Here’s the press release from Victory Gardens:

Victory Gardens announces its 2011-2012 season
Season to include works by John Logan, Sarah Ruhl, Theresa Rebeck and Jackie Sibblies Drury

Chicago, IL— Artistic Director Dennis Zacek and Executive Director Jan Kallish announce the 2011-2012 Victory Gardens season.  The season will include In the Next Room or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl; What We’re Up Against by Teresa Rebeck; We Are Proud to Present …, a play developed as part of IGNITION by Jackie Sibblies Drury; and Goodman Theatre’s production of Red by Victory Gardens Ensemble Playwright John Logan. The final play of the season will be announced at a later date.   Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Goodman:

GOODMAN THEATRE ANNOUNCES A RED HOT 2011/2012 SEASON

***TWO DIRECT–FROM–BROADWAY HITS, A TENNESSEE WILLIAMS CLASSIC REIMAGINED BY AN INTERNATIONALLY–ACCLAIMED SPANISH DIRECTOR,  AN INCANDESCENT MUSICAL REVIVAL AND NEW WORKS SEAR THE STAGE***  Read the rest of this entry »

Karen Aldridge, Jacqueline Williams, Jefferson A Russell, Christiana Clark/Photo: Brandon Thibodeaux

RECOMMENDED

Regina Taylor’s new “Trinity River Plays,” the Goodman co-production with the Dallas Theater Center, is a sprawling, ambitious piece of drama. Spanning seventeen years in the lives of two generations of four Dallas women and the men who, for better or for worse, help to define them, it is a story about home and its magnetic and repulsive qualities, escape, return and renewal.

The central character, Iris, begins in the first play as an awkward teenager with ambitions of living in New York and becoming a writer. On her seventeenth birthday, she loses her innocence in an event that will inform the rest of her life. The second play finds Iris returning home as a successful yet divorced 34-year-old writer to discover a secret held by her strong and independent mother. As foils, Iris’ Aunt Daisy and cousin Jasmine have problems that are both their own as well as intertwined with the rest. Painful secrets abound in these plays, and the confrontations with each of them snowball exhaustively. 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 »

Krapp's Last Tape/Photo: Liz Lauren

Top 5 Shows
“The Brother/Sister Plays,” Steppenwolf
“August: Osage County,” Broadway In Chicago
“Hughie”/”Krapp’s Last Tape,” Goodman
“1001,” Collaboraction
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
—Brian Hieggelke

Top 5 Play Revivals
“A Streetcar Named Desire,” Writers’ Theatre
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” Steppenwolf Young Adult
“Private Lives,” Chicago Shakespeare Theater
“After the Fall,” Eclipse Theatre
—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Performances
Brian Dennehy, “Hughie”/”Krapp’s Last Tape,” Goodman
Karen Janes Woditsch, “To Master the Art,” TimeLine
Tracy Letts, “American Buffalo,” Steppenwolf
Amy Morton, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
Mary Beth Fisher, “Seagull,” Goodman
—Brian Hieggelke

Read the rest of this entry »

Stephen Louis Grush and Mary Beth Fisher/Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

A scene late in the first act says everything about Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” and about Goodman Theatre’s powerful production. It’s a reconciliation between the larger-than-life (especially in her own mind) actress Arkadina, played to self-absorbed perfection by Mary Beth Fisher, and her overshadowed, would-be artistic son, Konstantin, depicted by the suitably brooding Stephen Louis Grush. Tender, gentle, we see the mother and child emerge in these two characters but then, an assertive inquiry tests the new waters of intimacy and soon the tenderness has turned into vicious conflict. Not only do the themes at play in this scene—intergenerational struggle, the capricious ways of the heart, the fight for the artistic soul and so forth—define “The Seagull,” so too the acting challenges in performing a scene with such a rapid yet precisely paced tonal swing that could so easily come off as forced or, even worse, laughable. Fortunately, director Robert Falls has gathered some of the finest actors working in Chicago—perhaps one of the best ensembles ever assembled on a local stage—and, not simply content to let them do what they always do, has rehearsed the play for seven weeks, double the normal time. The result is a Chekhov production to rival the finest anywhere (notably reminiscent of Maly Drama Theatre’s “Uncle Vanya” at Chicago Shakespeare in March), one where, with a minimal set and lighting (in fact, the first scenes are performed in full house lights), all the stakes are placed with the actors, who sit along a back bench when “offstage” to further emphasize their ownership of this production. Read the rest of this entry »

Lauren Molina and Geoff Packard/Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

Much musical theater plays to the most maudlin of impulses, shamelessly tugging at the heart. But put Mary Zimmerman, Voltaire and Leonard Bernstein in a room, and you expect something more cerebral. And indeed, “Candide” is.

Voltaire wrote his romantic-tragicomic novella as an enlightened rebuttal to the “philosophy of optimism” holding sway in his time. It’s a philosophy brought to life here in the character of the philosopher Pangloss, and his true believer Candide, who suffer monstrously and yet remain true to the idea that it’s all for a higher purpose. It’s not much of a stretch to find contemporary resonance in political conservatism and religious fundamentalism (and their Tea Party bastard child), both notions rooted in preserving the status quo, and Zimmerman even inserts a line about “intelligent design” early on, just to make sure we get the message.

The story of “Candide” is narrative excess in service of a point: the young optimistic is pushed from his life of comfort for daring woo Cunegonde, whose noble lineage is out of his class; from there a life of horrifying misadventures unfurls, depicted to comic extremes, as he works his way around the world and back. 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 »

"La Vista de la Vieja Dama"

By Monica Westin

The fifth biennial Latino Theatre Festival at the Goodman, is centerpieced by “The Sins of Sor Juana,” which has been getting mixed reviews, but the real surprises of the festival’s lineup are two performances by Teatro Buendía. The theater company, one of the most highly regarded in Cuba, has never performed in the US before this month. Newcity spoke with Goodman Artistic Associate Henry Godinez, festival curator, about Teatro Buendía’s style, getting the theater into the country, and revolution.

How did you first become familiar with Teatro Buendía?

The company has played all over the world—Africa, Europe, Australia, obviously Central and South America, even the Globe in London. I first saw them in Cuba in 2003, and I had hoped to bring them to the festival back then, but it was just impossible to bring artists from Cuba under the last political administration. This year, with Obama in the White House, we thought we’d try again and we succeeded… they have their visas, and they fly in tomorrow. Read the rest of this entry »

Malaya Rivera Drew and Dion Mucciacito/Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

It speaks volumes about the sad state of human affairs when we can describe the story of the repression and destruction of a great, brilliant woman as fairly predictable fare. Predictable perhaps, but still poignant, especially in light of the continuing unabashed cruelty toward women in parts of the Islamic world even today. Perhaps we tsk-tsk these “uncivilized” cultures a bit too much, for it wasn’t long ago that it was Western culture, with the royal court and the Catholic Church at its core, that destroyed many a great woman (and man, for that matter), in the name of God or king.

So even if there is a familiar Joan-like arc to “The Sins of Sor Juana,” now playing at the Goodman, the particulars of the story of this great poet of Mexico are not as widely known. Brilliant, dynamic and beautiful from a young age, Juana Inés de la Cruz was pre-destined for trouble, and in playwright Karen Zacarías’ fairly straightforward imagining of the circumstances of her life, she finds it. Set at the moment when Juana starts to “lose her voice” thanks to the Church’s inability to abide by its promise to let her write, “The Sins” unfolds in a conventional overlapping story line, with an interwoven flashback that explains how Juana came to the Church and, more importantly perhaps, how she found the raw romantic emotions, both conventional and mildly Sapphic, that would manifest so powerfully in her poems. Read the rest of this entry »