Jeff Lillico and Joy Farmer-Clary/Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

With artistic director Barbara Gaines busy directing “Macbeth” over at Lyric Opera, Chicago Shakespeare Theater brought in renowned Shakespearean director Gale Edwards from Australia (veteran of several Royal Shakespeare Company gigs) to helm its season premiere of “Romeo and Juliet.” She, in turn, imported many of her leads from out of town, but no matter: this is an exceptional production regardless of its principals’ pedigrees. Most striking, perhaps, is the design of the show, and for that we have Chicagoans to thank: Brian Sidney Bembridge’s set is astonishing, the back stage opened up to create a long, deep hangar-like space, which functions as Verona streetscape, interior of the Capulet mansion and all other locations in the play. It is neither modern nor classical as befitting the production’s overall design, including Ana Kuzmanic’s wardrobe, which seems to master that balancing act of being of no time and all time at once. Like the story itself. Read the rest of this entry »

"Candide" production photo by Liz Lauren

By Dennis Polkow

When Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman is due in early at Goodman Theatre to discuss taking on her first musical, Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide,” it is obvious that she is tired, having stayed up most of the night revising script pages after a day and night of rehearsals. Today will also be a full day of rehearsals, but tonight will be the first preview of the work. As she is making her way to the table and chairs that her press folks have set up in a quiet area of the building, a beautiful large dog briskly enters, checking out both the area and the reporter. The dog has a Goodman Theatre security tag attached to his collar with his picture that identifies him as “Beary.”

“When I first got him, he was a wreck. He was a pound dog, so he is quite devoted. He is a mix—at the pound they said shepherd-husky, but a lot of people see beagle in him as well. Beagles have that black saddle but huskies often have a very thick double coat and little star as he does. I’m sure he is more than two breeds, by the way. But he’s a good old fellow. I’ve had him since “Pericles” in D.C. This is probably his fifteenth show, maybe? He was full grown when I got him and I’ve had him eight years, so he’s at least ten. I hope he’s only ten. I don’t know how old he is, I have no idea. He’s holding up, and he’s a sweet boy. Tonight he will be exiled from the theater for the first time and will be in the dressing room. He’s just sort of curled up by me in rehearsals most of the time.” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

There are so many one-person shows out there that many of us have become numb to the template of one person sharing anecdotes for an hour or two, or even acting his or her heart out in an intense manner for a compact period of time. What distinguishes “Itsoseng” from the usual formulaic solo fare is that it is a sweeping dramatic epic that just happens to be told by a single person. That said, the single person in this case actually takes on the personas of the various characters in the play, sometimes right within the same scene (yes, we’ve seen that before, too) that just happens to be set within the immensely compelling backdrop of South Africa’s post-apartheid era. We have seen that before, too, right here in our country: simply because civil rights legislation is passed or a black man becomes president in America does not mean that racial prejudice goes out the window, and in fact, for some, such events become rallying cries for agendas of white privilege to simply take on new forms. Read the rest of this entry »

Ian Bedford and Bianca Amarto/Photo: Liz Lauren

Imagine Shakespeare’s infamous battle of the sexes, minus the sexes, cross-fertilized with Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate,” minus the music. That is essentially what we get with director Josie Rourke’s re-imagining of “The Taming of the Shrew.”

Rourke clearly takes the one-dimensional view that the Bard’s purpose is merely to remind us that a good wife is a submissive wife, end of story. Doing the play means being a Shakespearian enabler in getting across his male-chauvinist message. As such, the decision is made to replace the often omitted play-within-a-play device of the original and transplant it with a modern-day framing scenario—complete with snappy dialogue supplied by playwright Neil LaBute—of a cast and crew putting on the play, at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, no less, and of objecting to the sexist message that they are asked to get across via the play. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Viktor Vassiliev

RECOMMENDED

It’s easy for Chicagoans to take great ensemble acting for granted. After all, we get it in abundance thanks to the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. But in reality, you could count on one hand the number of great theatrical acting ensembles in the world, and among them surely is the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg. On par with seeing Moliére done by the Comédie-Française in Paris, or Strindberg performed by the Dramaten (Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre), the prospect of experiencing an authentic Russian-language production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” by the Maly ensemble is one of those rare theatergoing opportunities that doesn’t come around too often. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

Top 5 Shows
“Desire Under the Elms,” Goodman
“Blackbird,” Victory Gardens
“South Pacific,” Lincoln Center Theater
“The Tempest,” Steppenwolf
“Spring Awakening,” Broadway In Chicago 
—Brian Hieggelke

Top 5 Shows
“The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” Victory Gardens/Teatro Vista
“An Apology For the Course and Outcome of Certain Events Delivered by Doctor John Faustus on This His Final Evening,” Theater Oobleck
“The Pillowman,” Redtwist
“Frat,” The New Colony
“Red Noses,” Strawdog
—Nina Metz 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 »