have ruined the show. Read the rest of this entry »

Sara Greenfield, Levenix Riddle and Darrell Cox

Martin McDonagh’s trademark blacker-than-black humor is a nasty giggle, and he usually manages to combine his smart bitchiness with a theme you actually care about. The themes in “A Behanding in Spokane” are underdeveloped, which makes his bitter medicine harder to swallow.

Carmichael (Darrell Cox) is hunting for his hand, severed by a band of marauding rednecks. He holds two small-time weed dealers (Sara Greenfield, Levenix Riddle) prisoner in his crappy hotel room while he searches for a hand they claim to have. The hotel receptionist (Eric Burgher) waits for revenge on the prisoners, who burned him in a drug deal. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

At the opening of this onstage haunted house you’re at a foreign train station late at night, the sound of trains in the distance and buzzing flies nearby. Early on you realize you’re just in the anteroom and will actually have to board the train by walking down a dark, eerie hallway. This is where the true frights kick in, with a well-developed story penned by Jeremy Menekseoglu that mostly unfolds around you but involves you too, offering plenty of uncomfortable chills from a gory plot that leaves you feeling helpless and disturbed. Immersion is key. Read the rest of this entry »