Photo: Rachel Elizabeth

Coriolis Theater Company is launching a live sitcom “airing” in Chicago this summer. Written by four local comedians and directed by Grayson Vreeland (a.k.a.“Ketchup” from the Colbert segment on Occupy Wall Street), “Maggie and Coco Save The World” delves deep into the insecure hilarity of post-collegiate slacktactivist culture, conspiracy theories and nature documentaries. Vreeland explains: “After six months of confronting police and engaging in direct actions, Coco has to move back in with her longtime best friend and roommate, Maggie, and attempt to reintegrate herself back into her old life with her old friends, while still trying her best to save the world.” Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Goetten, John Taflan, Justin C. Turner, Kyle A. Gibson/Photo: Chris-Ocken

RECOMMENDED

John Webster’s 400-year-old Jacobean revenge tragedy is most famous now for its violent incestuous themes and high body count. This has come to overshadow the accomplishment of “The Duchess of Malfi”: Long before the concept of psychoanalysis had been created, Webster made a complex and penetrating study of  human nature’s self-destructive and pathological tendencies. The plot line—two brothers conspire, out of clearly psychopathic sexual perversions, to kill their widowed sister the duchess after she remarries secretly and below her station—is only the beginning of a story that ultimately finds its moral center on the double-crossing spy-murderer Bosola, who’s as close to a proto-existential character as Hamlet. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

On a rainy night, Bobby (Darrell Cox) and his black-sheep-turned-academic sister Betty (Natasha Lowe) pack up a lakeside cottage. Bobby’s looking for a fight; he finds it when he pokes around Betty’s personal life. It’s a prickly bit of back and forth, as both characters come to terms with their relationship and themselves.

Cox captures the bitterness and longing his character harbors for his sister. He’s a scruffy, no-bullshit loser who has no patience for Betty’s wily ways and gives her no quarter. Unfortunately, Lowe doesn’t display the bad-girl quality that explains Betty’s hold over her brother. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Alan Callaghan

“So, what did you do last night?” a businesswoman habitually probes her coworker over those first scalding sips of morning java. “Nothing,” he shoots back with casual dismissal, having obviously done something. In mid-afternoon, a parent interrogates his teenaged spawn. “How was school?” “Good,” she says, seemingly unable to feel anything grander than chill. Playwright Sarah Ruhl is majorly bummed out by these all-too-regular scenarios. So much so, that she has written, for our viewing pleasure, a “defense of melancholy.”

“Melancholy Play” is Ruhl’s hopeful obituary for the forgotten and looked-down-upon emotional state of being called melancholy: a sustained, billowing sadness. “Are we capable of melancholy?” the play wonders out loud. It’s a question worth asking. Caught up in the present-day fury of naturalist performance, most aspects of the bombastic melodrama, including melancholy, have been tossed aside in favor of internalized emotional thunderstorms and external poker faces. The same is echoed in our daily lives. But Sarah Ruhl longs for the past, or her perception of it anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: K Leo

The third geekily comedic installation from co-creator of Gorilla Tango Burlesque (formerly Geek Girl Burlesque) MsPixy feels like a show created in complete complacency. There’s a heavy reliance on a parade of recognizable superheroes undressing to provide laughs, but without the clever scripting and tantalizingly choreographed stripteases that made previous shows so enjoyable the novelty quickly wears off. Read the rest of this entry »

Liz Chase/Photo: Bob Fisher

This small, all-woman production of Moby Dick shows promise in the premise and casting of very capable actresses, but falters on many levels. Director Bob Fisher’s script, written with Sara Gorsky, could use some trimming, as the show manages to feel too long at a little more than two hours. One of the most problematic scenes involves a dream of Ishmael’s where the story of Jonah is reenacted at the top of act two. This scene, although interestingly staged, does nothing for the advancement of the plot. Just as Ishmael narrates Herman Melville’s novel, the character (Erin Orr) narrates the play. Read the rest of this entry »

Simon Callow/Photo: André Penteado

RECOMMENDED

Those who have experienced one of veteran British stage and screen actor Simon Callow’s compelling one-man shows in the past will likely be checking out his latest solo effort solely based on the sheer revelation and enjoyment of his previous outings. However, unlike, say, his one-man Dickens show, where so much is known about that author and the material presented is always on terra firma, “Being Shakespeare” is a far more speculative show. And yet it is precisely because so little is known about the Bard—taken with his sine qua non reputation in the canon of English literature and a template-setting role in theater as we know it—that we are all the more curious. Read the rest of this entry »

Eddie Bennett and Rob Lindley/Photo: Michael Brosilow

Review: Angels in America/Court Theatre

RECOMMENDED

Perhaps the best theatrical experience is always personal, but ever since I saw “Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches” during the premiere run of its national tour at the Royal George in 1994, I’ve had a particular attachment to this show, which I’ve long considered the best new play of my adult lifetime. Read the rest of this entry »

Simon Callow/Photo: André Penteado

By Dennis Polkow

If veteran British stage and screen actor Simon Callow seems a bit late to the one-man-Shakespeare party given how many such plays there have been, consider that Callow has been doing various solo shows for years.

“‘Being Shakespeare’ is the direct offspring of the Dickens show that I did in Chicago about eleven years ago,” Callow explains. “This is more biographical investigation, or perhaps biographical evocation. In other words, I, the narrator, share with an audience the discoveries I have made about the character but I do that through their plays, their words and also the context. The idea is a bit like a Ouija board: you summon the character, the subject by means of smoke and mirrors, is the truth of it. A little biographical speculation, a little context and the discovery of that subject matter in the writer’s words.” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Playwright and chess master Cándido Tirado’s rumination on the brutality of human beings uses the chess board as a jumping-off point for covering a range of cruel behavior—from genocide to racism to unfair eviction—as three seasoned chess hustlers bicker and collude with each other while working to lure in challengers (referred to as fish) and take their money at the board.

The action takes place in the round, with set designer Collette Pollard’s tables and benches perfectly capturing the comfortably worn feeling of New York’s Washington Square Park and Jesse Klug’s lighting design (including some glowing chess tables) adding a touch of the heightened abstract. Read the rest of this entry »