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.

Paige Smith and Eric Leonard/Photo: Peter Coombs

Based on real events in Germany, “Adore” is the love story of a man who wants to eat his lover, and the willing victim he found who wanted to give himself up in the name of true love. “This is an exaggeration of you,” we’re told in the beginning, and the show works hard to make the characters seem both utterly creepy and completely human by giving them numerous speeches about their hearts and turn-ons. It also goes without saying that the show tries to be edgy, which might be its downfall. The problem with this production isn’t the story it tells—which is visceral and painful to watch in a way that would have delighted Artaud—but the way it’s articulated. The writing is often hackneyed, with ruminations about true love and metaphors for being absorbed by our lover that are nothing new, awash with profanity—things are constantly described as “really fucked up” or “fucking real.” While the characters are middle-aged men, they end up speaking like teenagers. The other major problem is a lack of any kind of theatricality; the play is comprised of almost all monologues, delivered as backstory by the major characters against a screen of fucked-up home movies, instant-message conversation on computer screen, and in one case, the current monologue about love letters written in cursive. Indulgent and conceptually simplistic, not much is added in this production to the story, but it will turn your stomach with its narrative of ultimate masochism, if you’re into that kind of thing. (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.

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 »

Great Small Works' "Marcovaldo Planets"

By Monica Westin

It’s a big weekend for Seth Bockley. In addition to his highly-anticipated performance promenade “The Twins Would Like to Say” with Dog & Pony opening at Steppenwolf Garage on Sunday, Bockley has curated the impressive lineup of artists at Links Hall’s Toy Theater Festival this weekend.

Bockley champions toy theater for its populist roots in nineteenth-century paper theater, which could be made in anyone’s living room as a precursor to television. The form has morphed from living-room entertainment to a cheap, DIY way of making performance that Bockley loves because it’s “not rarefied art.” We spoke to Bockley about this form he wants to be reclaimed as an everyday act.

Toy theater seems to be an exciting and increasingly popular form lately—I’m thinking of companies like Great Small Works, who I know are going to be part of this show. Why do you think there is such a strong interest in toy theater today? When did you personally become interested in the medium?

I became interested in toy theater, and puppetry more generally, through work with Redmoon back in 2004 during my mentorship with Frank Maugeri, now the artistic director there. I originally was more interested in writing and had no intention, really, of getting involved with puppetry, but through seeing what Frank was able to do with the medium, I became extremely excited and interested in this form of storytelling. So oddly, I had become involved as a writer for puppet theater, which was a strange thing to be, and our collaboration allowed me to see the potential of this form. I see it as a form that can both be in dialogue with and in competition with cinema—working with puppetry is closer to the work of a filmmaker rather than a theater director. One of the many cool things it allows is a way of performing animation—performing film really—by other means. Read the rest of this entry »

"Bahok" rehearsal/Photo: Liu Yang

By Sharon Hoyer

Choreographer Akram Kahn has gained renown for cross-pollinating contemporary dance with kathak, a traditional Bengali dance form. His work “Bahok,” an ensemble piece forged from the experiences and histories of eight dancers from around the globe, plays this weekend at the MCA. I spoke with Mr. Kahn over the phone about the piece.

How did the idea for Bahok originate?
It starts from an experience I had in Japan. I was staying in a hotel where a world conference was taking place. I was in the lift and a Japanese woman came in wearing a kimono, an African gentleman came in wearing a traditional African outfit and a couple came in wearing suits. I wanted to ask the Japanese woman about the clothes she was wearing, what the markings on them signified, but the lift was quite small, everyone was looking up at the ceiling and it was rather awkward. The lift went up and I thought that I couldn’t communicate with this woman because maybe she doesn’t speak English or maybe she would think I was being rude, or that I was a stranger imposing on her personal space. And the lift got stuck. After about a minute, everyone starting panicking, including me, speaking different languages. And it occurred to me that in a moment of crisis that we shared together, here comes a situation where everyone has to communicate. I wanted to explore this in my own work.

The body is our home. And the subject is home: what does home mean to us? I realized my body carries my tradition, it carries my religion, it carries my education, it’s a political body. It’s many things. I wanted to explore with different dancers from different cultures: how does that operate? There’s a South Indian guy who has studied martial arts but also contemporary dance, there was the National Ballet of China, but now we have other ballet dancers from Hong Kong, we have a South African dancer who is contemporary-trained but also has strong African tradition of dance, we have Spanish contemporary dancers. So in a way I was using the lift experience, seeing where we would take that using our bodies. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Groves

RECOMMENDED

Aaron Copland used to routinely credit Berlioz for having virtually created the modern symphony orchestra.  Until Berlioz, composers wrote for orchestra as if it were basically an enlarged string quartet with winds used for timbral contrast and with strings and winds having very separate and clearly identifiable roles. It’s as if composers had only been painting in primary colors. With Berlioz, however, the full palette of the tone-color possibilities of the orchestra exploded with his daring blend of instruments in various combinations that created new sonorities that composers such as Mendelssohn and Rossini found incomprehensible and offensive; they actually assumed that he didn’t know any better.

This in part explains why it took the ultra-conservative and Italianate-centered Lyric Opera some half a century to present a single work by Berlioz. And once the company was ready psychologically to risk it a few years back for the Berlioz bicentennial, the expense of doing so scared it off in the wake of the economic downturn following 9/11: we still have yet to hear the promised “Benvenuto Cellini” that was forsaken for the box-office safety net of Gilbert & Sullivan.

The company decision to present a staged version of Berlioz’ oratorio “The Damnation of Faust” this season was a fairly safe one in a town where the piece had been a virtual party piece for Solti and the Chicago Symphony, even having been used as the basis for a memorable European tour that was the only time that the CSO Chorus went along. Still, the musical challenges of the work are enormous, way beyond anything Lyric had attempted since first mounting Wagner’s “Ring” cycle in the 1990s. The artistic resources of the company would be fully put on the line, admirable during a time of economic uncertainty. Read the rest of this entry »

Emanueal Buckley/Photo: Sharon Evans

Two NYPD officers, one white and one black, respond to a 911 domestic-violence call in a bad neighborhood, and a 16-year-old autistic African-American boy ends up dead. The story, about the complexities of racism and the impossibility of uncovering any objective vision of the truth, is nothing new—while playwright Andrew Case obviously has both passion for and knowledge about police corruption, it’s impossible to escape a sense of recycledness about the play. The writing is sometimes incisive; a beat reporter retells the story of the rape charges against Kobe Bryant by a white woman, concluding “Tell me what you believe about this case and I’ll prove you a bigot.” Unfortunately, these lines don’t add up to anything striking overall, and the only new addition to the genre that the show provides, a cop message board called “The Rant” wherein angry, racist tirades are posted, isn’t enough to make the production feel original. This sense extends to both heavily TV-influenced direction  and performances, by a “traitor” black cop, our beat reporter and a do-gooder Persian woman investigator respectively, that aim for archetypal but land firmly in cliché, especially when the characters yell at one another sanctimoniously. The show’s strongest element is the raw fury of newcomer Shariba Rivers performance as the boy’s mother, whose opening rant and version of the events is far more gripping than anything that comes after. (Monica Westin)

At Angel Island, 735 W Sheridan, (773)871-1442. Through March 28.