RECOMMENDED

Unfortunately, there was only one performance of Chris Sullivan’s creepy, gorgeous, hilarious, and profoundly one-off show at Rhinofest this year. However, “Mark the Encounter” has been in development for years (it shows), and so it’s possible there will be another incarnation in Chicago, though its creator plans to take it on the road before that happens. If and when it does, it’s an important one to see—rarely do we get a chance to see a performance piece that has been as meticulously worked as Sullivan’s, nor one that incorporates truly arresting—and at times brilliant—writing, perfectly disturbing comedy and a sense of the absurd delivered with droll understatement.

This is all to say that “Mark the Encounter” is very smart and at most times seemingly the work of a deranged consciousness. The show follows a dream logic, beginning with a doctor convincing a woman to donate her newly vegetable husband’s heart to a creepy marionette named Fred. Fred appears again as the fantasy of the dead man’s alleged brother Nosmo, whose insanely funny, and very very sad inner life turns out to be the expressionist hinge around which the short scenes rotate. Nosmo has a Peruvian mountain man living where his heart used to be (dysphemistically called a homunculus). His fantastically depraved and hilarious fantasies of seducing his brother’s widow run up against deeply unhealthy psychotherapy sessions that easily outstrip the subject’s usual treatment. Other scenes, intertwined and undermining one another, including an undertaker with the hustle of a used-car salesman and a series of horrific funeral elegies delivered with professional deadpan, somehow do more than stay afloat. This show embodies the niche between performance art and theater that Chicago desperately needs filled, and it does so in a damn smart, damn funny way. (Monica Westin)

Rhinofest.com

John Sanders, Kate Fry and Rob Lindley/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

When the Noël Coward revue “Oh, Coward!” opened in late 1972, Coward himself was still around but his detached and wry style had fallen way out of fashion. British actor/director/playwright Roderick Cook thought that the time was right to remind us all of what an original voice Coward had been, and the result was a hit show that even Coward himself came to check out in early 1973 in what turned out to be his last public appearance (he died in March of that year).

Cook’s idea was astonishingly simple: two male performers—one was originally Cook himself—and one female performer, all in evening clothes and sipping champagne, singing Coward songs and acting out scenes from his best-known plays. It was a passport to another era, and nearly four decades later, it feels as fresh as ever, at least in the hands of Writers’ Theatre. Entering the performance space in the back of a suburban bookstore, you are offered a glass of champagne as you head into an intimate theater transformed into an elegant, art deco nightclub of the 1930s. Music director Doug Peck greets you in tails as he is playing Coward songs on a grand piano and you find your way to small tables encircling the space in inviting, cabaret style. Read the rest of this entry »

Wayne Wilson, Jerry Kernion, Daniel Passer/Photo: Kristie Kahns

RECOMMENDED

Traditional Cirque du Soleil fans—and they are legion—are likely to find this latest comedy-packed, vaudeville-style entry in the franchise a perplexing, even tedious experience in that it has little in common with past offerings. “Daniel, help me down from here,” says clown Wayne Wilson, caught on a rising microphone. “I can’t,” says Daniel Passer, “I’m not in the union.” So much for the Chicago topical humor (the show is dress-rehearsing here for a New York opening).

Still, the take-off on American “talent” shows is hysterical, though it is likely to be unappealing to those who actually like such shows. “Is there anyone with any talent here?” says emcee Schmelky (Jerry Kernion), and seat numbers of “volunteers” are read aloud to audition on stage. All are clowns, of course, although out of makeup and just initially “normal” enough that they could pass for actual audience members. Before long, we get a ventriloquist whose dummy is deaf (the ventriloquist silently moves his hands endlessly, imitating sign language), a streaker/contortionist as a “modern dancer” (Patrick de Valette) and “the oldest mime in the world” (Gordon White) who comes on stage with a walker and takes his time to pantomime a large glass box that takes him long stretches of time to make his way across to its four corners.  Cruel humor, to be sure, but funny nonetheless.

As for actual circus acts within the show, these are few and far between, and consist mostly of juggling and a couple of gymnasts, albeit all excellent, as you would expect. What we get instead are elaborate dance routines, colorful costumes and an overdose of skits with no overall theme to any of this other than apparently being scaled-down Cirque du Soleil stuff reconfigured for theater venues.  (Dennis Polkow)

“Cirque du Soleil Banana Shpeel” runs through January 3 at the Chicago Theatre, $23-$98.

Ricky Jay/Photo: Jesse Dylan

RECOMMENDED

Ricky Jay opened “A Rogue’s Gallery” by reciting a poem that his friend Shel Silverstein wrote for him, in which Jay defends himself against a gun-wielding sore loser with only his playing cards. By the end of the evening, the idea of Jay fighting crime with cards seemed not only entirely possible, but paled in comparison to some of his other feats. Through random and sometimes haphazard processes, Jay selected audience members to join him on stage for various mesmerizing sleight-of-hand effects (he doesn’t call them tricks) in which he somehow managed to inscribe a book to someone before knowing her name, made cards seemingly teleport from one place to another, and blindly charted the course of a knight across a chess board without ever landing in the same space twice, while reciting Shakespeare and spontaneously calculating square roots. He also shared clips from some of the many films he’s been in and consulted on, and generally made people laugh tears with his remarkable stagecraft and wit. It sounds strange, and it was; but the kind of strange that causes every part of you all the way down to the cellular level to wonder how? Read the rest of this entry »

John Pierson, Luke Holladay, Vanessa S. Valliere/Photo: Johnny Knight

RECOMMENDED

There are those who find the Neo-Futurists scary any time of the year, so the thought of the avant-garde ensemble actually setting out to be scary for the Halloween season sounded intriguing, to say the least.  As you wait for your Edgar Allan Poe-themed tour to begin, you notice, ever so subtlely, the presence of a beautiful-but-hushed-and-pale young woman sitting in a corner copiously planting herself in dirt, an upside-down take on Poe’s fear of premature burial. Old photographs surround her, some which she buries along with her, and at least one audience member has her program spirited away and buried along with the photos. A personable and playful but mysterious guide clad in a black robe and hood with a half glow-in-the-dark facemask greets our group in silence and throws a glowing red bouncing ball to see who will go first.  Entering a long, scary hallway full of Andy Warhol-like portraits of well-known dead people, we make our way to a room based on Poe’s “The Oval Portrait” where a game audience member is given a palette of real paints and a brush and invited to paint a slowly deteriorating model on a video screen. Our aesthetic host, meanwhile, judges the quality of each, crumbling up ones that the rest of us decide do not represent honest artistic efforts.  A room devoted to “The Tell-Tale Heart” has audience members reading free riffs on the tale from a deck of cards (two of us had to chime in with punctuated “thump-thump” sound effects) but to careful and heartfelt direction from our silent guide. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Jim Newberry

RECOMMENDED

Cheryl Trykv makes Amy Sedaris seem like a circus clown. Her tales of private eyes, girl Fridays, Palm Springs teen runaways and truck-stop lowlifes are peppered with observations about the world that would make anyone else want to cry, but in Cheryl’s hands they’re gems that just need a little spit shine. At heart she’s a storyteller, and her current performance, a monologue of her greatest hits from 1990 to today (many performed at Milly’s Orchid Show), weaves short stories with personal reflections. Whereas the personal asides are a strange blend of self-deprecation and self-affirmation, the stories, as short fiction, are a fit and imaginative revival of the American pulp genre. Cheryl celebrates the absurdity that passes for everyday life. Each sentence offers an unpredictable turn, but each word is precise. To see and hear her speak them onstage is icing. (Jason Foumberg)

Cheryl Trykv performs at Davenport’s, 1383 N. Milwaukee, June 16, 17, 23 and 24 at 8pm.

RECOMMENDED

Cirque Shanghai’s annual summer visit to Chicago is a time to round up good friends, bask in the Navy Pier open-air setting and marvel at the suppleness of the human body.  This year—the troupe’s fourth with “Bright Spirit”—offers the same basic physical daredevilry and moments of real wonder, but overall the installment felt shorter in length, lighter in the number of traditional Chinese circus acts, and smaller in total number of performers.  Given the state of the global economy, it makes you wonder:  has the recession affected even grandiose entertainment juggernauts like Cirque Shanghai?  Is less more?  You can decide that last question for yourself, since this unique Chicago circus tradition still deserves to be experienced, but compared to last summer’s ravishing and majestic “Cirque Shanghai: Gold” I’m afraid “Bright Spirit” wins Silver at best. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Are there Chicago audiences for gay theater that isn’t easy to swallow?  How about for one-man shows by gay performers  that straddle the line of monologue, performance art and concert?  The night I saw Kevin Thornton’s “Sex, Dreams and Self Control,” in town for only a fist-full of shows, the audience certainly was somewhere else.  In all fairness, the 11:30pm start time on a Thursday evening may have had something to do with it, but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen one man working in this genre threaten to outnumber the audience.  In this case, it really is a shame.  Thornton is engaging and funny and cute as hell as he recounts his journey from aspiring youth minister to rebellious homosexual with only himself, a microphone and a guitar.  His web site compares him to a post-Smiths Morrissey, and in fact there are moments he opens his mouth to sing that you can hear it right away.  The impressive versatility of voice shines brightest when he picks up the tempo, even when he is singing about handjobs after Bible study.  There are a few more chances to catch Thornton this weekend at The BoHo Theatre at Heartland Studios.  Gay audiences, this is our opportunity to prove we will support theater that doesn’t involve naked men, bars or Broadway in Chicago. (William Scott)

At BoHo Theatre at Heartland Studios, 7016 N. Glenwood , (866)811-4111, through May 9.

Photo: Jennifer Korff

RECOMMENDED

This is your last weekend to catch Cupola Bobber’s “Way Out West, the Sea Whispered Me” at Links Hall, and if you’re interested in performance that’s as concerned with wordplay as with image and movement, it’s a show that will offer a lot of food for thought. Focused on the sea, the piece is woven together with threads of different historical moments and psychological affects related to the ocean, from the nostalgia of seaside resort towns to a gloriously bizarre erosion narrative that tells the story of buildings and even towns that have slipped into the sea, and, as a perfect foil, the Depression dust bowl of Kansas. The piece is nearly as intellectually engaged and critically connected as an academic essay. Read the rest of this entry »

If you go to see “The Yellow Wallpaper” out of a love for the groundbreaking short story about postpartum depression (as I did and suspect many audience members will), at least do yourself a favor and arrive half an hour late during intermission, so that you will miss the warm-up: truly cringe-worthy poetry (by a woman who inexplicably takes off her shoes and plays with her scarf while reading lines like “those were the days of cornbread”) and physical theater (a trash-clad woman offers cookies to audience members out of a garbage can lid while singing “fancy” over and over). That said, the relationship between Chicago Danztheatre’s adaptation and the Charlotte Perkins Gilman story is parasitic at best, and a travesty most of the time. Any sense of narrative coherence is one of the many casualties of this production, which mostly consists of a chorus of young women breathing heavily, rubbing themselves against strips of fabric hanging from the ceiling, and crawling around the stage and aisle in their most feline manners (my baffled neighbor wondered if one woman did so to keep us from being able to escape), while the protagonist goes mad Sideshow-Bob style, but without the funny red hair. Overacting and underperforming all around. Not recommended. (Monica Westin)

At Gorilla Tango Theatre, 1919 N Milwaukee, (773)-598-4549. Through October 12.