Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

The best direction is usually transparent; when a play is really working, you’re not thinking about the director. But when it fails, the director inevitably shoulders the blame. Sean Graney, The Hypocrites founder, is never transparent. He likes to work with classic texts and, to varying degrees, reconstruct them with his fingerprints visible throughout. As long as you can accommodate his penchant for out-of-context non sequiturs, it mostly works, sometimes to wonderful effect.

Playwright Charles Ludlam died of complications from AIDS in 1987, in the twilight of Reagan’s reign, still in the early years of the above-ground emergence of gay culture—less than twenty years after Stonewall and less than a decade after the pansexual hedonism of Studio 54. In this environment, cross-dressing camp theater had come of age, with a dint of the avant-garde and a winking naughtiness. When Ludlam died, camp too was on its deathbed, at least as a politically subversive aesthetic idea; it lives on and succeeds or fails these days simply as entertainment palatable to increasingly mainstream audiences.

You might suspect that Ludlam saw this day coming, for his most prolific legacy, “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” first produced by his Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1984, elevated the camp device of sending up cultural conventions into a masterful exploration of film and theater that not only flourished as comedy on the page but, in his construction of the play as an over-the-top quick-change vehicle with two actors of the same sex playing all the roles, male and female, through thirty-five costume changes, has the potential to astonish audiences with its stagecraft. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Michael Brosilow

By Fabrizio O. Almeida

There are few plays that can boast a backstage drama to rival the one being seen out front. “The Mystery of Irma Vep, A Penny Dreadful” is one of those plays.

The late playwright-director-designer Charles Ludlam’s comedy, which opens at Court Theatre this weekend, is at once a Victorian-style send-up of the Gothic melodrama, a hyper-verbose mish-mash of recherché literary references and delicious double-entendres, and homage to the midnight horror flicks of yesterday.

At its heart, however, it is a simple show devised entirely around a simple concept, the quick-change.  And yet, as evidenced by the backstage brio and technical wizardry that makes it possible for two actors (Erik Hellman and Chris Sullivan) to take on nine roles and pull off dozens of split-second costume changes, there is nothing simple about it.

Director Sean Graney likens the challenge of coordinating the backstage dance between Hellman and Sullivan and the show’s five dressers to piecing a puzzle together or solving a Rubik’s Cube:  “It’s like Ludlam said ‘Fuck all of you, you’ll never be able to figure this out’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, okay, let’s do it!’”  Assistant Stage Manager Sara Gammage favors the sports analogy, appropriate for a show that demands nothing less than sheer athleticism from all involved (“It’s like designing a playbook, if you were playing basketball or football, and mapping out the Xs and Os and what needs to go where and when and in how much time.”)  And Production Stage Manager Ellen Hay, who oversees everything and is responsible for calling the show’s 300-plus light, sound and special-effects cues (an amount not typical for a non-musical) quips, “This is just another day in stage management…times a thousand.” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

When writing reviews it’s rare that I’m able to use the word “powerful.” Still, I can’t think of a better description for Court Theatre and director Ron OJ Parson’s superb revival of playwright August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Indeed the show, which was first performed more than twenty-five years ago, is teeming with themes and ideas—assimilation, internalized racism, the appropriation and exploitation of one culture by —that still resonate with an incredible topicality as if the play had been written yesterday.

Wilson’s setting for his play is a fictional Chicago recording studio in 1927.  A white record producer and white music manager are trying to lay down some tracks of black singer Ma Rainey (the real life “Mother of the Blues” who recorded with Louis Armstrong and mentored Bessie Smith, among other achievements) performing her signature number, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” 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 »

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 »

Conner, Abercrumbie, A.C. Smith

RECOMMENDED

When August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” appeared more than two decades ago, the idea of an African-American playwright reflecting the African-American experience was still largely a novelty. Here, at last, were fully developed black characters not as imagined by white writers, but an attempt to chronicle the journey of a people attempting to adjust decade-by-decade to the realities of post-slavery America where true freedom still remained largely elusive.

The struggle reflected in “The Piano Lesson,” the 1930s entry in Wilson’s ten-play twentieth-century cycle, is one of legacy, magnificently symbolized in an elaborately hand-carved upright piano uniquely tied to a family’s past and drenched in the blood of its ancestors. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Michael Brosilow

By Whitney Dibo

The old saying, “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity” seems an appropriate adage for Charlie Newell’s directing career. When the D.C. native originally applied for the associate artistic director position at Court Theatre back in 1993, he couldn’t have known the company was actually in search of a replacement for their retiring artistic director. A lucky break to be sure—but Newell was also firmly prepared for the opportunity: his very first directing gig for Court, a production of Marivaux’s “Triumph of Love,” won a Jeff Award for Best Production. “After that, I guess Court felt comfortable handing over the reigns,” Newell says with a modest laugh.

Fast forward to 2008—fourteen years into Newell’s successful tenure at Court Theatre. Tom Stoppard’s new music-infused play, “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” opens on Broadway, and Court tries to nab the production rights for the Chicago premiere. “They got back to us on a Thursday and told us our request had been declined,” Newell says.

Newell was naturally disappointed, and wondered which major Chicago theater had successfully wooed the producers of “Rock ‘n’ Roll” with bigger royalties and larger production capabilities. The answer came the next day, with a phone call from The Goodman Theatre. “On that Friday, the folks at Goodman called me up and asked me to direct the show,” says Newell, obviously still tickled by the serendipity of it all. “Rock ‘n’ Roll” started previews in the Goodman’s Albert Theatre on May 2 and will run through June 7, with a cast comprised almost entirely of Chicago-based actors. Read the rest of this entry »

Frank Galati (center) and the cast of Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s production of The Tempest/Photo: Michael Brosilow

By Dennis Polkow

No.  Shakespeare. Ever.  Despite Steppenwolf being the oldest ensemble theater in Chicago, there has curiously been no Shakespeare performed by the company across its nearly thirty-five-year existence.  Until now, that is, with the staging of the Bard’s last play, “The Tempest.”  Why the long drought in the first place, and why end it now?

“Ever since I’ve been in the ensemble,” says Tina Landau, Steppenwolf ensemble member since 1997, who is directing “The Tempest” and is upstairs during a company dinner break two hours before the first preview of the show, “many ensemble members have been longing to do Shakespeare.  Five years ago, I pitched ‘The Tempest’ as one of three plays that I most wanted to do and through a confluence of the right timing and the right season—particularly with this year’s overall theme of the imagination—it finally all came together.” Read the rest of this entry »

Theatrical candy, occasionally delicious but more often a bit cloying, the Court’s seeming answer to seasonal affective disorder is a psychological thriller that delivers less suspense than laughs at its own campiness. The story itself, involving con artists invading an apartment and the blind, petite and spunky woman-child who outwits them in their own game, is very fun, with smart writing and a perfect pace. However, the acting is uneven, running the gamut from John Hoogenakker as a frenzied psychopath to Emjoy Gavino as the flighty heroine, affected and somewhat silly in her seeming attempt to channel Audrey Hepburn, who played the role in the film. For all its banter and suspense-driven plot, the show gets dragged down in awkward moments resulting from this lack of focus, making it not just fluffy but treacly, and the best moments arise when the show seems utterly aware of how ludicrously dated and frivolous it is and lets the audience in on the joke. (Monica Westin)

“Wait Until Dark” plays at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, (773)753-4472, through April 6.

Laura Scheinbaum (Hedvig Ekdal)

There is a lot to like about the aesthetic impulses that drive Court Theatre’s artistic director Charles Newell. The guy is unafraid to tinker with the classics; everything “proper” is given the heave-ho and suddenly a play you thought you had all figured out seems uncommonly new and unexpectedly urgent.

I had high hopes for Newell’s take on Henrik Ibsen, and yet behold his current production of “The Wild Duck” (at the MCA). To say this staging left me cold is an understatement.

Ibsen’s drama of secrets and lies has always been tricky, with its insistently self-centered men and the women yoked to them. Ibsen himself anticipated “plenty to quarrel about, plenty to misinterpret.” The personal losses pile up like so many felled logs, that much is certain.

But if anything, the Court production exposes the play for what it really is: the proto family sitcom, easy on the com. Dad as infantile idiot; Mom as Practical Patty; Grandpa as eccentric; plus the requisite Preteen Kid and a Neighbor who drops in for a bon mot or two. It’s “The King of Everybody Loves Yes, Dear,” nineteenth-century Norway version. It’s not that Ibsen’s script isn’t funny (in its own way), but you’ll find little of that here.

Something about Newell’s approach has a pile-driving affect. Jay Whittaker is Gregers—the pot-stirrer who inadvertently destroys an entire family in a deranged sense of honesty and morality—and Whittaker is perhaps too obvious in his physical manifestation of the character. The hair is greasy, the body language full of tics. Everything about this man suggests trouble and I wonder if Newell had pushed for something more internal and composed, it might have created a much-needed elusive quality. Gregers’ motives should tap uncomfortable nerves—who among us hasn’t been blinded by principle?—but as it is, you just hate the guy on sight.

So what of the family he splinters like so much wood in the chopper? Kevin Gudahl’s Hailmar is appropriately childlike; Mary Beth Fisher, as his doting spouse, gives the role that frozen stare seen in the wives of stunted men.

But their cozy life is anything but. Leigh Breslau’s set design is gorgeous—a gaping warehouse loft straight out of “Rent”—and yet it exposes an emptiness in the production.  The family sits on the sofa clasped together in a Norman Rockwell embrace and it’s all you can do to not to roll your eyes. The artifice is stultifying, which may be the point. The fantasy must give way.

Ignorance is bliss, but what of the unexamined life? I’m not sure Ibsen was entirely convinced one way or another about the question of honesty versus delusions. Both have to exist to propel you out bed every morning—I’ll pretend my life isn’t as bad as it is in the hopes of making room for things that are genuinely pleasurable. Isn’t that what we call growing up?

It is only Timothy Edward Kane as the doctor—a dangerous man in his own right, with little patience for the artificially induced tragedy before him—who offers something to grab onto. Kane’s performance commands your attention, his voice low and pissed off and full of brine. Fuck you, he all but tells this group. Fuck you and figure out a way to live your lives. The alternative is to sink irretrievably to the bottom of the sea like so many ducks shot from the sky. (Nina Metz)

At The MCA Stage, Museum of Contemporary Art,220 East Chicago,(773)753-4472 or courttheatre.org. Wed-Thu/7:30p, Fri 6p, Sat 3p & 8p, Sun 2:30p & 7:30p. $32-$60. Through Feb 15.