Mildred Ruiz-Sapp/Photo: Michael Brosilow

Ostensibly about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the dynamic members of New York-based Universes (writers and performers of “Ameriville”) quickly take this high-powered percussion-and vocals-driven show down a twisting American path that leads out of New Orleans and into rapid-fire discussions of topics ranging from homelessness to healthcare to illegal immigrants. By the time they start decrying fracking and predicting a Latina president, it’s a bit too clear that this piece has a target audience. Read the rest of this entry »

Jack Hickey and Christian Gray/Photo: Lila M. Stromer

George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 adaptation of one of Aesop’s fables was a bit of a dramatic firebrand when it first premiered, attacking religious and political hypocrisy and calling instead for earnestness and honesty. Nonetheless, the story of Christians being sent to the slaughter in ancient Rome was so wildly misunderstood that the writer felt it necessary to explain himself in a note distributed to his New York audience in 1915. Sometimes the best satire will backfire and be taken at face value by those at whom the satire is directed. Read the rest of this entry »

Zoe Drift, Diva LaVida and Choco Latina/Photo: Jason Brown

RECOMMENDED

Anchored by the well-honed comedic timing of Diva LaVida as Mari, a tough mariachi seeking revenge for the killing of his “womans” by local gangster Mierda, the cast of this provocative parody of Robert Rodriguez’s cult favorite “El Mariachi” (later remade into the more popular “Desperado” starring Antonio Banderas) works hard to sell the jokes in this episodic script by The Salsation Theatre Company. And their work mostly pays off (in pesos). Read the rest of this entry »

Usman Ally, Alana Arenas, Lee Stark, Benim Foster/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Amir is an American of Islamic heritage, his parents from the part of the world now known as Pakistan. He seems fully assimilated in all the ways mainstream America would want him to be: he’s disavowed the religion of his people, married a white woman and, most important of all, become an asshole corporate lawyer who wears $600 shirts. For what aspiration is more American than to be an asshole corporate lawyer?

But no one wants the assimilated Amir. Not his nephew who still clings to the Koran. Nor his wife, who’s using Islam in a  contemporary version of radical chic to establish her career as an artist. And in the ultimate act of identity suppression, he’s immersed himself, it seems, in a world of American Jews—at his law firm, among his social circle. Read the rest of this entry »

Randall Newsome, Sally Murphy, Kristina Valada-Viars and Francis Guinan/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

War photographer Sarah, played with a sense of psychic damage to match her physically wrecked state by Sally Murphy, is home in New York with her long-term companion James, a freelance war journalist, who Randall Newsome injects with just enough emotionalism to complement Sarah’s internal struggle. She’s just barely survived a horrible injury while on assignment. Addicted to excitement, they’re the “Sid and Nancy” of journalism, as their pal Richard (Francis Guinan, brilliant as always) describes them in exasperation. But when Richard introduces his young and bright and naive new girlfriend, Mandy Bloom (Kristina Valada-Viars, charmingly bathetic), Sarah and James come to question the decisions they’ve made about life and love. Read the rest of this entry »

Meredith Alvarez and Philip Winston/Photo: Johnny Knight

RECOMMENDED

Signal Ensemble might be the 1968 New York Jets of Chicago theater: scrappy, undermanned and under-resourced, but quarterbacked by a leader with a knack for championship-level razzle dazzle. I’d write something like that, but Ronan Marra, Signal’s co-artistic director and the playwright of “Motion” is a Cleveland native and a Browns fan, so he might object. In any case, something pretty cool’s happening up at Signal, and “Motion” follows on the extraordinary success of 2010′s Rolling Stones bipolar “Aftermath,” with a re-teaming of playwright Marra and director Aaron Snook delivering similarly impressive results.

The small theater space has been transformed into a football field, with the cast sitting on “the bench” and about forty audience members surrounding the action in “the bleachers,” complete with cup holders and complimentary popcorn. Read the rest of this entry »

Bret Tuomi as Jeffrey Skilling/Photo: Lara Goetsch

RECOMMENDED

Jeffrey Skilling (Bret Tuomi) comes to Enron with new ideas: mark-to-market accounting, electricity trading. The company makes fistfuls of cash and causes fatal, rolling blackouts in California. But it’s not just Skilling’s ideas that are scandalous; it’s that everyone (Enron lawyers and accountants, the financial industry) lets him get away with it. Read the rest of this entry »

From left: Adrian Danzig, Samuel Taylor, John Judd/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

What if all the magical action in “The Tempest” happened inside the head of one bitter, wronged man? “The Feast” portrays a tormented Prospero (John Judd) commanding his slaves Ariel (Samuel Taylor) and Caliban (Adrian Danzig) to repeatedly act out an unfolding drama of his own creation using masks and puppets. Read the rest of this entry »

Tamberla Perry, Geoffrey Owens, Marc Grapey, Patrick Clear/Photo: Eric Y. Exit

RECOMMENDED

When David Mamet was on Charlie Rose promoting the New York premiere of his new play “Race” last year, he was naturally enough asked what he thought of President Obama. “I would rather not answer that question,” he said after a long silence, “as it might influence how people approach this play.” Since then, Mamet has released his infamous liberal-to-conservative manifesto, “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture,” a kind of upside-down Augustine’s “Confessions” where he describes Obama’s “Change” that was so “accepted by a drugged populace and a supine press” as “the unfortunate descent of a productive nation into socialism” where “racial tensions have devolved to acrimony unknown in this country for decades.” Of Obama’s declaration that “Selma belongs to me, too,” Mamet assesses, “but the credit does not.”

No wonder in promoting the Chicago premiere of “Race” that Goodman Theatre, Mamet’s old stomping ground, has by and large turned the production over to its African-American director Chuck Smith. Also no wonder that, while Goodman’s gift shop had plenty of copies of “Race” on hand and virtually any other Mamet play for sale during intermission opening night as well as his book of theater essays, “The Secret Knowledge,” Mamet’s latest and most controversial opus, was nowhere to be found. Read the rest of this entry »

Leah Karpel, Ryan Heindl, JJ Phillips and Jess Berry/Photo:Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Lest one be confused by the title of this 2009 Simon Stephens play, Griffin opens the show with the image of British schoolchildren rocking out to Big Black’s “Kerosene,” a mean thrasher whose lines ”Probably come to die in this town, lived here my whole life” encapsulate the very palpable fears of the play’s protagonists. Ever the mouthpiece for disenfranchised youths, the punk ethos pervades the show, if not the aesthetic. Set in a suburb of Manchester, England, and inspired by the 1999 Columbine shootings, “Punk Rock” creates a portrait of teenage violence that seems to come from a modern disdain for small-town, middle-class monotony. Read the rest of this entry »