Members of 2nd Story (John Wilson, Kim Morris, and Doug Whippo)

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Lifeline Theatre and Live Bait Theater offer a smorgasbord of storytelling experiences by presenting the fourteenth-annual Fillet of Solo Festival. Fans of the solo performance medium should have no problem finding something to enjoy at the festival, which performs at a variety of locations in Chicago over the next few weeks.

Last weekend’s offerings included performances by three members of 2nd Story recited stories that, though otherwise disconnected, were told in an interwoven fashion that echoed one another in parts. Following 2nd Story, the storytelling collective Sweat Girls delivered five monologues, under the title “The Sweat Girls are A-Gaga!,” that touched on late motherhood, first-time home-buying and seeing your child off to college, among other topics.

If these performances were any indication, the Fillet of Solo Festival shouldn’t disappoint. The festival has programmed such a wide variety of performers, the only caveat is that even a little research into who is playing on a given night will go a long way. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

The Fillet of Solo Festival (Lifeline Theatre and Live Bait Theater) at Lifeline Theatre, 6912 North Glenwood and The Artistic Home, 3914 North Clark, (773)761-4477. Through August 21.

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 »

Frederica von Stade/Photo: Robert Miller

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During the early decades of the twentieth century, Ravinia was the summer opera capital of the United States. Concert opera was also the centerpiece of the twenty-two-year Ravinia music directorship of James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera. That tradition stopped under Christoph Eschenbach but has continued on under James Conlon, who is also music director of the Los Angeles Opera and the Cincinnati May Festival.

There have been two alternating trajectories established to Conlon’s concert opera performances since his Ravinia music directorship began here five seasons ago: grand outdoor pavilion performances of Italian operas by Verdi and Puccini—which last year included “Rigoletto” and will pick up next season with “Tosca”—and intimate indoor Martin Theatre performances of  operas of Mozart, which two seasons ago included “Don Giovanni” and “The Abduction from the Seraglio” and this year picks up with “Cosi fan tutte” and “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Conlon is a master Mozartean, bringing lively tempos and wonderful balance and charm to chamber-music-sized ensembles made up of Chicago Symphony members. What a rare treat it is to hear Mozart operas in an 800-plus seat venue, close to the size of the theaters that Mozart had in mind when he wrote these works, rather than the too-large Harris Theater (Chicago Opera Theater) or the cavernous Civic Opera House (Lyric Opera) where nuance and subtlety are lost. Director David Lefkowich returns to direct both productions and English surtitles will be projected throughout both works. New this year is the participation of the stellar Chicago Symphony Chorus, which should be a real boost to the proceedings. (Ravinia had been using amateur choruses as a cost-saving measure but the quality differential became too jarring for that practice to continue.) 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 »

Philip Adrian Elson/Photo: Ryan Bourque

Here’s the concept: a panel of dance experts from Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco, Seattle and Philadelphia convene in Chicago to collectively select twelve choreographers from each aforementioned city to participate in a competitive performance series judged by audience vote. Both experts and audience judge the artists on four criteria: Potential, Originality, Execution and Merit (it spells POEM by design). The winner takes home $10,000. Take a TV game show, reduce a season of elimination to two rounds, replace the amateur competitors with serious dance artists, toss in the opportunity for actual dialoguing with the audience beyond woots and text messages and you get The A.W.A.R.D. Show!, or Artists With Audiences Responding to Dance—the acronym-mad performance series that, despite a title that’s trying a bit too hard to garner excitement either sincerely or ironically (I’m not sure which, though the exclamation point certainly suggests the latter), does a number of exciting things for the dance community on local and national levels. One is that choreographers are given the chance to receive substantial feedback from the audience both verbally and in writing, and the audience is in turn able to share their thoughts, substantial or otherwise. Another is that the participants are chosen by dance experts who have never seen or heard of them before. This means lots of brilliant, innovative, independent artists and smaller companies were seriously mulled over by heavy hitters from the Joyce in New York, On the Boards in Seattle, Dance Affiliates in Philly and the Dance Center of Columbia College, among others. The result is an eclectic mix of artists you probably wouldn’t see on the same program at the Dance Center had the panel been entirely Chicago-based judges. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Traditional Eastern dance meets contemporary Western dance this weekend at the Department of Cultural Affairs’ Storefront Theater. Shirley Mordine’s celebrated, long-running modern company collaborated with Hema Rajagopalan’s company dedicated to the practice and preservation of Bharata Natyam (a classical Indian dance form) to create three new works on the themes of family, gender, philosophy and gesture. It will be interesting to see what the exchange yields, especially in terms of the latter; Bharata Natyam is characterized by high-speed, rhythmic footwork and distinctive hand gesture, contemporary movement often by weighted, sweeping lines. The languages that emerge when these tongues are tied should be unfamiliar, fresh to the eyes and mind. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the DCA’s Storefront Theater, 78 East Washington, (312)742-8497. July 29-August 1, Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm, Sunday at 3pm. $18 in advance, $20 at the door.

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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 »

Photo: Zane Davis

At one point in “Talk Radio,” an old woman calls into Barry Champlain’s radio show complaining about the lack of new “I Love Lucy” shows. Nonplussed, Champlain yells at her, “Do you know what year this is?!” and says Lucille Ball must be really old by now. Written in 1987, this line made sense two years before Ball’s death. Yet with a state-of-the-art social-media concept and not one but two sparkling Mac computers on the set, we might do well to ask the same question of the State Theatre. Concerning an adventurous Cleveland talk-radio host on his last show before it goes national, the production suffers from a basic lack of good old-fashioned script analysis. The social-media concept, which includes a live Twitter feed (the audience is encouraged to tweet and take pics) and Skyping callers, is ambitious but has no place next to references about hippies and the Vietnam War. If anything saves the show it’s the versatile cast portraying the variety of strongly written characters for which playwright Eric Bogosian is known. Now with one full season under their belt, the State has shown a penchant for ideas so crazy they just might work. We’ll see what next year brings. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

The State Theatre of Chicago at the Boho Theatre, 7016 North Glenwood. Through August 15.

Photo: Jorge Rosemberg

Tap dance, like jazz music, is an intrinsically American art form: improvisatory, rhythmically dynamic and playfully competitive, sprung from Harlem clubs in the early twentieth century where soloists would take turns besting one another in virtuosity and wit. Unlike jazz, tap remains for the most part outside the greater American dance institution, performed for ticket-paying audiences at revered venues as infrequently as it is offered in the curriculum of degree-seeking university dance programs (i.e. about once per annum), relegated instead to student clubs, studio recitals and—less frequently since the passing of Hollywood’s golden age—Broadway shows.

“There isn’t any infrastructure for American tap in the establishment now,” says Lane Alexander, founder of the Chicago Human Rhythm Project, and arguably creator of the infrastructure for American tap in the Midwest. “There aren’t any dedicated spaces for tap. It’s a big deal for the tap community to be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Peter Taub [the MCA’s performance programming director] led us in the door and we felt his embrace of the community needed to be recognized.” 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.