Christina Nieves and Edgar Miguel Sanchez/Photo: Chris Plevin

RECOMMENDED

A geeky brilliance and an unexpected wave of rousing feminism lives at the heart of “Welcome to Arroyo’s”, Kristoffer Diaz’s new play at American Theater Company directed by Jaime Castañeda. It’s a world premiere, but the play’s been knocking about at readings and festivals since 2003. Diaz, of course, is the exciting Latino playwright whose first commercially produced play, last season’s “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” Diaz’s love letter to professional wrestling, just nabbed a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize in drama. With “Arroyo’s”, Diaz once again taps his inner pop-cultural geek—this time for hip-hop—as well as his inner feminist, to produce an urban comedy that dares to place women at the birth of modern-day hip-hop.

Read the rest of this entry »

Donna Jay Fulks, Alan Wilder

RECOMMENDED

Jesse is a videogame-playing rocket of a kid. But when Jesse’s exuberance disrupts his class and is followed by an ADHD diagnosis, his parents face a bewildering array of bad options. Drugs? Behavior modification? Unappetizing diet changes? Nothing seems to work.

Lisa Loomer’s meta-theatrical script captures the conundrum of modern parents living in a technologically advanced society at hyper speed. Donna Jay Fulks is appealing as the mother with the best intentions but no clue; Kevin Rich’s in-denial father is heartbreaking as he tries to protect and help his child. The multi-cast ensemble shines; Alan Wilder’s many “expert” roles are frustrating and amusing; OCD neighbor Dina Facklis steals the scene every time she steps onstage.

Andre LaSalle’s flat-screen-dominated set utilizes Mike Tutaj’s video design to effectively enhance the environment and narrate the story. P.J. Paparelli’s direction maintains the impossible pacing of a family we can all identify with. (Lisa Buscani)

At American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron, (773)409-4125, through February 28.

The Addams Family at The Oriental/Photo: Samuel Adams

By Brian Hieggelke

As the wind blows the snow sideways this December evening, the weatherman is telling Chicagoans to stay bunkered; the deserted downtown streets reflect their obedience. All save the sidewalk near the intersection of State and Randolph, as TV crews jockey for faces on the red carpet in front of the Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre, where more than 2,000 patrons, including a who’s who of backstage Broadway, are gathering for the world premiere of a new musical featuring a AAA list of talent, onstage and off. “The Addams Family,” with multiple Tony winners Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth in its leads, a book from the librettists of “Jersey Boys” and so on, is certainly Broadway bound, but tonight—tonight—Chicago is the center of theater in the world.

That’s the story of Chicago theater in the zeroes: the decade in which it grew up and got big. Whether it’s the launch and monumental success of Broadway In Chicago, the maturation and astonishing quality of a remarkable number of small and mid-sized companies or the increasing demand for Chicago product and Chicago talent on Broadway, Chicago theater has fully come into its own. Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Carter, Ashley Bishop, Gary Houston, Kevin R. Kelley and John Mohrlein/Photo: The Stage Channel

RECOMMENDED

Creating a dramatic story to celebrate the spirit of Christmas is far more challenging than it seems. It’s far too easy to try and simply trade on the cloying sweetness of hackneyed sentimentality (see the annual rollout of made-for-TV movies), rather than to construct something that evokes the seasonal themes in a manner that warms the heart and pleases the brain. That’s why most new theater works tend to parody the tropes of the holidays; warm and fuzzy Christmas seems like an old-fashioned notion that belongs to our grandparents. Even  putting a twist on a classic can fail. Count me among those who can recite lines from the Frank Capra film “It’s A Wonderful Life” and who finds himself sobbing at the ending every time. When Porchlight did a musical version a couple years back, I expected to love it but instead found it quite disappointing. So I went to see the American Blues Theater’s production of “It’s A Wonderful Life: Live at the Biograph!” with some measure of apprehension. I left marveling at their creation of perfect Christmas theater. Read the rest of this entry »

Rick Kubes/Photo: Emily Johnston Anderson

RECOMMENDED

ATC’s holiday perennial blooms again, transporting audiences to the forties and the Golden Age of Radio. Its news reports, dedications and re-creation of Frank Capra’s classic make for poignant, gentle entertainment.

The ensemble’s impressive vocal dexterity enables it to handle the multiple castings with aplomb; Bernard Balbot gives Mel Blanc a run for his money. Rick Kubes’ on-time Foley work enhances the production’s retro feel, no mean feat. Kareem Bandealy and Mary Winn Heider have the thankless task of assuming roles Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed  cornered, yet they manage to capture the love and humor that bind the couple.

It’s a shame the schism between ATC and the majority of its ensemble members has created double productions and competition for audience. The best gifts both groups could give us would be to rise above their differences and get back to the strenuous blessing of creating art. (Lisa Buscani)

“It’s A Wonderful Life” plays at American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron, (773)409-4125. Through December 27.

Barbara Robertson/Photo: Michael Brosilow

Review: Yeast Nation (The Triumph of Life)/American Theater Company

Wasn’t it Einstein who once famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting different results?

After several New York workshops and a 2007 world-premiere production at Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre, Chicago is now receiving the much-anticipated Midwest premiere of “Yeast Nation (The Triumph of Life),” the follow-up musical from the men responsible for “Urinetown, The Musical,” composer Mark Hollmann and lyric- and book-writer Greg Kotis.  After experiencing the production on stage at the American Theater Company—and mind you, I went twice during opening week, once to the official opening and later again to confirm what I had seen that night—I shudder to think what “Yeast Nation” looked and sounded like two years ago.

Its fundamental problem—the fact that “Yeast Nation” doesn’t know what it is nor what it wants to say—basically reduces the piece to a vacuous experience that looks and sounds like a satirical musical but ultimately comes across like an overlong sketch on steroids. It’s the story of a colony of 4-billion-year-old yeast living at the bottom of the ocean, threatened with extinction and oppressed by a tyrannical king afraid of evolution, and it serves up song and dance romance laced with familial and political power struggles. The love story is un-compelling, the Machiavellian machinations predictable and the score banal, but most disappointing is that you never understand what the creators are poking fun at. Is “Yeast Nation” just an excuse to parody more musicals?  Director PJ Paparelli’s staging nods to “Rent,” “Cats” and “The Lion King” certainly suggests so. Is it a ringing (and singing) endorsement for going green?  The colony in collapse in “Yeast Nation” is said to have doomed itself with extravagance and an insular world view. Is it criticizing Darwinism, Modernism or Fundamentalism?  The creators’ deliberate resistance to scientific accuracy in the piece (were yeast really the first organisms to inhabit the planet?) leaves a lot open to interpretation, or maybe Hollmann and Kotis don’t know or care themselves, if their baffling appearance on Chicago Tonight the evening before the press opening is anything to go by.  Spouting cheeky one-liners (“It has a very period feel,” remarked Kotis) and saucy sound bites (“The strangest story ever to be musicalized”), they didn’t seem to have much else to say at all and remained content, it seemed, with their own cleverness at having anthropomorphized and musicalized salt-eating yeast. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release announcing the Jeff noms for Equity:

Chicago Theatres Shine in Outstanding Jeff Nominated Productions of 2008-2009 Season

Goodman Theatre and Drury Lane Oakbrook
Top List of Award Nominees

50 Years of The Second City to be Spotlighted
at The Jeff Awards

Thursday, August 27, 2009 – Chicago, IL.   The Jeff Awards today announced 179 nominations in 35 categories for Chicago Equity theatrical productions which opened between August 1, 2008, and July 31, 2009. The Jeff Awards sent judges to the opening nights of 141 productions offered by 57 producing organizations. From these openings, 98 Equity productions were “Jeff Recommended,” which made them eligible for award nominations.

The 41st Annual Jeff Awards ceremony, honoring excellence in professional theatre produced within the immediate Chicago area, will be held on Monday, October 19, at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie, 9501 Skokie Boulevard. A pre-show Appetizer Buffet will run from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., and the Awards Ceremony, directed by Michael Weber, will begin at 7:30 p.m. The Second City, celebrating 50 years as a producer, will play a featured role at the Jeff Awards ceremony. Advance purchase tickets, which include the ceremony and the pre-show buffet, are $75 ($55 for members of Actors’ Equity Association, United Scenic Artists, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and The Dramatists Guild of America). The evening is black tie optional and the public is cordially invited to attend. To purchase tickets, visit the Jeff Awards website at www.jeffawards.org. For more information, contact Equity Chair Diane Hires at equitywing@jeffawards.org. Read the rest of this entry »

Steppenwolf announces that the Broadway engagement of Tracy Letts’ “Osage” follow-up, “Superior Donuts,” is opening at a TBD Shubert house on October 1, juiced by the producers behind “Osage,” Jeffrey Richards, Jean Doumanian, Chicago’s Steve Traxler and Jerry Frankel, and helmed by ensemble member Tina Landau, who did likewise for its world premiere at the Stepp home on Halsted last summer. Casting has not been announced, but Michael McKean, Lenny on the hit seventies sitcom “Laverne and Shirley,” turned in a noteworthy performance in the Chicago production and might have just enough celebrity appeal to reprise.

Tucked away in a fall season announcement for American Theater Company, the mid-size company decimated by the departure of virtually its entire ensemble in March, is this bit of news: ATC’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” a co-production with About Face, is the company’s highest grosser this season, and is on track to be ATC’s biggest hit ever. You can almost hear the “touché” out of the camp of artistic director PJ Paparelli. Of course, the whole season has that feel, from the “get” of the Chicago premiere of “Urinetown” creators Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis’ “Yeast Nation (the triumph of life)”—already bumped from this season—to the very fact that the season is taking place at all.

Here’s the press release from ATC:

AMERICAN THEATER COMPANY ANNOUNCES ITS 2009-10 SEASON
WITH FOUR PLAYS THAT CELEBRATE THE AMERICAN FAMILY; SECOND EXTENSION OF HEDWIG; GROUNDBREAKING NEW DOCUMENTARY PLAY

Chicago, IL— American Theater Company proudly announces Season 25, which includes the Chicago Premiere of Yeast Nation (the triumph of life) by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, directed by Artistic Director PJ Paparelli; the Chicago Premiere of Lisa Loomer’s Distracted, also directed by PJ Paparelli; and the World Premiere of Welcome to Arroyo’s, written by Kristoffer Diaz and directed by Jaime Castañeda. Back for the holiday season is It’s a Wonderful Life: The Radio Play, directed by Jason Gerace.  Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Garrison/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

The term “rock musical” is an oxymoron, like “Justice Scalia.” But Northwestern Alum John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” works harder than James Brown to breathe life into the formula.

East German Hansel endures a botched gender reassignment surgery in order to follow his American GI lover Stateside, leaving him with the titular “angry inch.” Divorced, “Hedwig” embarks on musical collaboration with a lover who takes their (uncredited) work to the top of the charts.

Nick Garrison hits all the right comedic and musical notes; he handled the inevitable opening-night glitches with aplomb. His “rock energy” is muted, but ATC’s claustrophobic space doesn’t give him much room to groove; thankfully, his back-up band doesn’t overwhelm the Keith Pitts’ shabby chic set. While some of director PJ Paparelli’s blocking seems clumsy, he drives the pacing. Thanks to Malcolm Ruhl’s musical direction, Hedwig rocks. (Lisa Buscani)

American Theater Company with About Face Theatre, at The American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron, (773)929-1031. Through May 31.