Cole Simon, Anna Shutz

RECOMMENDED

Project 891’s slapstick ode to the biblical movie epic is intentionally short on production values but long on charm. Its “hey kids, let’s put on a show” aesthetic rivals the glorious cheesiness of the original productions themselves.

Brothers Benny (Matt Lozano) and Phil (Cole Simon) head to the desert to join 3,500 other extras to make a cinematic extravaganza; both become enamored of spunky extras coordinator Louise (Anna Schutz). When the film’s eccentric director (Robert Kearcher) quits and Phil takes over the production, movie mayhem ensues.

The funny hits some speed bumps and both comedy and melodrama are over the top, but the camp doesn’t distract. Simon is leading-man charming, Schutz has likeable ingénue purity and Lozano’s gee-whiz honesty is appealing (someone needs to wipe the boy down after the sweaty battle scenes). The story’s final physical skirmish runs long, but Beau Forbes’ fight choreography is corny entertainment. (Lisa Buscani)

Project 891 at the Chemically Imbalanced Theatre, 1428 W. Irving Park, (773)485-0924, through March 28.

Ashleigh LaThrop and Paige Collins/Photo: Peter Coombs

RECOMMENDED

The true story of self-destructive identical twins who spoke to nobody but themselves for decades while producing wildly theatrical novels and stories alone in their bedroom. The story lends itself beautifully to a dramatic staging, and Dog & Pony maximizes its potential with a brilliantly versatile promenade set, wherein audience members circulate to make real choices about which scenes to see; they also make deft use of various hyper-theatrics, including a gorgeous overhead projector piece, with which to stage the twins’ exuberant fictions and fantasies against their isolated, dejected adolescences. In terms of dramatic range and technical theater, the show is flawless; the actors show impressive flexibility working amongst stylized choreography, sharp naturalism and song-and-dance disco numbers. The show’s only weakness might end up being this very versatility; there is so much stimulation happening at any given moment that the real tragedy of the twins’ sad lives is somewhat lost, and it’s too easy to see the show without giving any real emotional investment. (Monica Westin)

At Steppenwolf Garage, 1624 N. Halsted, (312)335-1650. Through April 25.

Matt Farabee and Alexander Lane/Photo: Peter Coombs

RECOMMENDED

Two suburban teenagers  in the mid-eighties discover punk music and, ostensibly, themselves through it. Hero and antihero, Mickey and Duck alternate between childlike naivete, adolescent fury, and a seen-it-all affectation covering up real crises of identity. That is to say, they’re typical teenage guys (except for being on rollerskates). What’s not typical is how creatively Pavement Group manages to re-imagine this story in their production, forging a fresh look at the ways we join social movements to hide from ourselves. It’s also an incredibly funny play, with dialogue that runs between witty banter and insults of a Beavis and Butthead nature without dumbing the production down, and some of the worst and best names of nonexistent punk bands you’ve never heard of. Acting is controlled, perfectly paced, and full of hormonal energy; and this edge extends to savvy technical theater. But the most impressive feat lies in the final scenes of the play, which explore the real ideology of punk music, as opposed to its mere fashion, and actually manage to make it seem relevant again. (Monica Westin)

At Steppenwolf Garage, 1624 N Halsted, (312)335-1650. Through April 25.

RECOMMENDED

Daughters of second-wave feminists were raised to believe they could “have it all”: career, family. Now, they spend thousands on infertility treatments and surrogate mothers. So much for “having it all.”

After a painful miscarriage and a thwarted adoption, Abigail (Cat Dean) and Zachary (Cory Krebsbach) opt for surrogacy in India, a cheaper alternative. Her leftist lawyer sister Jem (Kate Black) condemns turning poor women into for-profit baby factories; their surrogate Beena (Mouzam Makkar) sees an opportunity to build a better life.

There’s some schmaltz as the parents perform a ritual on a teddy bear standing in for the infant, but by and large, M.E.H Lewis’ script presents a balanced look at an emotional subject. Dean and Krebsbach palpably convey the pain of a couple searching for their immortality. Black provides a conscience without being strident and Makkar’s hope and naiveté is heartbreaking as her character searches for a leg up. (Lisa Buscani)

At Stage Left Theatre, 3408 N. Sheffield, (773)883-8830, through April 3.

Tim Curtis, Shannon Hoag/Photo: Chris Ocken

RECOMMENDED

Director Kimberly Senior knows Chekhov. Over the past five years, this veteran Chicago director has developed a profound affinity for the plays of the great chronicler of aristocratic angst at the turn of nineteenth-century Russia, and showcased some of her finest work through her intimate, ensemble-rich and emotionally-devastating renderings of “Three Sisters” and “The Cherry Orchard” (the former remains of the most perceptive versions of that play I have ever seen).  If her “Uncle Vanya,” now at at Strawdog Theatre, isn’t as moving as those other two productions, it is nevertheless a worthy contribution to Senior and Strawdog’s continuing exploration into the playwright’s canon, and confirms that a Chekhov play directed by Senior is still cause for celebration. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

In their inaugural production at their new home, Seanachai presents Brian Friel’s bittersweet memory play, chronicling a simpler time that wasn’t so simple.

In Depression-era Ireland, The Mundy sisters welcome their African missionary brother Jack (Don Bender) home after twenty-five years’ service. That’s not the only change the sisters endure. Kate (Barbara Figgins) may lose the teaching job that supports their family; Agnes (Carolyn Klein) and Rose (Anne Sunseri) will lose their glove-making living when a factory puts them out of business. Maggie (Sarah Wellington) and Chris (Simone Roos) yearn for joy as their gray world closes in.

The ensemble captures the piece’s very Irish combination of quick humor and painful melancholy. Wellington brightens the mood with quips and riddles; Figgins finds the desperation as upstanding stalwart Kate finds her back against the wall. Klein, Sunseri and Roos furtively and effectively hunger for love they can never know. (Lisa Buscani)

Seanachai Theatre Company at The Irish American Cultural Center, 4626 N. Knox Avenue, 866 811-4111. Through April 4.

LaNisa Frederick/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Dael Orlandersmith brings her slam-poetry-honed narrative to Pegasus, examining the bond and break-up of Alexis (LaNisa Frederick) and Jimmy (Brandon Thompson) in their harsh Harlem neighborhood.

There’s not much new here; Orlandersmith explores the stranger-in-my-own-land theme in other works and we’ve heard the story of a person saved by education before. But the evocative language dazzles as she shows us the bottom-line gimmicks New York life requires.

Thank God for Frederick; not every actress could keep up with the piece’s thick poetry. She brings a tough vulnerability that minimizes the melodrama and makes the show’s climax painful and plausible. Thompson and the multi-cast Caren Blackmore are strong and versatile but underused; the script forces Frederick to handle their dialogue as well as her own. More straight dialogue would create a respite from Orlandersmith’s torrential wordplay. We may have heard the story before, just not like this. (Lisa Buscani)

At Pegasus Players,  1145 W. Wilson, (773)878-9761. Through March 28.

Photo: Jane Nicholl Sahlins

By Dennis Polkow

“If Aristophanes were alive today,” says an elderly but still twinkling Bernard Sahlins, “he would be on cable television.”  It may a seem a long way from the satirical ancient Greek playwright to the Second City some two-and-a-half millennia later, but Sahlins, a founder of Chicago’s legendary comedy troupe who is directing a production of “Lysistrata” this weekend, puts the timeframe in perspective: “Long before Second City, when I was directing ‘straight’ plays, including the Greek tragedies, Claudia Cassidy [then Chicago Tribune critic] wrote that I had directed the worst production in 2,000 years.”  Well, she ought to know.

Sahlins says that he has always been interested in Greek drama, a love that was in part fostered by his time studying the classics at the University of Chicago, where he graduated in 1943.  “A University of Chicago education was once described as ‘Casting imaginary pearls before real swine.’ But don’t use that.

“You know, the high point of Greek drama only lasted for about eighty-six years. The period of Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus and Aristophanes passed quickly and then there was nothing except street theater until the Middle Ages and the development of church plays. The era of the playwright, the individual dramatist, did not emerge again until the Renaissance and the phenomenon of the playwright as we think of it is a fairly modern phenomenon that really fully came about in the nineteenth century.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Decline of Ballooning

RECOMMENDED

This gorgeous pairing of unlikely musicals was a highlight of this year’s Rhinofest. B.T. Scott’s “Decline of Ballooning” is the stronger of the two, an abstract, delicate piece about the pained relationship between two aerial photographers. The story’s diagesis, which necessitates some staging as improbable as “Lear,” is broken up by disjoined interjections by Cupola Bobber’s Tyler Myers and a pianist playing surreal and Brechtian songs written by Scott and Sam Wagster. The overall effect is more lyrical and understated than one might imagine a play involving people falling from airplanes and receiving invasive surgery onstage could be. Devin King’s “Madame X Paints Haydn Red” is less coherent but just as striking at times; King monologues about Haydn being “sort of a dick, like Frank Zappa” in his music, the story of the two skulls in Haydn’s tomb, the history of vinyl, and the lost art of phrenology while collaborator Sean O’Connell and he create a sort of ambient music opera. The only problem here is that the music is technically boring and often tedious, especially sections that seem to meditate on the sound of rewinding. (Monica Westin)

Caitlin Chuckta/Photo: Anne Petersen

RECOMMENDED

A good chunk of my youth was spent at summer camp, and I loved the intense relationships that formed over a matter of days. It always felt like you were going to be BEST FRIENDS FOR EVER!!!

A goofy but intensely gossipy slumber-party culture permeates summer camp. For all its unobscured nature and forestation, camp always felt like a strangely hermetic environment, but to this day I’d rather swim in a lake than the ocean. I’d also rather watch “Wet Hot American Summer” than just about anything else starring Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black.

I never went to Jesus camp, but judging by the atmosphere captured in “11:11”—the high-spirited, genuinely funny comedy from The New Colony currently occupying the upstairs studio at the Victory Gardens Biograph—apparently it’s not that different from any other camp.  Camp is camp.

The counselors here may drop references to God and Jesus the way I used to obsess over care packages. But when it comes to the all-over “camp” vibe, playwrights Evan Linder and Tara Sissom (working with director Meg Johns and an excellent cast) have it nailed. Read the rest of this entry »