RECOMMENDED

I hate winter. Sure, no Chicagoan really loves the season, but I truly hate it. So any play that depicts winter in its worst light has a leg up with me—just a caveat.

Cities kind of hate winter, too. The blizzard of 1967 was the worst snowstorm in Chicago history, dumping twenty-three inches on the city, heaviest during rush hour and doing what Billy Sunday could not, that is shutting down the town. “Blizzard ’67,” the intriguing new play by Jon Steinhagen, depicts the impact of that fateful event on one carpool of four co-workers of varying rank and age at a faceless downtown corporation. The play’s framed in a faux-documentary fashion, with the actors occasionally narrating their own transitional voiceovers. Read the rest of this entry »

Whitney White and Brad Woodard/Photo: Kevin Viol

Muddled accents and a striking lack of chemistry take a lot of the zing out of this poignant and often hilarious exploration of class, culture and education by British playwright Willy Russell, in which Frank (Brad Woodard), a cynical, booze-addled professor is assigned to tutor Rita (Whitney White), an effusive hairdresser seeking to improve her life via higher education. Like any two-person script, “Educating Rita” relies heavily on the evolution of and the relationship between the characters. Over the course of the show, as Frank and Rita meet repeatedly in his shabby academic office (perfectly imagined by scenic designer Chelsea Warren) and the number of missed connections between the actors mounts, the two-hour-and-forty-minute running time begins to feel especially lengthy. The drawn-out scene changes don’t help. Tightening the pacing and injecting a healthy shot of urgency into the proceedings might bring out some of the excitement in the story. (Zach Freeman)

Shattered Globe Theatre at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 West Chicago, (773)236-0764. $28. Through August 14.

Here’s the press release from Chicago Dramatists:

CHICAGO DRAMATISTS ANNOUNCES 2011-2012 SEASON
AND NEW PLAYS PARTNERSHIP WITH GOODMAN THEATRE

Chicago’s Home to Playwrights Presents an Electric New Season including a co-production with About Face Theatre  Read the rest of this entry »

Joanne Dubach, Thomas Gebbia and Gail Rastofer/Photo: Jeff Pines

Given its prevalence in film, television and books, it’s somewhat surprising how rare it is to see new plays incorporating science fiction and fantasy. Though special-effects challenges no doubt play a part, I suspect the reason is more a case of topical snobbery, never mind that Shakespeare routinely worked witches, ghosts and other magical creatures into his works. So Marisa Wegrzyn’s Wendy Wasserstein Prize-winning “Hickorydickory,” in its world-premiere production at Chicago Dramatists, works from a rather refreshing premise. Humans, it turns out, unknowingly have a “mortal clock” inside of us—a personally engraved pocket watch—set to the very minute of our inevitable death. For the family of multigenerational suburban Chicago watch smiths who secretly specialize in mortal-clock repairs, this provides ample fodder for family drama and musings about the nature of life and fate. And the processs of removing wayward clocks from the head brings a real splatter of gore to the stage. For most of this three-act, we’re captivated by the story: what horrible fate befell shop owner Jimmy’s parents? What does daughter Dale know about her perhaps-impending death? And how did Cari Lee manage to find eternal youth and, in doing so, turn out so annoyingly 17? Read the rest of this entry »

As the economy slowly lifts us back to our feet and we look around, we see a remarkable sight: a performance industry in Chicago that survived the worst recession since the Great Depression wholly intact. Sure, we had a few brushes with death, and no doubt a few very small, very new theater companies threw in the towel, as they do even in good years, but unlike many other cities across the country, we’re in pretty good shape. How good? The League of Chicago Theatres issued a press release last week proclaiming our town as America’s theater leader, with more than 250 professional theaters, including four Regional Tony Award winners, and a combined annual budget of $250 million serving five million audience members. Add in our thriving dance community, a comedy scene that’s the envy of the nation and two world-class opera companies and you’d have to say we’re doing pretty damn good. But neither the economy nor any cultural organization is fully out of the water yet, and the dramatic uncertainty injected into the political sea by Mayor Daley’s decision to call it a day means Chicago’s performance community will need some steady hands at the wheel these next few years. Accordingly, for this edition of The Players, we’ve broadened our horizon and taken a closer-than-ever look at the individuals in charge of the financial fitness of our local institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Michael Litchfield

RECOMMENDED

Sometimes all you need is a simple premise and a flexible, talented cast. Writer and producer Laura Jacqmin’s “Dental Society Midwinter Meeting” is a deceptively light-on-its-feet satire that succeeds in finding humanity in small episodes between characters you may only meet once or twice.

Scandal has rocked the North Shore Regional Dental Society: President Morris J. Morris, Jr., has been found to have been sleeping with his hygienist and letting her, unlicensed, perform advanced dental procedures. The members of the society have convened for the midyear meeting with the single goal of rectifying this mess.

The exceedingly clever script by Jacqmin pokes loving fun at its dentist characters without condescending to them. Words can’t express briefly the merits of the six-member ensemble cast, who are largely responsible for the aforementioned humanity. Late in the play there’s a scene in a karaoke bar, and it’s the saddest, funniest, most heartbreaking scene about dentists you’ve ever seen. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

At Play Productions at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 West Chicago, (773)828-4331.  Through August 7.

Will Cooper, who only started writing plays in 2004 after “accidentally” taking a playwriting class his wife couldn’t, has his first full-scale professional production, “Jade Heart,” at Chicago Dramatists after his first play “Book of Leaves” debuted at Village Players in 2006. We spoke to Cooper the week before the show opened about identity, race and coming of age.

So just a little about the play. Would “family drama” be an accurate description?
Definitely a good place to start. Here’s the slug paragraph: “Jade Heart” tells the story of Jade, a woman abandoned as an infant in China and adopted in America by a single mother. It follows their lives from Jade’s childhood until her early twenties. It’s a fictional account of transnational, transracial adoption… It touches on the social and political issue of overpopulation in China and the one-child rule of 1979, but it’s not a piece of propaganda… I’d hope it’s a human story primarily about the relationship between a mother and her daughter, and the daughter’s struggle to answer questions about origin and identity. Read the rest of this entry »

Tara DeFrancisco, No. 36

In this town of performers—theater makers, dancers, comedy creators—you’d think it’d be pretty easy to assemble a list of artistic influencers and innovators. And it is. The challenge is paring that list down to a mere fifty. It’s a testament to the wonders of the performing-arts culture in Chicago that we easily came up with about 200 names when we set out to create this year’s version of The Players. Unfortunately, we’re only listing a fraction of those worthy of your attention, but that’s the problem with an abundance of riches. Hopefully you’ll see a handful of recognizable names and a whole lot more you’ll start noticing from this point on. We’ve retooled the criteria for this year, focusing on onstage artistic achievement, rather than the backstage influence of artistic directors, executive directors and the like—who will get their day again next year. Let the arguments begin. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Peter DeFaria and Randy Steinmeyer in "A Steady Rain" at Chicago Dramatists

Annoyance Theatre
Coed Prison Sluts: $64,000, 5,380 people

The Artistic Home
Peer Gynt: $19,044 box office, 1,200 people

Chicago Dramatists
A Steady Rain: $21,000 box office,1,500 people at CD, 10,000 at Royal George Theatre
Cadillac: $23,000 box office,1,600 people at CD, 1,500 at Theatre on the Lake

Collaboraction
The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, $150,000 box office, 6,500 people Read the rest of this entry »