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

 

RECOMMENDED

Bonnie Metzgar has taken the artistic reigns at About Face Theatre and her choice of performance artist Taylor Mac’s “The Young Ladies Of…” as the opener of her first season is a loud declaration that Metzgar isn’t afraid to take a risk. Instead it seems that she will demand that GLBT theater in Chicago not be dumbed down as it so often can be. Taylor Mac is anything but safe and nothing if not complex. The play is about Mac’s complicated relationship with his absent father, but he is so much more than just a postmodern drag queen with daddy issues. Through letters he wrote to his father after his death and hundreds of letter he found written to his father by young Australian women answering a personal ad while he served in Vietnam, Mac finds a way to make one man’s struggle to find self-identity and acceptance universal and uniquely personal. And he does it all with a ukulele.  “The Young Ladies Of…” is a brave start to a new era for About Face. (William Scott)

At the Hoover-Leppen Theatre at Center on Halsted,  3656 N Halsted ,773.784.8565, through October 26

Pride has come to Chicago once again. It is time to take to the streets and celebrate the diversity that gives our city so many reasons to be excited. About Face Theatre is one of those reasons. This season the dynamic institution dedicated to the exploration of sexuality and gender issues will have new artistic leadership. Award-winning producer, director and playwright Bonnie Metzgar has taken the helm as artistic director and is excited to continue the company’s dynamic programming. Although Metzgar won’t make it to the parade this year—she is currently traveling Africa with her partner—she did take a few minutes to share a little bit about how she got here and what she is looking forward to as she makes Chicago her home.

How did you get to Chicago and About Face?

I spent the last year traveling around the U.S. for the 365 Festival with Suzan-Lori Parks. We partnered with 600 theaters; fifty-two of them were here in Chicago. Congo Square, Next, Steppenwolf, Goodman, Writers, Hypocrites—I learned fast that, wow, the Chicago theater scene is amazing! Bold artists, bold audiences—that’s my kind of town. So when the opportunity with About Face came up, I jumped at it. About Face has always had a unique place in the American theater as a home for new work that furthers the national dialogue on sexuality and gender.

How do you plan to continue what is great about About Face?

I will continue the commitment to artistic excellence and to developing the voice of our youth. I will expand the tradition of collaboration by continuing to find new ways to reach out to the community. And I will throw really great parties. I am excited and proud to be producing our whole season at the Center on Halsted. The Hoover-Leppen Theater is gorgeous! And having a home in the heart of the LGBTQ community feels right.

What excites you about Chicago?

Chicago is fierce—in its commitment to the arts, its celebration of diversity and in its history of political struggle. So for someone like me who is interested in the messy intersection of art and politics, Chicago is a fascinating place to be in 2008.

The country is changing for the LGBTQ community. What is the role theater can and must play in shaping perceptions and advancing LGBTQ causes?

The country is not changing for us. We are changing the country—by working hard, building bridges, making art that moves us all closer to each other. We need to feel the urgency in each day—as citizens and artists, in our homes, in the streets and in our art—if we dare to believe that another world is possible.

What message do you have for the LGBTQ community as we enter this year’s gay pride celebration?

Our community is in all communities. Reach out. Beyond your comfort zone. And support LGBTQ artists in Chicago during pride and all year round! (William Scott)

Learn more about Bonnie Metzgar and About Face Theatre at aboutfacetheatre.com

RECOMMENDED

Nobody emerges unstained in Douglas Carter Beane’s comedy about celebrity, closeted homosexuals and a vapid entertainment world in which asking an agent to give her word is like “asking a whore for her cherry.” In this supremely entertaining but problematic About Face Theatre production, it is possible to submit to the play’s joys and Eric Rosen’s glossy direction while being keenly aware of just how empty the show really is. Mitchell (Kea Coco) is a film actor with the kind of long-limbed confidence that cannot fully mask the awkwardness seeping through around the edges. He claims to be straight, though a drunken phone call summoning a young male prostitute called Alex (Levi Holloway) indicates otherwise. Mitchell’s agent, a brass-balls-and-pearls type (Mary Beth Fisher) is having none of this—if her client wants a big-league career, he’ll keep his mouth shut about the gay thing. It is a mad, rip-roaring role that Fisher nails about half of the time; at her best, she conjures a woman who can pander the ego and land a verbal bitch slap in one fluid motion. If you swallow the play’s conceit, Alex the hustler also has a girlfriend. I’m not sure if it’s the role or Holloway’s portrayal, but his homosexuality never seems to be in doubt, which opens up a credibility problem in the script. Might as well sidestep this concern and focus instead on Beane’s acidic putdowns that offer the soothing reassurance that fame is best enjoyed on this side of the divide. (Nina Metz)

At the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted. This production is now closed.

In About Face Theatre’s “Wedding Play,” Adam, the neurotic writer, frantically warns his director that his play-within-the-play doesn’t work. Like its theatrical counterpart, writer/ director Eric Rosen’s piece doesn’t work either. Adam writes a show that’s an alleged confession for the murders of his wife and their child and casts his ex-lover as the villain. Their history is examined from several perspectives, requiring a tedious repetition of over-the-top dialogue. Rosen reveals no new insight with each new layer of information, which hampers the show’s pacing. The ensemble’s performances are uniformly strong and sharp; standout performances include Sean Cooper as the mysterious, off-kilter playwright, Benjamin Sprunger as his disgruntled ex, and Joe Dempsey as the fiercely ambitious, menacing director desperate for his shot at the big time. But all the energy the cast brings to the script can’t deepen the observances or create the love that’s missing between the characters. (Lisa Buscani)

At the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted. This production is now closed.

By Valerie Jean Johnson

It’s bright and early on a Friday morning, and Eric Rosen, artistic director of About Face Theatre, almost apologetically warns me that he is coming off of a long night of rewrites for “Wedding Play,” his latest offering, in its world premiere at Steppenwolf’s Garage Theatre. But far from running on empty, Rosen, who is also the play’s director, seems invigorated: “It’s great, getting feedback,” he says, enthusiastic about the opportunities for down-to-the-wire fine-tuning that only reveal themselves when you’ve got a live audience in the seats. And as playwright/director (or, in his words, “a director who writes”) working on a project like this allows him to “author the whole thing all at once,” describing the process as “writing in three dimensions.”

Tackling multiple dimensions seems to be Rosen’s calling card, made evident even in the synopsis of “Wedding Play”: “After two and a half years together, Chicago playwright Adam Mace leaves his partner Tom (an actor in his theatre company) to marry Thalia, his best friend, star of his plays, and soon-to-be mother. Soon after the wedding, Thalia and the baby die under mysterious circumstances. When Tom is cast in Adam’s new play, ‘Wedding Play,’ he quickly learns that art is imitating life and that the death of Adam’s wife and child may have been no accident.” It’s been a three-year writing process for Rosen, but this story has been incubating for the past fifteen years, first inspired by Naguib Mahfouz’s novel “Wedding Song,” which Rosen tried to adapt for the stage. (In fact, that story serves as a basis for Adam’s play-within-the-play, “Wedding Play.”) Now, as it’s about to come to fruition, is Rosen nervous? Leave that business to someone with more free time on his hands, thank you very much.

Indeed, while other playwright/director’s might be in full-on nail-biting mode at this point, Rosen’s antidote to stress is hard work: “[As an artist] I try to be as unselfconscious as possible,” he says, “by staying very busy.” It’s precisely that absorption in the work that has made Rosen and company such highly prolific and successful staples of the Chicago theater scene. Thirteen years strong, About Face, with Rosen at the helm, has established itself as “national center for the development of gay and lesbian theater” committed to “working within and beyond the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities” to create what Rosen describes as “artistically rigorous theatre [that asks] ‘How do we legitimize the question of gay culture in America…so that what seemed radical is now commonplace?’” For Rosen and company, the key to combining artistry and activism lies not in latching onto whatever the perceived hot-button topic in queer culture is of the moment, but in asking questions, creating a dialogue, allowing the political conversation to be “responsive to, not predictive of, [the work] we’re doing…let the play teach [us] what it’s about.”

And teaching is without a doubt a priority right at the heart of this company—mentoring students in their Youth Theatre and Educational Outreach program is, in Rosen’s words, their “most important work.” The eight-year-old program is designed to create performance opportunities for young artists; “giving voice to queer youth” in the community—and their productions have garnered critical acclaim in Chicago and beyond. When asked which artists he’d say are the “ones to watch in Chicago,” Rosen is quick to note that those students from the program’s first year are now close to the same age Rosen himself was when he started his company, and speaks with an almost parental pride of the wonderful things he expects they will do as the next generation of Chicago theater artists.

That “passing of the torch” mentality is made all the more poignant amidst discussion that Rosen will soon be moving to horizons beyond Chicago, perhaps as the new artistic director of Kansas City Repertory Theatre. Though at the time of our conversation no contracts had been signed, no decisions made, Rosen was very open about his belief that changing of the guard would be creatively beneficial for both himself, and for the longevity of the company that has been his artistic home for over a decade: “I feel like I’ve achieved [even] more that I hoped to…[and that there is] danger artistically in staying in one place too long. I’m ready to hand over the keys.” 

“Wedding Play” at the Steppenwolf Garage Theatre, 1650 North Halsted, (312)335-1650. This production is now closed.

 

RECOMMENDED

Two years ago, gay activist and master polemicist Larry Kramer gave an important speech in New York City in which he pleaded for younger generations of gays and lesbians not to forget their past: “You are here as a gay person because of certain events and certain people who lived and suffered and died before you. You must learn about them and not continually deny their existence and importance in our history, the history of gay people in America.” There can be little doubt then that About Face Theatre, director Gary Griffin and a veritable who’s who of Chicago’s finest actors—Ora Jones, John Judd, Larry Neumann, Jr. and Steve Key to name just a few—are doing more than just entertaining theatergoers with their theatrically vibrant production of playwright Emily Mann’s docudrama “Execution of Justice,” chronicling the 1978 assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and the first openly gay politician elected to high office, City Supervisor Harvey Milk; they are presenting an important part of American gay history. Read the rest of this entry »

Take the popcorn movie, blend it with “Queer As Folk” and a playwright who moonlights for Marvel Comics, and what pours out is a comedy that almost but doesn’t quite work, currently staged by About Face Theatre at the old Victory Gardens mainstage. Bookish Andrew (Joshua Rollins) is wooed away from his sweet and committed boyfriend (Benjamin Sprunger) when he is targeted by a lithe and aggressively confident interloper named Jack (Jonathan Pereira), who eventually admits that yes, he is the spawn of Satan. Or Satan himself. Whatever—what’s the diff when the guy with ice running through his veins has a bod that could melt polar ice caps? Or so goes Andrew’s thinking, despite the best advice of his pal, Bernadette (Elizabeth Ledo, stuck playing the harpy). The humor burbles at the surface, but never really erupts, and some of that lies on the shoulders of director Scott Ferguson, who wrote and created “Schoolhouse Rock Live!,” but more importantly (for this discussion) directed the superior “Xena Live” series for About Face in the late nineties. Here, Ferguson can’t overcome material that is just as pop-culture-laden, but not as sure of its purpose. Things move at a good clip, but to where? Playwright Robert Aguirre Sacasa doesn’t seem any clearer on this question than the audience. The whole thing feels like a rehash of “Queer as Folk’s” puppy-dog-meets-the-devil routine as enacted by the characters Michael and Brian. There’s valid entertainment in that, but it only goes so far. (Nina Metz) Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Few novelists would seem to elude dramatic adaptation as successfully as Proust. “In Search of Lost Time” implicitly places the theater at the bottom of an artistic hierarchy, as the youthful narrator Marcel grows out of his fascination with the actress Berma to take up the painter Elstir and the writer Bergotte. Though Proust’s gargantuan novel by no means lacks for dramatic scenes, each is thoroughly encrusted with the sinuous, labyrinthine reflection that is the work’s main mode. Mary Zimmerman has quixotically pursued Proustian adaptation before, with her vivid “Eleven Rooms of Proust.” She and About Face Theatre have returned to the graphomanic Frenchman with this elegant one-woman show, a glimpse at the life of Proust’s longtime maid Celeste. The dutiful structure by which Zimmerman’s play alternates the narration of Celeste’s life with dramatized episodes from the book falls uncomfortably near the realm of public television documentary; a less schematic execution might have allowed the novel’s language to breathe more vitally. But “M. Proust” succeeds in perhaps the primary task such a project can assume: it evokes the addictive, almost suffocating atmosphere of the book for those who have read it, and it provides a well-chosen sampler of text to tempt in those who haven’t. Read the rest of this entry »

When Gertrude Stein began writing plays, she realized, “So naturally what I wanted to do in my play was what everybody did not always know nor always tell.” The urge to discover the essential by resolutely following her idiosyncratic inclinations pretty well defines the peculiar genius of Stein. Frank Galati and Stephen Flaherty labor under no such restrictions in their new musical “of Gertrude Stein,” currently at the MCA in partnership with About Face Theatre. From the initial scene, it’s apparent that the creators of “Ragtime” and “Seussical” have no qualms about centering their play on what everyone always knows and always tells. We begin with the older Stein (Cindy Gold) looking back on her younger self (Christine Mild), see her initial encounter with Alice B. Toklas (Jenny Powers), and close at her deathbed. Along the way, the project becomes occasionally more adventurous. The inventively staged “Lyrical Opera Made By Two, To Be Sung,” an opera of Stein’s, conveys briefly in its second scene the oceanic play of meaning and nonsense which undergirds Stein’s writing. For a moment, “Loving Repeating” achieves the suspension of time for which Stein aimed. But then Flaherty’s frequently hackneyed score breaks in with a phony cathouse blues, and we’re back in the general mode of the piece: a musical about Gertrude Stein for people who don’t like Gertrude Stein. When you think about how rarely Stein’s own, brilliantly original theatre pieces get staged, the lost opportunity seems almost criminal. (John Beer) Read the rest of this entry »