Photo: Liz Lauren

Money can’t buy friends. And as Eric Clapton sings, “Nobody knows you when you’re down and out.” These are lessons wealthy financier Timon learns the hard way when his fortunes flounder and his requests for financial aid are rebuffed by his affluent associates. Considered an unfinished work by most scholars, the somewhat disorganized structure of Shakespeare’s rarely performed “Timon of Athens” (staged at Chicago Shakespeare only once before, in 1997) presents a number of problems. Thus artistic director (and director of this production) Barbara Gaines spent some time with actor Ian McDiarmid (who elegantly captures both the comedy and tragedy of the titular character’s experiences) adapting the story in an attempt to make things clearer. Read the rest of this entry »

Simon Callow/Photo: André Penteado

RECOMMENDED

Those who have experienced one of veteran British stage and screen actor Simon Callow’s compelling one-man shows in the past will likely be checking out his latest solo effort solely based on the sheer revelation and enjoyment of his previous outings. However, unlike, say, his one-man Dickens show, where so much is known about that author and the material presented is always on terra firma, “Being Shakespeare” is a far more speculative show. And yet it is precisely because so little is known about the Bard—taken with his sine qua non reputation in the canon of English literature and a template-setting role in theater as we know it—that we are all the more curious. Read the rest of this entry »

Simon Callow/Photo: André Penteado

By Dennis Polkow

If veteran British stage and screen actor Simon Callow seems a bit late to the one-man-Shakespeare party given how many such plays there have been, consider that Callow has been doing various solo shows for years.

“‘Being Shakespeare’ is the direct offspring of the Dickens show that I did in Chicago about eleven years ago,” Callow explains. “This is more biographical investigation, or perhaps biographical evocation. In other words, I, the narrator, share with an audience the discoveries I have made about the character but I do that through their plays, their words and also the context. The idea is a bit like a Ouija board: you summon the character, the subject by means of smoke and mirrors, is the truth of it. A little biographical speculation, a little context and the discovery of that subject matter in the writer’s words.” Read the rest of this entry »

Chicago Shakespeare Theater announces 2012/13 Season

Chicago—March 12, 2012—Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) Artistic Director Barbara Gaines and Executive Director Criss Hendersonannounced today CST’s 2012/13 Season, which begins with a major new production of Sunday in the Park with George by musical team Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, and also includes the Chicago premiere of The School for Lies by playwright David Ives and productions of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Henry VIII. The Theater’s extensive World’s Stage lineup of international programming for 2012/13 ranges from the American premiere of A History of Everything by Belgian company Ontroerend Goed to the return of the National Theatre of Scotland’s internationally acclaimed Black Watch and its inventive, supernatural The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart. CST’s annual CST Family programming kicks off this summer with Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Additional productions will be announced for the 2012/13 Season later this summer, including an ongoing collaboration between Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Australia’s one step at a time like this (en route) creating for the City of Chicago a world premiere pedestrian-based live art event inspired by Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and set in the city’s urban landscape. Read the rest of this entry »

Timothy Edward Kane and Tracy Michelle Arnold/Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

Throughout Gary Griffin’s absorbing two-hour and twenty-minute production, Philip S. Rosenberg’s lights and Mike Tutaj’s projections coordinate with Mara Blumenfeld’s costumes to create an arresting wash of lush purples and oranges, working as much dreamy magic on the audience as Timothy Edward Kane’s gleeful fairy king Oberon and Elizabeth Ledo’s gender-bending Puck work on the four young lovers in the forest. Read the rest of this entry »

From left: Adrian Danzig, Samuel Taylor, John Judd/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

What if all the magical action in “The Tempest” happened inside the head of one bitter, wronged man? “The Feast” portrays a tormented Prospero (John Judd) commanding his slaves Ariel (Samuel Taylor) and Caliban (Adrian Danzig) to repeatedly act out an unfolding drama of his own creation using masks and puppets. Read the rest of this entry »

Darren Criss (#4) with Team StarKid

With our criteria shifted back to artistic accomplishment in theater, dance, comedy and opera this year, our task got infinitely tougher. Because while the number of performing venues grows at a steady rate, the increase in the number of noteworthy artists seems to grow exponentially. For everyone we name on the list below, we had to leave off five, an embarrassment of riches for Chicago. We made a conscious effort to introduce a meaningful number of new faces to the list this year; the necessary absences should not be construed as a loss of worthiness as a consequence. We often find trends when we do the research these lists require; this year we’re starting to see a more meaningful effort to redefine performance itself in the internet age, from the runaway success of StarKids, to the more calculated endeavors of Silk Road. So what defines a “player”? Consider it some complex stew of career achievement, recent “heat” and, in some cases, rising stardom.

Written by Zach Freeman, Brian Hieggelke, Sharon Hoyer and Dennis Polkow

Read the rest of this entry »

Diane D’Aquila and Steven Sutcliffe/Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

In many ways, Timothy Findley’s play is a gender theorist’s wet dream. On the factual night before the execution of Elizabeth I’s lover, the Earl of Essex, the queen has ordered Shakespeare’s players to perform for her distraction and has a fictional confrontation with Ned Lowenscroft, the actor who played Shakespeare’s leading female roles. The kicker is that Lowenscroft is dying of syphilis.  Read the rest of this entry »

Brent Barrett, Jenny Guse, Christina Myers, Amanda Tanguay and Amanda Kroiss/ Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

Back in the 1990s when Gary Griffin was artistic director of Drury Lane Oakbrook where he had directed some of his first musicals, he programmed Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies.” Curiously, despite his longtime love for that show, he allowed his associate director to take it. Thus, despite Griffin’s later reputation for directing Sondheim as associate artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater, this much-anticipated production opening CST’s twenty-fifth-anniversary season is actually the first time that Griffin himself has directed “Follies.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Eric Y. Exit

RECOMMENDED

Created specifically for Chicago by one step at a time like this, a group of Melbourne-based artists, “en route” is an intricate maze of an art piece/interactive theater event that combines elements of a scavenger hunt and “Mission: Impossible” to fully bring to life the immortal words of Shakespeare: “All the world’s a stage.” Experiencers (“audience members” doesn’t sound right) are given a device with pre-recorded tracks of music/instructions and a phone number to call in case they become “geographically, technologically or even psychologically lost” and then sent out to explore. But this is more than a tour of Chicago’s landmarks; as you make your way through grimy alleyways and plush hotel lobbies you start to take in your surroundings in a surprising new light. Is that crushed beer can a prop? Is that girl with the cast on her leg following you? What happens next? “en route” isn’t a show that you “see,” it’s something you “do.” And I can’t say this emphatically enough: “Go do it!” (Zach Freeman)

Presented by Chicago Shakespeare Theater, (312)595-5600. $35. Through August 13.