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

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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 »

Meredith Alvarez and Philip Winston/Photo: Johnny Knight

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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 »

The cast of "Motion"/Photo: Johnny Knight

Ronan Marra, one of the founders of Signal Ensemble Theatre and playwright of their breakout hit “Aftermath,” is a huge football nerd. He’s been an NFL fan since he was a kid. He knows the ins and outs, not just of the game, but the behind-the-scenes, the draft, the politics—you name it.

“For the last several years I’ve been wanting to write a play about professional football somehow, but I really didn’t know how to. I kind of knew that it would have to be something about the behind-the-scenes, but I didn’t have an entry point for it yet.” Read the rest of this entry »

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

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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 »

Teagle Bougere/Photo: Michael Brosilow

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There’s a certain advantage to adapting a masterpiece of literature to the stage: the story and the characters are proven entities, not likely to elicit complaints about plausibility or development. But there is an even bigger disadvantage: not only will audiences inevitably make comparisons, usually unfavorable, to the primary work, but the distillation of a novel the length of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” into a three-hour stage play (including two intermissions) will necessitate vast edits that might threaten clarity even if, as is the case here, the dialogue is drawn strictly from Ellison’s text. Contrarily, the risk is equally great that careful adherence to the text will result in a work that, while unquestioned genius on the page, is plodding on the stage.

Fortunately, most of these potential problems have been avoided with Oren Jacoby’s world-premiere adaptation of “Invisible Man,” now playing at Court. Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Lambert/Photo: Lucas Gerard

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“I do love the office at Christmastime,” exclaims the portly, oppressively exuberant Mr. Bahnson (Rob Grabowski), surveying his bleak cubicular kingdom. He is addressing his subordinate Martin (Kevin Lambert), a corporate Everynerd who manages his repressed anger and boredom by watching horror movies at his desk and secretly writing his own fantasy novel, with himself as swashbuckling hero. Tonight is Martin’s moment of truth, as he learns that he has been accepted into business school and must decide his future.

The Ruckus’ world-premiere presentation of Daniel Caffrey’s “Little Triggers” is a sharp, well-executed and provocative blend of comedy and horror. Combining equal parts Charles Dickens and Rod Serling, Caffrey captures the compartmentalized mentality of middle-class urbanites of a certain age. It is the point when the tug-of-war between dreams and economic realities, imagination and survival, can become so painful that the drab routines and paltry rewards of the day job make it seem like an ongoing Creature Feature. Read the rest of this entry »

Larry Grimm and Danny McCarthy/Photo: Michael Brosilow

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A nervous inventor (Larry Grimm) pitches his latest creation to a smarmy business executive (Danny McCarthy) in the confines of a metallic negotiation room that gives off the claustrophobic feeling of an inner chamber in a giant machine (scenic design by John Dalton).  It’s a creation he breathlessly claims will change not just the world, but our very perception of the EVERYDAY. Read the rest of this entry »

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I hate winter. Sure, no Chicagoan really loves the season, but I truly hate it. So any play that depicts winter in its worst light has a leg up with me—just a caveat.

Cities kind of hate winter, too. The blizzard of 1967 was the worst snowstorm in Chicago history, dumping twenty-three inches on the city, heaviest during rush hour and doing what Billy Sunday could not, that is shutting down the town. “Blizzard ’67,” the intriguing new play by Jon Steinhagen, depicts the impact of that fateful event on one carpool of four co-workers of varying rank and age at a faceless downtown corporation. The play’s framed in a faux-documentary fashion, with the actors occasionally narrating their own transitional voiceovers. Read the rest of this entry »

Jordan Stacey and Stacey Stoltz/Photo: Wayne Karl

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Ringo sang “I get by with a little help from my friends,” but the characters in Dierdre O’Connor’s new play aren’t so lucky. Anne (Stacy Stoltz) is a somewhat frumpy librarian still living with her mother, who bit her last home care provider. So she hires Levi (Jordan Stacey), a young former alcoholic, who is sorely underqualified but desperate for a job and a place to belong. Read the rest of this entry »

Ted Evans and Marsha Harman/Photo: Tom McGrath

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If ever there was a show in the right performance space, this is it. The domed ceiling, dangling chandelier and slightly dated grandeur of this room in the Lincoln Park Cultural Center fit the trappings of a small-town Nebraska funeral home to a T. Set designer Michelle Lilly seals the deal with an overabundance of flowers surrounding a white, open casket and a thrust seating arrangement. Read the rest of this entry »