Miriam Reuter and Jon Matteson/Photo: Nicholas Gang

Chicago’s bustling theater scene might seem already saturated with companies, but the newly founded (re)discover theatre hopes their specific angle will help them find a bit of room in the city: Their mission is rediscovering classical theater while staying true to the ideals of the classic playwrights.

For their maiden production: Hamlet.

“Hamlet is so huge, you can’t get it right. Nobody can get it right, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in the business or how well you know Shakespeare,” executive director Miriam Reuter says. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Bishop, Casey Chapman/Photo: Emily Granata

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It’s unfortunate it’s the case, but Black Elephant’s inaugural production of “Gross Indecency” couldn’t come at a more opportune moment.  Given the spate of news stories involving gay-bashing and bullying, its message is more than timely. Director Michael Rashid’s eye for context makes the production all the more astounding.

In a gay bar in the modern day, a number of bar patrons decide to stage a production of “Gross Indecency,” eschewing English accents for the most part and making the best of their largely leather and tennis shoe wardrobes. Following Oscar Wilde’s litigious conflicts involving his alleged homosexual affairs, the play ends with his ultimate banishment from society and imprisonment.

What’s remarkable is that Rashid made sure the framing device follows a narrative arc as well. Rather than simply dressing his actors up as two-dimensional queeny barflies, he has them be moved by the story they tell as it ultimately reflects their own. Sometimes the two worlds collide awkwardly—for instance, it’s unclear why the bar patrons would have an intact copy of a period magazine—but details like that can be forgiven in an otherwise lovingly handled production. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

Black Elephant Theatre at the Raven Theatre, 6157 North Clark, (800)838-3006. Through November 14.

While anyone involved with theater is familiar with the concept of a stage whisper, what director David Fehr needs to introduce into Ka-Tet Theatre’s new show—the uneven and vaguely metaphorical “Sun, Stand Thou Still”—is the stage yell. Maybe it’s the tight quarters at Stage Left Theatre or the often sudden outbursts of the actors, but by the time the explosive finale of Steven Gridley’s meandering play is reached, it feels like far too much emotion is expressed through actors raising their voices to their maximum volumes rather than engaging each other.

There’s promise in this story of two men—a spastic hitchhiker and a half-blind driver—travelling eternally west on a straight road (so straight, in fact that the driver rarely needs to watch the road or hold the steering wheel), but too much time is spent following a bumbling cop and discussing how much liquid the human bladder can hold. (Seriously, there is a LOT of talk about urination.) The imaginative set design by Isabella Ng does add a touch of life to the proceedings. Perhaps run as a single act with thirty minutes cut from the often repetitive script, ”Sun, Stand Thou Still” would be much more engaging. (Zach Freeman)

Ka-Tet Theatre at Stage Left, 3408 North Sheffield, (800)838-3006, through June 5.

Neal Starbird

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New company Ruckus covers both the Jim McGreevey and Mark Foley sex scandals, which forced both men out of the closet into the glaring moral spotlight. It’s a clever if a bit overgrown look at life on the political downlow.

Writer Kristian O’Hare’s narrative is cluttered and tonally confusing; the humor is by turn heart-wrenchingly natural and wider than the Potomac. There’s room for both energies but not the way the piece is currently crafted. Exploring both imbroglios stretches the narrative thin; O’Hare may have to choose between stories to make this tale manageable.

That aside, the ensemble’s game; Freddie Donovan’s rent boy/page is  a good sport in platform boots, roller blades and tap shoes; Julie Cowden and Stevie Chaddock bring a painful vulnerability to their wife and daughter roles and Neal Starbird works McGreevey’s white-bread sleaziness. Director Allison Shoemaker drives the pacing, which keeps us from drowning in dishonesty. (Lisa Buscani)

The Ruckus at the Side Project Theatre Company, 1439 West Jarvis, (312)307-8684. Through May 26.

Following the twisted antics of anti-hero Mr. Suit as he traverses the halls of a hospital/asylum for damaged women, Brikenbrak Theatre Project’s production of The Samaritan Syndrome presents a dark examination of the human psyche—intrinsically asking us how often we hurt others (intentionally or unintentionally) while seeking to save ourselves. While the pain inflicted in the show is more often physical than mental, the unspoken metaphor is apt and visceral—and plays well in the starkly intimate confines of the Gorilla Tango Theatre. Unfortunately, the forty-five-minute script doesn’t quite hold up under scrutiny, and the female characters (though ably played by the cast) are written with disappointingly one-dimensional (and overly sexual) strokes. It’s definitely a conversation piece—with a talk-back planned after each show—but the conversation feels a little too surface-level for such disturbing material. (Zach Freeman)

Brikenbrak Theatre Project at Gorilla Tango Theatre, 1919 N. Milwaukee, (773)598-4549. Tuesdays at 8pm through May 25. $12.

On Friday night at Studio Be, as the new RoShamBo Theatre Company opened its first show, the smell of fresh construction lingered throughout the space, a few paint cans sat visibly under the risers, and a ladder leaned against an exposed wall. These physical signs of a show still in developmental stages are clearly reflected throughout the hour-long production itself.

Consisting of three short, rather disconnected pieces, “Attack Ships on Fire”—a title that references both Rutger Hauer’s final monologue in “Blade Runner” as well as the Revolting Cocks song from the eighties–feels more like a theatrical workshop than a fully-formed show. The often didactic nature of the first and last pieces (“Canary in a Mineshaft” and “No Pity”) begins to wear thin rather quickly and the acting isn’t captivating enough to overlook the meager set design and bland costuming (with the exception of the canary’s outfit). Read the rest of this entry »

As I enter my sixth year of Chicago stage criticism, I find it harder to distinguish raw talent when it’s marred by bad material. Because no matter how much passion and commitment is pumped into a mediocre play, the evening usually becomes a case of watching performers working tirelessly, but to tiresome effect.  The hard work on display at the Viaduct Theater is courtesy of The Consortium Project, a brand new Chicago ensemble comprised mostly of Florida State University Theater graduates, and the so-so drama is the 1970 stage version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by playwright Dale Wasserman, and based upon Ken Kesey’s 1960s novel of the same name.

The play brings to life Randle McMurphy, a paragon of individuality and free will that is emblematic of the spirit of the 1960s. Evading prison (for statutory rape) by voluntarily submitting himself to a mental asylum for rehabilitation, McMurphy’s “Jock Christ” (as the late Pauline Kael wonderfully nicknamed the character in her review of the 1975 Milos Forman film version) raises hell and ultimately sacrifices himself in an attempt to inspire his fellow inmates—a motley crew of emotionally and psychologically crippled men—to rise up against the tyrannical and oppressive Nurse Ratched (Tracy Wray), herself emblematic of totalitarian power structures. Read the rest of this entry »

Anand Bhatia and Nadia Anwar in "Midnite's Vultures"/Photo: Tom McGrath

An uneven but charming series of one-acts about the South Asian diaspora that deftly overcomes stereotypes of victimization and the American dream but gets undermined by increased sanctimoniousness throughout the night. The plays’ ordering is astute, moving thematically from immigration to working to the fallout of expatriation for later generations. The first, “Instant Recall,” is funny and compelling, playing cleverly on the concept of immigration by placing a South Asian newcomer on a cruise ship, where she confuses a British passenger with her selective memory and non sequiturs before revealing her quiet tragedy. “Night Shift” pits the Indian daughter of a hotel owner and the world-weary white woman who works the night shift against a bigoted and threatening (white male) client. It’s the weakest of the three, taking easy shots with hackneyed writing and excessive sentimentality. The final play is the most fascinating and also, at times, the hardest to watch. “Midnite’s Vultures” is also the longest by far, and features, among other trippy events (the main characters are on peyote, by the way), a man dressed in the costume of Apu from “The Simpsons,” dispensing wisdom on the oneness of it all through a character’s Blackberry. Read the rest of this entry »

The Thirteen Pocket ensemble: Mark Minton, Carin Silkaitis, Laura Rook, Jacob Lorenz, and Stephen Grush (left to right)

By Ilana Kowarski

With a baseball cap, wife-beater and exposed tattoos, Stephen Louis Grush may not look like the typical artist, but he says that he can’t imagine what his life would be like without art. “You can’t underestimate the importance of invention. The chaos it creates is the closest we can come to something that’s good and meaningful,” says Grush, an actor, director and playwright who has already performed in leading roles at Steppenwolf (most recently as Ethan Strange in “Sex With Strangers”) only four years after finishing the theater program at Roosevelt University. Grush’s mother was a professional actress, meaning theater has always been a part of his life. “I literally grew up in the theater. There were always actors in the green room taking care of me, trying to keep me out of trouble. They never did,” Grush grins. As a younger man, Grush had a few run-ins with the law, and he brings that same brand of rebelliousness to the theater. As the founding artistic director of new-work theater company Thirteen Pocket, Grush believes in causing trouble by making theater. He produces current, gutsy plays about controversial topics, like sexual promiscuity and cannibalism, because he says that “without examining these things we cannot hope to grow as a community or as a people.” “The reaction doesn’t always have to be positive, as long as there is a reaction,” Grush explains. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Matthew Hooks

There is something about entering a poorly marked building of halls and doorways and sitting on a hard floor in what feels like a storage unit to watch a series of scenes in which one person after the next dies a horribly gruesome death that makes a person squirm a little inside. I’m pretty sure that feeling is exactly the point. Abraham Werewolf’s “DECADENCE: The Two Faces of Robert LaPage” is raw and frayed around the edges, but this upstart company, now producing its second show, is finding something that just might work, a gritty experience with a few genuinely scary moments.  Actually, a couple of plays are happening here.  To see the show twice is to see the show once. Audiences may sit in one of two rooms and watch different scenes of blood and gore.  In the end, the stories on two stages collide in a death-filled finale that could stand to push the boundaries a bit more. The writing and performances are inconsistent; some fall flat while others are beautifully chilling or funny or sad. Abraham Werewolf is still finding its footing, but something about this project evokes a zeitgeist that I imagine to be similar to the early days of some of Chicago’s more illustrious ensemble-based theaters. (William Scott)

At the Post Family’s gallery and workshop, 1821 W. Hubbard #202, abrahamwerewolf.com, through August 22. $15-$25.