Robert Sella, Tracy Michelle Arnold; Tim Campbell, Chaon Cross

RECOMMENDED

What a brilliant stroke for Chicago Shakespeare Theater to present Noël Coward’s “Private Lives” the same season as it is presenting the Bard’s own “The Taming of the Shrew.” So much is the same and yet so much is different when it comes to the battle of the sexes, but one message remains intact for both: you always love the one you hurt.

This is the first-ever Coward production at CST, a significant development as there is often a Shakespearian snobbery when it comes to Coward that it would be hard to imagine Shakespeare himself accepting. Both, after all, were audience-pleasing pop-culture icons of their time who placed how a story is told—i.e., its language—first and foremost, even over the narrative itself, which is often mundane and predictable in both.  Experiencing Coward in a theater built for the Bard where the play is the thing makes for a remarkably satisfying contrast in playwrights of different centuries who are above all, wordsmiths.

Yes, within minutes of “Private Lives,” we all know exactly what is about to happen, even if we have never seen or read the play before. But the genius of Coward is that even though we know—perhaps even because we do know exactly what will happen—we relish in the expectation all the more, and can sit back and bask in the glories of Coward’s language. 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 »

2000

Milestones

500 Clown, Steep Theatre, the side project and Teatro Luna are founded

Broadway In Chicago launches as a joint venture between Live Nation and the Nederlander Organization

Goodman departs its original home in the Art Institute of Chicago and moves into $51 million new digs in the North Loop

Chicago Shakespeare moves into a $24 million theater on Navy Pier

Collaboraction produces its first Sketchbook

The City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs opens The Storefront Theater

Passings

Michael Maggio, Goodman Theatre Associate Artistic Director and Dean of The Theatre School at DePaul University Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Liz Lauren

The finale of the history plays, “Richard III” is that remarkable early work of Shakespeare where the Bard fully developed his villain chops, i.e., his ability to create a character that, though thoroughly despicable, can take the audience into his confidence so disarmingly and with such charm that we become virtually complicit in the crimes that are to follow just by becoming engaged in the play.  Or at least, it is usually so.

With Barbara Gaines’ Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s season-opening production, Washington D.C. actor Wallace Acton plays Richard with such affectations and disinterest that we don’t feel a thing. From the first moments of Richard’s soliloquy “Now is the winter of our discontent,” Acton is up there talking to himself, not us, refusing to connect either with the audience nor anyone else in the play.  At one point after revealing his plans, he offers a brief, cursory faux smile to the thin air. His faux British accent is a cross between Charles Laughton and Roddy McDowall impressions and makes Richard into such a detached dandy that we cannot possibly accept that he would be able to sway anyone in the court into his confidence to do his bidding, let alone that he would be able to woo his way into the bedchamber of Lady Anne. Without a Richard that works, the play falls apart and much of the rest of the cast just falls into standby mode, the women most effectively able to get their characters across despite such a handicap. 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 »

Monica Westin

This weekend Chicago Shakespeare brings its latest World’s Stage production to Navy Pier—but this time, the show takes place actually on the waters of Lake Michigan. The French street-performance ensemble Ilotopie has performed their fire-and-water performance spectacle “Water Fools” on the waters of the Seine and the Thames, and in the words of Chicago Shakespeare executive director Criss Henderson, “We thought that Lake Michigan should be counted among such aquatic venues.”

Ilotopie is known for their site-specific performances in public spaces all over Europe, but their pieces are also about the constraints of the theatrical. “Water Fools,” which incorporates monumental boats and fire, is both about dramatic expression and the position of the actor experiencing “technical difficulties” in order to “keep… his liberty of movement on the liquid element,” according to the ensemble’s statement.

Newcity talked with Henderson this week to hear about his hopes for the performance. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Liz Lauren

By Brian Hieggelke

Here’s how Mattie Hawkinson’s spending her summer in Chicago: babysitting for her friends, playing with their dogs, showing her extended family around the sites of Chicago—”I’ve been to the Art Institute so many times I almost bought a membership”—going for ice cream, taking walks in the park. “Anything innocent,” she says. Kind of a mother’s dream, when your twentysomething daughter’s living thousands of miles away in the big city.

Except that every day at 7:30pm, she steps onto the stage at the Biograph Theatre and steps into the role of Una, the victim of a pedophile more than a decade earlier when she was twelve. And that pedophile, who she spends the next ninety or so minutes locked into a confrontation with, is played by none other than Chicago theater’s reigning leading man, William Petersen, who famously deserted top billing in television’s top show, “CSI,” so that he could return to the town of his formative years, and play roles like that of the onetime child molester in David Harrower’s harrowing drama, “Blackbird.” Innocent daytime pursuits for Hawkinson are not youthful frivolity, but rather a necessary counterbalance to the darkly damaged soul she inhabits each night.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Ruckus Theater:

“DO YOU THINK YOUR WU-TANG SWORD CAN DEFEAT ME?”
THE RUCKUS THEATER—FORMERLY OF KALAMAZOO MICHIGAN—JOINS THE RANKS OF CHICAGO’S STOREFRONT THEATER COMMUNITY

***THE RUCKUS ANNOUNCES 2009-10 SEASON OF WORLD PREMIERES
PRESENTED AT THE SIDE PROJECT THEATRE***

(Chicago, IL) Chicago is officially one theater company richer after The Ruckus Theater recently karate-chopped and high-fived its way into the Central Time Zone. Made up of an industrious group of Michigan ex-pats, The Ruckus is composed of actors, directors, playwrights, musicians, casting directors, publicity managers, grant writers, baristas, grad students, poets, computer fixers, appointment-makers and census-takers who aim to create a new kind of company—a casteless theater that blends the lines between playwright and actor, audience and company member. The Ruckus Theater is led by Artistic Director Allison Shoemaker and Managing Director Ryan Dolley. The company’s inaugural Chicago season is produced as part of the side project’s Visiting Artist Series and is comprised of three world-premiere productions: Heist Play by Mitch Vermeersch, Tell It & Speak It & Think It & Breathe It devised by members of the company and contributing artists, and Linear A by Ryan Dolley. In addition, The Ruckus presents two workshop productions: Joshua’s Play by Ryan Dolley in collaboration with Filament Theatre Ensemble and 11-Detroit devised by members of the company. Further details regarding the 2009-10 season will be released at a later date. Prior to The Ruckus’ recent move to Chicago the company was based in Kalamazoo MI, where it produced such popularly acclaimed productions as Apple Frog Baseball, The Retreating World and Fore Play, in addition to a developmental reading of Linear A by Ryan Dolley at Barrow Street Theatre in New York. Read the rest of this entry »

E.B. Smith (Macduff) and Nathan Hosner (Macbeth)/Photo: D. Rice

There is much to recommend in the First Folio production of “Macbeth”; the west suburban outdoor setting could not be more ideal for Shakespeare, cooperating with even a hint of mist to suggest the moors. The attention to detail, albeit taken literally and done up traditionally, does an effective job of transporting us back to the Elizabethan era, minus the occasional passing plane. There are no surprises like, say, Barbara Gaines’ contemporary and gruesome adaptation earlier this year at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Indeed, if you crave a straight-ahead version of the Bard’s “Scottish” play, you’ll be right at home. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Raven:

RAVEN THEATRE ANNOUNCES THEIR 27th SEASON
Family. Justice. Laughter

CHICAGO – Producing Artistic Director Michael Menendian and Co-Artistic Director JoAnn Montemurro announce Raven Theatre’s 2009/2010 Season, which includes Arthur Miller’s timeless Death of a Salesman, Reginald Rose’s thrilling Twelve Angry Men, and Neil Simon’s classic comedy The Odd Couple. This season follows the rise of the baby boomer generation, moving from issues of morality and success through class and ethnic divisions, ending in the middle of a social and cultural revolution. Raven kicks off the season with its 27th annual benefit gala, Back Stage at Raven, Saturday, August 1, 2009. Season subscriptions are available for $35-72. Visit www.raventheatre.com or call 773-338-2177. Read the rest of this entry »