Top 5 Shows

“Caroline, or Change,” Court Theatre

“A House with No Walls,” Timeline Theatre

“The Glass Menagerie,” Steppenwolf Theatre

“No Darkness Round My Stone,” Trap Door Theatre

“The Birthday Party,” Signal Theater

—Monica Westin

Top 5 Shows

“Jon,” Collaboraction

“A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant,” A Red Orchid

“Be More Chill,” Griffin Theatre

“Men of Tortuga,” Profiles

“Picked Up,” Neo-Futurists

—Nina Metz

Top 5 Theatrical Experiences

“Caroline, or Change,” Court Theatre

“Columnibus,” Raven Theatre

“As You Like It,” Writers’ Theatre

“The Comedy of Errors,” Chicago Shakespeare Theater

“Romeo y Julieta” (Staged Reading), Chicago Shakespeare Theater/Shakespeare in Español

—Fabrizio O. Almeida

Top 5 Guilty Pleasures

“Jarred: A Hoodoo Comedy” by Tanya Saracho, Teatro Luna

“Speech and Debate” by Stephen Karam, ATC

“Dead Man’s Cell Phone” by Sarah Ruhl, Steppenwolf

“The Little Dog Laughed” by Douglas Carter Beane, About Face Theatre

“After Ashley” by Gina Gionfriddo, Stage Left Theatre

—Fabrizio O. Almeida

Top 5 New Plays

“Kita y Fernanda” by Tanya Saracho, 16^th Street Theater

“The U.N. Inspector” by David Farr and James Sherman, Next Theatre

“Dead Man’s Cell Phone” by Sarah Ruhl, Steppenwolf Theatre

“Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat” by Yussef El Guindi, Silk Road Theatre Project

“Superior Donuts” by Tracy Letts, Steppenwolf Theatre

—Fabrizio O. Almeida

 Top 5 Revivals

“The Maids,” Writers’ Theatre

“The Lion in Winter,” Writers’ Theatre

“Requiem for a Heavyweight,” Shattered Globe

“Plaza Suite,” Eclipse Theatre Company

“The Birthday Party,” Signal Ensemble Theatre

—Fabrizio O. Almeida

Top 5 Play Revivals

“Our Town,” Hypocrites

“The Lion in Winter,” Writers Theatre

“Requiem for a Heavyweight,” Shattered Globe

“Journey’s End,” Griffin

“M Butterfly,” BoHo

—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Memorable Productions by a Smaller Theatre Troupe

“Multi-Purpose Doom,” Sandbox Theatre Project

“The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler,” Dog & Pony

“Termen Vox Machina,” Oracle Productions

“On My Parents’ 100^th Wedding Anniversary,” Side Project

“The Last Days of Judas Iscariot” (original mounting), Gift Theatre

—Fabrizio O. Almeida

Top 5 Directors

Ann Filmer for “Kita y Fernanda,” 16^th Street Theater

Charles Newell for “Caroline, or Change,” Court Theatre

Sean Graney for “Edward II,” Chicago Shakespeare Theater

William Brown for “As You Like It,” Writers’ Theatre

Greg Kolack for “Columbinus,” Raven Theatre

—Fabrizio O. Almeida

Top 5 Musicals

“Caroline, or Change,” Court Theatre

“Grey Gardens,” Northlight Theatre

“Tell Me On A Sunday,” Bailiwick Theater

“The Full Monty,” Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre

“All Shook Up,” Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre

—Fabrizio O. Almeida

Top 5 New Musicals

“Caroline, or Change,” Court Theatre

“Grey Gardens,” Northlight Theatre

“Songs for a New World,” Porchlight

“The Ballad of Emmett Till,” Goodman Theatre

“I Am Who I Am: The Story of Teddy Pendergrass,” Black Ensemble Theater

—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Musical Revivals

“Tell Me on a Sunday,” Bailiwick Theater

“Sweet Charity,” Drury Lane Oakbrook

“1776,” Signal Ensemble

“Jacques Brel’s Lonesome Lovers of the Night,” Theo Ubique

“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” Circle Theatre

—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Worst Musicals

“Shout! The Mod Musical,” Drury Lane Water Tower

“Avenue Q,” Broadway in Chicago

“Dirty Dancing,” Broadway in Chicago

“Russian on the Side,” Royal George Theater

“Gutenberg! The Musical,” Royal George Theater

—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Worst Musicals

“Dirty Dancing,” Broadway in Chicago

“The Kid from Brooklyn,” Mercury Theater

“Gutenberg! The Musical!,” Royal George Theatre

“Jekyll & Hyde—The Musical,” Bohemian Theatre Ensemble

“Sweeney Todd,” Broadway in Chicago

—Fabrizio O. Almeida

Top 5 Operas

“Manon,” Lyric Opera

“The Abduction From the Seraglio,” Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Ravinia

“Lulu,” Lyric Opera

“Porgy and Bess,” Lyric Opera (second cast)

“Don Giovanni,” Chicago Opera Theater

—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Productions of Shakespeare

“As You Like It,” Writers Theatre

“Comedy of Errors,” Chicago Shakespeare

“Much Ado About Nothing,” First Folio

“Merchant of Venice,” Boho

“Twelfth Night,” City Lit

—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Touring Shows

“Saint Joan,” Shaw Festival Canada, Chicago Shakespeare

“Cirque du Soleil: Kooza,” United Center

“The Drowsy Chaperone,” Broadway in Chicago

“My Fair Lady,” National Theatre London, Broadway in Chicago

“Jesus Christ Superstar,” Broadway in Chicago

—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Holiday Shows

“The Christmas Schooner,” Bailiwick Theater

“A Dublin Carol,” Steppenwolf Theatre

“A Christmas Carol,” Writers Theatre

“Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular,” Rosemont Theatre

“The Seafarer,” Steppenwolf Theatre

—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Comedy Shows

“Impress These Apes,” Blewt!

“Shatter,” Pat O’Brien’s solo show at Second City e.t.c.

“Steve and Jordan, Respectively” i.O. Theater

“Brother, Can You Spare Some Change?” Second City e.t.c.

“PennyBear: A Collection of Miniature Plays and Curious Diversions,” Apollo Theater Studio

—Nina Metz

Top 5 Female Performances

Janet Ulrich Brooks, “Golda’s Balcony,” Pegasus Players

Christina Anthony, “Brother, Can You Spare Some Change?” Second City e.t.c.

Erin Barlow, “Red Angel,” LiveWire

Sarah Goeden, “13 Dead Husbands,” Sansculottes Theater

Rachel Quinn, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” Circle Theatre

—Nina Metz

Top 5 Male Performances

David Cromer, “Our Town,” The Hypocrites

Usman Ally, “Celebrity Row,” American Theater Company

Steve Wilson, “Red Angel,” LiveWire

Edward Thomas-Herrera, “The Last Days of Beast,” Live Bait’s Fillet of Solo Festival

Daniel Behrendt, “Beggars in the House of Plenty,” Mary-Arrchie

—Nina Metz

Top 5 Out-of-the-Box Performances

“Inner Space,” Joffrey Ballet’s American Moderns

“Walking Mad,” Hubbard Street Dance Winter Series

“The Young Ladies Of…,” About Face Theatre

“Dr. Egg and the Man With No Ear,” Redmoon Theater

“One on One,” Hubbard Street Dance Winter Series

—William Rogers

Top 5 Dance Shows by Chicago Companies

“The Sky Hangs Down Too Close,” Lucky Plush Productions

“Nuevo Folk,” Luna Negra Dance Theater

“De-Evolution of Mudwoman,” Breakbone DanceCo

“Vintage Modern,” Same Planet Different World Dance

“American Moderns,” Joffrey Ballet

—Sharon Hoyer

Top 5 Overrated Productions

“Dave DaVinci Saves the Universe,” House Theatre

“Dirty Dancing,” Broadway in Chicago

“Shining City,” Goodman Theatre

“The Glass Menagerie,” Shattered Globe Theatre

“Scenes from the Big Picture,” Seanachai Theatre

—Fabrizio O. Almeida

Top 5 Theatrical Disappointments

“Dirty Dancing,” Broadway in Chicago

“Les Miserables,” Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre

“Yohen,” Silk Road Theatre Project

“Richard III,” Strawdog Theatre

“Macbeth,” Greasy Joan & Co.

—Fabrizio O. Almeida

 

Often, one of the biggest inspirations for a person to become an actor is the desire to inhabit a world other than their own, the challenge of “becoming” another human being. But for actress Mierka Girten, company member of A Red Orchid Theatre and writer/performer of the company’s season opener “With or Without Wings,” starring as herself in her own life story may be the richest, most rewarding role of her career.

Girten’s one-woman show, which first debuted in 2001, chronicles her devastating 1992 diagnosis and subsequent battle with Multiple Sclerosis with incredible honesty and surprising humor. Girten takes the audience on a ninety-minute journey from childhood to present day,  playing not only herself, but a whole cast of characters from friends and family to healers and not-quite-healers.

“[The play] started as journal entries mostly,” says Girten. “Friends [who] found my story interesting and funny…encouraged me to keep writing.” Girten crafted the journal entries into a play, which she shared with her friend Michael Thomas, who challenged her to dig deeper, and helped her to adapt the play into what is now an extremely candid personal portrait of the triumphs and defeats of living with this complex and debilitating illness.

Girten (who is now in remission) was inspired during the first run of “With or Without Wings” to create the Mookie Jam Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to benefiting artists with MS. And both Girten and director Larry Grimm, a fellow company member at A Red Orchid, agree that this play is as much about educating people and raising awareness about MS as it is about putting on a great show, full of energy and humor.  “I think that everyone has their own story to tell,” says Girten, “and I think telling our stories can bring people together. We should be able to laugh [at our challenges]. If I hadn’t been able to laugh, I don’t think I’d have gotten better.” (Valerie Jean Johnson)

At A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells, (312)943-8722, through November.

RECOMMENDED

There are certain types of plays A Red Orchid does very well, and the searing, grasping comedy of working-class Brits is a genre this theater has down cold. Three London cabbies arrive at a shabby sports center for the big ping-pong—sorry, table tennis—tourney, but the distractions are many. “It’s a dog-eat-dog-turd world,” one of them says, and it’s a profound insight in their mindset. (Simon Block’s script is directed by Robin Witt.) Like the guys of “Ax Men” and “Deadliest Catch,” these are men being men, chaffing whenever the domestic intrudes. Eric is the dedicated family man with stress at home, and as played by Nigel Patterson, he is a wildly agreeable pain in the ass, tender yet harsh. Oscar is the lifelong bachelor and the ultimate enigma, and Daniel Rivkin’s performance leaves just enough out of focus. You never fully grasp what motivates this lone ranger, and that’s just as he would have it. Rounding out the trio is Bob Turton as Tony, the battered Labrador pup looking for approval as he soils the carpet. He is youngest of the men and the one with the most to lose on this night. All three are intense and tension-fueled, sweating with their tiny paddles and lobbing resentments across the room with a recklessness that is disquieting—and in all honesty, funnier than it should be. (Nina Metz)

At the Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 North Wells, (312)943-8722.  This production is now closed.

It’s one thing to be pissed, but the grotesque vaudeville that is John Clancy’s finger-wagging, America-bashing comedy (in a production at A Red Orchid Theatre) is the intellectual equivalent of slinging animal dung across the stage.  Everyone’s entitled to a tantrum now and then—even playwrights; or perhaps especially playwrights—and I certainly dig Clancy’s remarkably profane verbosity; the script reads like a longshoreman’s guide to insults.  And it’s not that I disagree with the play’s larger point.  But man, does Clancy take his time getting there—and when he finally does, he hammers that sucker like a man paid by the swing.  Guy Van Swearingen’s more-is-more direction doesn’t seem to be doing the play any favors, but it is certainly audacious.  Fatboy, in the world of Clancy’s agitprop, is a stand-in for America—a bloated, murdering pig who takes what he wants and wants what he takes.  He is “South Park”’s Cartman all grown up; a bloated, misanthropic, foul-mouthed Dickinson villain on steroids.  It’s a compelling characterization, but as politically minded theater the play is shooting blanks.  The metaphor and all its encompassing ideas are shoved down your throat in a fit of playwright outrage.  Clancy doesn’t want you to think; he wants you to agree or get the fuck out.  That being said, I kind of like what Steve Pickering has done with Fatboy—it’s as if he’s a bully trapped in one of those plastic sumo-wrestler thingies.  Jennifer Engstrom, as his nympho wife, Queen Fudgie, is a marvelous-ugly cartoon brought to life—equal parts Carol Channing and Carol Burnett’s charwoman, with a dash of that supreme prehensile tackiness represented in all its glory on “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”  If that ain’t American, I don’t know what is.  (Nina Metz)

At A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N Wells, (312)943-8722. This production is now closed.

By Nina Metz

If you live in Lakeview and have ever dumped unwanted furniture curbside, there is a chance that end table or chair or whatever ended up in the back of Grant Sabin’s truck. And quite possibly, on a theater stage near you.

The 24-year-old set designer works predominantly within the storefront-theater scene, where the venues are small, and the scenic-design budgets even smaller—usually in the $500-$1,000 range. Sometimes less. To put it in context, the larger companies in town spend up to five and six-figures on their sets. So yes, Sabin—who hails from Rochelle, Illinois, a farm community west of Chicago—frequently stocks his sets with found objects, out of necessity, but also something else. “I think having limitations kind of forces creativity,” he says.

This month he has designed the sets for three shows, including “Butt Nekkid” at The Side Project and “A Prayer for My Daughter” at Mary-Arrchie (both of which begin performances Sunday). The third, Blindfaith Theatre’s “Lord Butterscotch and the Curse of the Darkwater Phantom,” opens at the Storefront Theater November 30.

Not surprisingly, Sabin has gone scavenging. The set for “Butt Nekkid,” about the music industry in Los Angeles, features recycled pieces of furniture and “a great pedestal sink found in the construction dumpster across from my apartment,” he says. “It looks new.”

The Mary-Arrchie show, which depicts a police interrogation in a squad room, has a set dressed with items used in “The Pillowman” (seen at the Steppenwolf last August), specifically some filing cabinets that already had the perfect labels: “warrants,” “fingerprint forms,” “criminal history.”

“I also needed a radiator for this show,” he says, “and having moved real radiators up to the second floor at Mary-Arrchie in the past, I thought I would have to cut it in my design. But when I was working over at Columbia College on ‘Pack of Lies’ [a recent student production], there in the lobby, under the drinking fountain, was a fake radiator. Apparently it was left from the previous show and wasn’t tossed out by the janitors, because it looked like it was heating the building. It’s great—lightweight, and now in the Mary-Arrchie show.”

On any given day, Sabin says, he will get in his truck and simply drive the neighborhood. “That’s the best way to find things. There’s tons of great stuff that gets tossed all the time in the city, just because it’s too hard to move, or whatever. There was an article I read about the freegans, which I guess is a new group of people that are trying to live more green—furnish their apartments with stuff that gets thrown out, things like that—and I was like, ‘Wow, those are my kind of people.’”

He’s even gone back to his hometown to dumpster-dive. His classroom set design for Dog & Pony’s “Ape” (staged earlier this fall) was filled with the kind of chairs you only find in schools. “I actually went back to Rochelle for those. My dad’s a school principal out there, and in the basement of the school they had mismatched old chairs just kind of thrown by the boiler, so I grabbed some of those.”

Rochelle was also where he found the wood used to create the worn-and-scuffed barroom floorboards for “The Sea Horse,” at A Red Orchid in 2005. “One of my farming friends was taking down a barn, and I saw that pile of wood and thought, ‘Wow, that’d be perfect for that floor!’”

Since Sabin began working professionally two years ago, the Columbia College alumnus has been one of the most in-demand scenic designers in Chicago, and for good reason. He is frequently employed by the aforementioned companies—he is designing for “Fatboy” at A Red Orchid in January—and works on about twelve-to-fourteen shows a year. I can’t think of another local designer who is used as often as Sabin.

This spring he is an assistant designer on Lookingglass Theatre’s “Around the World in 80 Days,” and his work can also be seen at the Royal George, where he designed the set for “Forbidden Broadway,” currently in an open run.

Tiny stages and miniscule budgets are everyday hurdles for fringe theater companies, and from a design standpoint they can be debilitating. Too many young companies give short-shrift to design and the results can look cheap and uninspired—even depressing, when a crappy set becomes an obstacle the actors must overcome. (Money isn’t always the issue. Often the lush scenic designs at Chicago’s bigger Equity houses can be a distraction—so elaborate and literal, they start to resemble Barbie’s Playhouse.) But the set is the first thing an audience sees—even before we see the actors—and whenever I sit down and think, “That is an amazing set,” invariably Sabin’s name is in the program. What makes his work stand apart is that you are never conscious of the obvious money constraints. His designs are detailed and self-confident, and nothing reassures an audience more than an impressively executed set.

Not that Sabin would turn down a shout-out every now and then for his design-on-a-dime accomplishments. “Sometimes I wish that could almost be printed somewhere, like at the end of my bio: This set cost ten bucks.”

 

RECOMMENDED

Brett Neveu’s newest play (in a world premiere at A Red Orchid) gently suggests you choose your own interpretation of the contents therein. It’s not entirely clear what the play is about; Neveu isn’t offering pat answers, at any rate. Don’t take that as a drawback, but don’t walk in expecting a tidy narrative, either. Over the span of ninety minutes, the scenes cut back and forth between a training center that preps American travelers for the possibility of kidnapping overseas, and a coffee shop where the would-be victims—three women, professional types—meet during training breaks. In a broad sense, the play deals with the underlying feeling of a world gone crazy since 9/11, but Neveu is more specific in his focus. All politics are local, and I suppose all problems are local, too. Unless there is a terrorist directly in your face, it’s more likely that your own personal guilt, fury and life dissatisfaction will churn your stomach in knots. Is there such a thing as a tragedy of manners? Consider the things we do to one another in the name of polite conversation. The judgments that get passed off as friendly advice; the probing questions that imply there’s something wrong with you if you don’t want to share. The coffee klatch as a game of human Pac-Man—your fellow Americans as giant orbs with jaws that never stop flapping. At least, that’s what I got out of the show, directed by Edward Sobel with precise attention to Neveu’s banal rhythms of speech. The three women are terrific: Kirsten Fitzgerald, who is perfectly too loud and too much in her orange sherbet sweater poncho; Jennifer Engstrom, a brittle, high-strung yuppie in stiletto pumps; and Mierka Girten, whose buttoned-up, quiet personality masks a suppressed, thundering of rage. Everything is a digression, but there are two mini-anecdotes tucked in the script—one about a rape and murder at a nursing home, the other about a rabid dog attack—and couched within the play’s larger ambiguity, these monologues emerge as bright beacons of storytelling. (Nina Metz)

At A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 North Wells, (312)943-8722.  This production is now closed.

By Nina Metz

This is a ripe time for Chicago playwrights according to Brett Neveu, whose latest work, “Weapons of Mass Impact,” opens Monday at A Red Orchid Theatre. 

Over the past six years or so, no other local playwright has had as much new work produced as Neveu. You’d think the guy has it made. “The problem with that is ‘playwright’ and ‘have it made’—those two things never go together,” he says as we talk by phone.

He made this observation, by the way, from his new home in Los Angeles, where he and wife Kristen moved in August with their daughter, Lia Pearl, who turned 1 last week. “Mostly it was because we had the baby and we needed to have some more stability money-wise—or at least try to get that stability.” Kristen, who is a mixed-media artist, was the first to land a job. She works at Warner Bros. in the art department. And like so many before him, Neveu is hoping to write for television and film.

If he lands a lucrative writing gig—which seems likely, judging by his success to date—he will join the ranks of other nationally known playwrights who subsidize their theater dreams with Hollywood dollars, including Craig Wright (“Six Feet Under”), Theresa Rebeck (“Law & Order: Criminal Intent”) and Chicago’s own Rick Cleveland (who was just hired to write for AMC’s “Mad Men”).

It is a smart move for Neveu, 37, who was supporting his family primarily on teaching jobs (most recently at Northwestern) and playwriting commissions, which pay anywhere from $5,000-$10,000, depending on the theater. Neveu has had no shortage of commissions—companies such as the Goodman, Steppenwolf, Northlight and Writers’ have paid him to write plays. Currently he has commissions from the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York and Royal Court Theatre in London.

I’ve been commissioned many, many times,” he says, but “I’ve only had one theater produce the play they commissioned.” That would be “Old Town,” a musical about backroom political dealings set on election night in Cook County, which debuts in April at Strawdog. “They put it in the season before it was even finished,” a rare show of confidence from a theater.

But Neveu’s artistic home in Chicago is still A Red Orchid, where the claustrophobic dimensions of the stage seem perfectly suited to “Weapons of Mass Impact,” about a trio of kidnapped women who endure interrogation at the hands of their foreign captors—and at the hands of one another. 

The play is part of a trilogy that began with “Harmless,” seen last year at Timeline. (Part three is called “Old Glory” which Neveu is working on for Writers’ Theatre.) The plays each take place in the middle of the current decade, and they focus on how regular folks “mentally deal with the situations that crop up as a result of a country at war in the modern age.”

Despite the heavy subject matter, Neveu’s plays contain a sly sense of humor. He’s not writing jokes. The way Neveu sees it, people are just funny when they talk. “Especially in tense situations.” He doesn’t craft the perfectly articulated argument that would never transpire in real life. He writes dialogue that is riddled with awkward social niceties and subconscious hostility. He writes the way people genuinely talk, which is hilarious if you really listen to it.

The move to L.A. notwithstanding, Neveu is focused on theater. A possible strike by the Writers Guild of America “makes it harder for me [to get a job right now], so I’ll just wait until resolution happens. Whatcha gonna do?” He has a pair of commissions to work on, at any rate.

And more to the point, “My end goal was never to be a screenwriter or a TV writer. My end goal was to be a playwright, and that’s always been the case. Actually, my end goal is to be a writer, whatever it’s for. Actually, my end goal is just to have a job that I like.”

And regardless of what the future may bring, “I will always consider myself a Chicago playwright.”

“Weapons of Mass Impact” opens October 22 at A Red Orchid Theater, 1513 North Wells, (312)943-8722.