Khurram Mozaffar in "Bolt from the Blue"/Photo: Michael Brosilow

There’s no denying the noble aspirations of Chicago’s Silk Road Theatre Project, which aims to give voice to those with origins all along its namesake passage, including Asian, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean peoples. For “The DNA Trail: A Genealogy of Short Plays About Ancestry, Identity and Utter Confusion,” they’ve combined that mission with a study of the effects of genetics, a particularly relevant topic with all the recent breakthroughs in the study of the human genome. That’s a lot of ambition, and unfortunately, the seven short plays commissioned by SRTP for “The DNA Trail” don’t quite combine to create an entity that lives up to it. In some of the plays, recitations of college-science-textbook talk combined with almost caricature-like vignettes reminded me of the educational movies we used to enjoy in school, like “Donald [Duck] in Mathmagic Land.” Of these, highlights included Silk Road co-founder Jamil Khoury’s autobiographical upending of stereotypes, “WASP: White Arab Slovak Pole,” and David Henry Hwang’s hilarious exploration of the increasing ability to learn details about our ancestry dating back to the ancients—his protagonist engages with a horny Cleopatra and a violently unhinged Ghengis Khan, who’ve both contributed to his gene pool—”A Very DNA Reunion.” These pleasant pieces are mixed in with more serious fare, from Velina Hasu Houston’s morbidly dreadful “Mother Road” to the moving “Bolt From the Blue,” wherein playwright Shishir Kurup explores the still-inevitable tragedy of certain genetic traits while commenting on the way our digital age fosters both distance and new modes of intimacy.

Steve Scott directs the whole thing with as brisk a pace as the material allows, and the cast often performs at a level surpassing much of the material, especially Khurram Mozaffar, who shifts personalities among the plays with notable empathy. Given the high-concept origins of the work—each playwright commenced with a personal DNA test for inspiration—Silk Road was kind of stuck with whatever grew from its “seeds.” Like any gene pool, the result is a mixed bag. (Brian Hieggelke)

Silk Road Theatre Project’s “The DNA Trail” plays at The Chicago Temple, 77 West Washington, (312)857-1234 x201, through April 4.

Tamara Anderson, Josh Johnson, Melissa diLeonardo and Malcolm Callan/Photo: Sebastian Aguirre

Joshua Aaron Weinstein’s ode to economic apocalypse reduces the world to its fundamentals and discusses what happens when those basics disappear. Unfortunately, the piece’s flawed narrative collapses; structure’s pretty fundamental.

The piece works as a reminder of the litany of things we lose without our purchasing power. But the main storyline feels tacked on and is divulged when it’s too late to develop. The multimedia falls flat; the garbled audio obscures the storyline and destroys the dramatic tension created in the live text.

The ensemble dredges some good moments out of the ruins. Noah Lepawsky scores as the piece’s holy fool; Malcolm Callan’s brutish landlord seems happy to abandon civility. Brian P. Cicirello captures the irritating voice of compassion; Earliana McLaurin amuses as the smarmy voice of governmental intervention that everyone needs but resents. But the strong performances can’t save a show with a structure that crumbles by the curtain. (Lisa Buscani)

LiveWire Chicago Theatre at the Viaduct Theatre, 3111 N. Western, (312)533-4666, through April 4.

Greta Honold and Tom Hardy/Photo: Liz Lauren

Expectations were especially high for the world premiere of Brett C. Leonard’s “The Long Red Road” at the Goodman, thanks to the Chicago directing debut of Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the casting of rising British film and stage star Tom Hardy in a leading role written for him. And I am pleased to say that the set and lighting design meet those expectations, with the Owen Theatre converted by Eugene Lee into a sprawling thrust stage that squeezes right up to the audience, devouring seats and eliminating the opportunity to establish any distance from the tortuous fare unfolding upon it. It’s a magnificent fusion of two separate households headed by two brothers in two separate states (literally and metaphorically), including not only bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens, but also their places of occupation, a barn and a bar, respectively, the latter where the alcoholic brother Sam spends much of his time communing with the bartender. The homes are interconnected, and characters pass each other like ghosts, suggesting the invisible ties that perpetually bind, even strangle, families. And Edward Pierce’s lighting design is a simple marvel; lamps, across the vast stage, turn on and off to signal the flow of action; the beginning and the end of scenes on a set with no boundaries.

If only the play lived up to its setting, or even its opening, where the audience is greeted by the characters Sam and Annie enjoying a graphic and vigorous shag. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

RECOMMENDED

Imagine a small Chicago theater company choosing to do something that even a major opera company such as Lyric Opera wouldn’t dare think of doing in such uncertain economic times: put on a complete Wagner “Ring” cycle.

The “Ring” is the short name for Richard Wagner’s four-part epic “The Ring of the Nibelungs” cycle of music dramas which consists of the individual works “The Rhine Gold,” “The Valkyrie,” “Siegfried” and “Twilight of the Gods.” The “Ring” has no parallel, and is the most ambitious stage work ever written, occupying the mind of its creator for more than twenty-five years.

Logging in at some nineteen hours of performance time performed across four separate evenings, the theatrical demands of the “Ring” were such that Wagner designed and built his own theater outside of the small Bavarian town of Bayreuth that could properly meet its unique demands, a city whose principal industry remains its Wagner performances and its ongoing reputation as a Wagnerian shrine.  (The waiting list for tickets there is some eight years ahead.)   Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Janes, Patrick Michael Kelly and Kevin Gladish/Photo: John W. Sisson, Jr.

RECOMMENDED

It takes a fair bit of hubris and a whole lot of ambition to make theater derived from an iconic work of art. By taking on not only his most famous work, “Nighthawks,” but a range of his images, WNEP ups the ante with its “The (edward) Hopper Project, ” now in its world premiere at the DCA’s Storefront Theater.

A panoramic, complex set, designed with an authenticity that belies its economy by Heath Hays, takes the “Nighthawks” diner and adds adjacent buildings and rooms, based on other Hopper paintings, to create a sweeping vista of a Brooklyn corner in 1952. Occurring on a single day and night, scenes take place in apartments upstairs, in offices, on the rooftop, on the street, in the bus station and, of course, in the diner. There are eight million stories in the naked city, and WNEP lets us eavesdrop on a handful of them. Fragments, not full narratives, consistent with the mystique evoked by Hopper, create a mosaic of life. Not surprisingly, there’s a noir tone to it all, with spot-on night and the city costuming by Rebecca Langguth and a cinematic jazz soundtrack. Read the rest of this entry »

A frustrated painter replaces his aging muse with an Eastern European mail-order bride from a catalogue his washed-up DJ roommate masturbates to. If this show could hit all the notes of dark comedy it attempts, it would be a terrifically acerbic twist on its indulgent trope on the artist and the muse. As it is, “The Artist Needs a Wife” isn’t quite controlled or consistent enough to make it clear how seriously we’re supposed to take the production. Jesse Weaver’s play reels between sincere, moving conversations about aging and regret and hysterical screaming matches and cheesy choreographed fight scenes that make the show occasionally seem like a farce. The problem seems to lie in the writing—is it impossible for playwrights to address art-making without some immoderation?—and not in the acting, which is remarkable. Allison Caine in particular transcends her role as “Whore,” the rejected and vengeful first muse, digging deep for a performance of powerlessness that’s far more mature than the story. (Monica Westin)

At the side project, 1439 W. Jarvis, (773)973-2150. Through February 14.

By Emily Torem

Jesse Weaver’s “The Artist Needs a Wife,” slated for its world premiere at the side project theatre this week, is not a play to see if you’re feeling low. It’s about “trying to imagine what life would be like if you were a complete and utter failure,” says the Virginia-born playwright whose career is anything but—his last production at the side project, where he is an ensemble member, “On My Parents’ One Hundredth Wedding Anniversary,” drew critical raves. The plot of “Artist” centers on “fairly fucking old” washed-up artists: Mott, a DJ and Freud, a painter, along with Freud’s discarded muse, known only as “Whore.” The characters live in a futuristic world of Weaver’s imagination. “When I started writing it, I didn’t know much about DJing. It looked so cool and so hip. I was wondering: this art form seems so new and so uniquely of our time, what is it going to be like in 50 years? Are these guys going to be mixing in old folks homes in 2070?” We chatted with Weaver over the phone and via email from Virginia—he’s currently living in Ireland, where an earlier version of this play appeared at the Dublin Fringe Fest—to get some insight into his work.

What inspired you to write a play about failure?
I was in my mid-twenties [when I started writing it]. Living in my friend’s basement apartment—especially when you’re working in Chicago theater where everyone has to have a day job—there’s this feeling of, “Oh my god, I’m going to be 50 and doing [this] the rest of my life. In your mid-twenties, you’ve been sort of written a blank check. [You’ve been told] you’re very talented and you’re very cool and the world’s going to fall at your feet, and then you [learn] it’s not going to and you start to feel sorry for yourself and are going to end up this crusty old man in the basement—that was a personal feeling that sort of stoked the play. I started sharing these thoughts and found I wasn’t the only one with those feelings. Read the rest of this entry »

Lindsey Whiting/Photo: Sean Williams

RECOMMENDED

Chances are excellent that anyone reading this dreamt they were flying last night, so psychologists tell us. If you’re lucky, like me, you sometimes wake up remembering that you did, and even the memory of the sensation will give your day a lift. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite the fact that you or I could get on a jet today (just heard a passing plane as I write this), somehow being squeezed and seat-belted into a small seat surrounded by strangers and a flight crew passing out peanuts and soft drinks as you occasionally look out tiny windows of a large tube to notice clouds far beneath you is somehow not the same as being free in the air.

Greek religion—now called Greek “mythology” because other religions have since replaced it and so that we won’t get sued for teaching it in our schools—noticed this long ago. It forms the climactic element of the story of Minos II of Crete, grandson of Zeus and Europa, when the inventor Daedalus and his son Icarus are imprisoned and escape via the inventor concocting wings for the two of them. Any grade-schooler knows the tragic end to the story, and at the world premiere of Lookingglass artistic director David Catlin’s “Icarus” that opened on Sunday night, that familiarity is used as an effective flashback device. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Joan Marcus

By Dennis Polkow

“They’re creepy and they’re kooky / Mysterious and spooky…”  Well, at least they used to be, before the Addams Family became a Broadway-bound musical.

It all looked so great on paper: Broadway superstars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia, the librettists (Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice) and choreographer (Sergio Trujillo) of “Jersey Boys”—how could it miss?

Oddly enough, by forgetting that the perpetual appeal of the Addams Family and the common thread running through its incarnation from magazine cartoon characters to television series to hit movies has been the dark and macabre sensibility of the family itself.

Despite a blizzard, there was not an empty seat in sight at last Wednesday’s world-premiere performance of “The Addams Family: A New Musical” and anticipation was high, even with a slightly delayed curtain due to the weather.

When the lights began going on and off to loud electrical noises and the theater darkened and a spooky, four-note ostinato began sounding, the crowd response was that of rock-concert excitement. By the time a spotlight shown on a single hand (i.e., Thing) peaking out of a red curtain that pulled back to the entire “family” in a cemetery under a full moon facing the audience in its familiar and iconic pose, the cheers were deafening.

As things calm down, Nathan Lane’s Gomez sighs and in a slightly Latino accent says, “Ah, it’s bad to be alive,” before leading the family and its dead ancestors in a low-energy opening number called “The Clandango” that seeks to draw ties to its past that is, as Lane keeps singing, “We are part of a chain.” It is a remarkably squandered moment that cuts the high-energy anticipation level in half. Read the rest of this entry »