Brad Armacost

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Life’s full of ghosts and their sad stories; some tales are otherworldly, others are awash with regret. “The Weir” captures a good sample of the supernatural, including stories that are frightening because they are all too real.

Irish bar man Brendan (Brad Smith) hosts country bachelors Jack (Brad Armacost) and Jimmy (Jeff Christian) for their daily pints o’ Guinness. When their small-town sharpie mate Finbar (Kevin Theis) brings newcomer Valerie (Sarah Wellington) around to see the sights, the four curry her favor by telling local spook stories, only to be seriously spooked in return.

The ensemble is on top of a tough script filled with demanding monologues. The actors goose the humor with nice, natural touches; Christian’s awkward pauses and over-long eye contact are genius. But the jewel of the evening is Armacost; his mundane  tale of love and life squandered is heartbreaking; his pain is very much of this realm. (Lisa Buscani)

Seanachai Theatre Company, 4626 North Knox, (866)811-4111, through October 3.

Andrew Carter and Terry Hamilton/Photo: Lara Goetsch

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These days he’s called Sir David Frost, which seems a smidge lofty for someone better known three decades earlier as a louche British media personality and man-about-town. There was the bouffy hair, the sly wit. But no one took him seriously. Not really.

Frost had a short-lived talk show that ran in the U.S. from 1969-1972, and when the plug was ultimately pulled, he took it personally—a banishment from the American limelight he was desperate to regain—and it is no wonder he saw his 1977 television interview with Richard Nixon as a way back in. And to some extent it was.

But what American today under the age of forty knows his name—or knows his name for anything other than his Nixon interviews? It’s no slight, I think, to ask the question, and it’s probably fair to say Frost is all too happy to let the Nixon interviews stand as his defining career moment. Read the rest of this entry »

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Eighty percent of suicides are men, according to Scott, the president of Legacy Letters, a consulting company devoted to helping would-be suicides craft the perfect note—and Scott is after this demographic ruthlessly, trying to sell them the platinum suicide note package and keep them from changing their minds in the would-be-satire of Suicide, Incorporated. Scott is paranoid that his new writer Jason is a mole from a suicide-prevention agency, but he’s only half-right; Jason has in fact joined the company to save at least one client, stemming from guilt over his own brother’s graphic suicide. Enter Norm, a client whom Jason could save if he doesn’t over-identify with him, and Tommy, Jason’s dead brother, who appears as a series of flashbacks. Andrew Hinderaker’s play is lucidly and often dazzlingly written, with a strong and subtle ear for dialogue between desperate men, but “Suicide Incorporated” floats uneasily in the space between the dark satire of the first half of the play and the meditative but often tired drama of the second, never dwelling comfortably in either. Read the rest of this entry »

Natalie Ford and Cooper David Grodin/Photo: Rich Foreman

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“Carousel” was Richard Rodgers personal favorite of all the musicals he wrote, either with lyricist Lorenz Hart or with Oscar Hammerstein II. Together, Rodgers & Hammerstein created a new kind of musical drama with 1943’s “Oklahoma!” where every song advanced the story line and every dance was done in character. The line between music and drama was so magnificently blurred that you never knew when dialogue might turn into song, or when action would turn into dance. “Carousel” followed two years later, developing even deeper characters and containing more music than “Oklahoma!” The R & H “You’ll Never Walk Alone” ending was certainly more optimistic and uplifting than Ferenc Molnár’s “Liliom,” upon which the show is based (Molnár was said to not only have approved, but to have loved it), but much of the play’s bleakness remained intact. Certainly the central character of Billy Bigelow was as earthy and tough as ever, even if he did have his more gentle moments. Indeed, there has been a trend in recent revivals and productions of “Carousel” to have things be so bleak, so dark, and so non-musical in presentation that you often thought you were watching “Liliom” interrupted by background music. Thankfully, Light Opera Works is reminding us why “Carousel” was chosen by Time magazine as the best musical of the twentieth century: the music. Read the rest of this entry »

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Patti LuPone initially came to prominence originating the completely sung role of Eva Peron on Broadway in “Evita,” for which she won a Tony Award. Her career took a tumble however, when after originating the role of Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard” on London’s West End, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber abruptly replaced her with Glenn Close for the Broadway run, deeming LuPone’s acting too superficial.

LuPone’s career has since had an unusual renaissance courtesy of the Ravinia Festival, where she has been singing roles of Stephen Sondheim—a composer that she came to late in her career—in various shows there for the past decade. Two of these went on to have Broadway runs: “Sweeney Todd” and later “Gypsy,” which won LuPone her second Tony as Mama Rose, and was briefly reprised in a stellar rendition of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” at Ravinia’s recent Sondheim gala. Read the rest of this entry »

Kelli Simpkins and Polly Noonan/Photo: Chris Tzoubris

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“Late: A Cowboy Song” is the kind of play that traffics in feelings and emotions more than it does concepts or themes. That’s not to suggest this Chicago premiere, by playwright Sarah Ruhl, is bereft of ideas. Far from it, the play has huge things to say about relationships, love, the elusiveness of happiness and, to a more subtle degree, the touchy subject of gender roles in society and the gendering of intersex babies. But it’s told so simply and directly that it tugs at the heartstrings and connects with the soul, and makes the experience memorable for how and what you felt while watching it. It’s afterwards that you marvel at how something so simple could ultimately be so complex. And concurrently how something so complex could come across so simply. Considered intellectually, it’s brilliant. Considered emotionally, it’s human. These are the marks of a great play, and I wouldn’t be surprised if “Late: A Cowboy Song” quickly becomes a modern classic. In Piven Theatre Workshop’s production, under the flawless direction of Jessica Thebus, and boasting three amazing performances, it already feels like one. Read the rest of this entry »

Behzad Dabu, Melanie Keller, Anish Jethmalani, Minita Gandhi/Photo: D. Rice

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The weather outside has been frightful, what with heat waves, humidity and sudden summer monsoons, making the prospect of a couple of hours of outdoor suburban Shakespeare seem less than delightful. For those who do make the midsummer journey out to the grounds of the west suburban Mayslake Forest Preserve, however, the high rewards are worth the risk in that the Bard’s best and funniest comedy has been given a brilliant re-imagining in the world of nineteenth-century British-occupied India. That poses a whole host of fascinating transpositions for “Twelfth Night,” of course, which director Michael Goldberg addresses so cleverly that those unfamiliar with the original text may think that he has changed the prose to suit this updated scenario. (He hasn’t.)

Here, the twins Viola and Sebastian are natives, and convincingly played as such by Minita Gandhi and Behzad Dabu, as are Orsino (Anish Jethmalani) and Antonio (Jonah Winston), right down to Indian accents. This gives a distinctive cadence, for instance, to such familiar lines as Orsino’s “If music be the food of love, play on,” and gives his wooing of the Countess Olivia (Melanie Keller), one of the occupiers, an entirely new level of meaning as there are now caste and race issues involved with their potential relationship. Indeed, a clash of classes surrounds both the occupiers and the occupiees and creates a new world of additional mix-ups and confusions. No wonder Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are so put out by Malvolio’s pomposity, for as played by Nick Sandys, he would be lower class back home but here, is telling knights of the realm how to behave. That also makes Malvolio a more rife target for thinking that he would have caught the eye of his mistress, an aristocrat. Read the rest of this entry »

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There have been at least two musical adaptations of Tod Browning’s 1932 “Freaks,” a film about circus sideshow performers. Even so, “Shrek the Musical” comes the closest to musicalizing the dark spirit of the unsettling climax of that film when the “freaks” accept an outsider as one of their own with unison cries of “We accept her! One of us! We accept her! One of us! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble! We accept her! We accept her!”

Likewise, the evicted fairy-tale characters of “Shrek” decide to unite and “out” Lord Farquaad, a closeted fairy-tale dwarf who does his best to hide his shortcomings throughout the musical (David F. M. Vaughn portrays him on his knees with a false set of short legs dangling in front of his camouflaged thighs). It is a daring moment of social action made all the more powerful occurring when it does in the show and having the fairy-tale characters carrying protest signs and singing like an angry mob (“Freak Flag.”) That is a scene you will not see in the original animated “Shrek,” and is one of many charms unique to “Shrek the Musical.” Read the rest of this entry »

Bubba Weiler and Kevin Anderson

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Joel Drake Johnson’s latest at Victory Gardens explores redemption and the long, strange trip guilt takes us on. Thankfully, the destination is as satisfying as the journey.

Ex-con Doug (Kevin Anderson) has no place to go. His sister (Meg Thalken) is absent, so he’s forced to endure his uber-anal-retentive brother-in-law Phillip (Francis Guinan). The two manage to integrate each other into their respective mental prisons.

The piece’s mood shifts can be tough to keep a handle on; both Doug and Phillip act out without pattern. But Guinan and Anderson make up for it with killer rapport and razor-sharp timing; a simple bed-making scene is heartbreakingly hilarious. Bubba Weiler holds his own as the “lying, manic-depressive” son trapped in his own cruel adolescent reality; Sandy Shinner’s direction keeps the pacing and the physicality in check as the characters seek relief from their burdens and the seemingly unobtainable vision of their futures. (Lisa Buscani)

Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 North Lincoln, (773)871-3000. Through August 15.

Photo: Michael Litchfield

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Sometimes all you need is a simple premise and a flexible, talented cast. Writer and producer Laura Jacqmin’s “Dental Society Midwinter Meeting” is a deceptively light-on-its-feet satire that succeeds in finding humanity in small episodes between characters you may only meet once or twice.

Scandal has rocked the North Shore Regional Dental Society: President Morris J. Morris, Jr., has been found to have been sleeping with his hygienist and letting her, unlicensed, perform advanced dental procedures. The members of the society have convened for the midyear meeting with the single goal of rectifying this mess.

The exceedingly clever script by Jacqmin pokes loving fun at its dentist characters without condescending to them. Words can’t express briefly the merits of the six-member ensemble cast, who are largely responsible for the aforementioned humanity. Late in the play there’s a scene in a karaoke bar, and it’s the saddest, funniest, most heartbreaking scene about dentists you’ve ever seen. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

At Play Productions at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 West Chicago, (773)828-4331.  Through August 7.