The Neo-Futurists don’t really do “normal” plays. Their shows—original works that are more theme-based than plot-based—are brainy and whimsical and so uniquely constructed, you might often find yourself wondering why you ever gave a fart about so-called normal plays. And yet. At their most precious, the Neo-Futurists produce shows that can be aggravatingly theater-cute. “Patriots,” created and directed by Chloe Johnston, falls (and falls, and falls, and falls) into this category. It’s very school-projecty: colored masking tape, Sharpie markers and lots and lots of paper. All of these supplies are used to illustrate the history of America on a big map pasted to a wall on stage. It’s neither terribly witty nor illuminating. And it goes on forever. The show then veers off into two seemingly unrelated tangents, one examining the nineteenth-century poet Walt Whitman, the other focusing on the twentieth-century politician and notoriously hypocritical racist J. Strom Thurmond. Johnston’s compare-and-contrast portrayal of each man feels meaningless. More importantly, it doesn’t propel forward any kind of discussion about patriotism in the here and now. (Nina Metz) 

This production is now closed.

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For the second time this year, a Chicago company offers a reinterpretation of “Alice in Wonderland.” In the fall, the Neo-Futurists used their commitment to a theater of the everyday to create a charming site-specific experience. Lookingglass’s Alice plays to the company’s talent for spectacle: it’s an entirely different, but equally inventive, accomplishment. Opening with a through-the-looking-glass encounter between the stuttering Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell (an encounter which is only partly available to each half of the divided audience), the production quickly morphs into a thrilling evening of physical theater. At turns explosive and lyrical, “Lookingglass Alice” keeps its performers in constant motion, whether on stilts, unicycles, or a central trapeze. (John Beer)

This production is now closed.

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The poster art for the Neo-Futurist’s newest show features twenty-five different versions of a Photoshopped portrait: Ibsen buried under mounds of snow; Ibsen dressed in a Viking’s horned helmet; Ibsen’s high forehead and white muttonchops skewered by a Norwegian flag and, in one, Ibsen’s features wiped out altogether, a blank oval where his face used to be. A similar prankish quality runs through “The Last Two Minutes of the Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen,” Greg Allen’s madcap deconstruction of the final moments of the playwright’s twenty-six works, all of which invariably end with a bang—sometimes literally. The production starts off a little shaky but finds footing soon enough, a funny little exercise that goes full-tilt silly on Ibsen’s most obscure plays. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple. At the end of the Neo-Futurists’ newest show, “Windmilled: Tilting at Don Quixote,” writer-performer Sharon Greene picks up an old-fashioned electric fan and points it at a wall of faded seventies-era feel-good posters of kittens and couples strolling down the beach. The posters ripple gently in the breeze and there is true poetry in the moment—a quietly, dreamy sort of whimsy that is beautiful despite its self-consciousness. But the production as a whole—conceived and directed by Greene, who performs alongside writers Shawn Huelle and Jay Torrence—feels like a forced (rather than organic) riff on the Cervantes novel. Essentially a series of bits and pointless tasks, the show is slow going at first, but does gain some momentum when Huelle launches into the story of his Don Quixote-Sancho Panza-like road trip to the Artic Ocean. Huelle is an understated writer with a wry appreciation for the absurd—both sublime and funny as he silently flashes cue cards as a preface to his tale—and he is an extremely likable performer. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Residents of Andersonville will be treated to the spectacle of single files of adults clutching enormous pencils being led by a bunny-eared guide for the next several weekends, as Noelle Krimm’s Neo-Futurist adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland” transforms their neighborhood. As much a mini-festival as a single play, “Alice” enlists members of several of Chicago’s more adventurous theatre companies (House Theatre, Kapoot Clown Theater, David Kodeski) to each adapt an episode from Lewis Carroll. The results, as might be expected, are mixed. Kapoot Clown Theater offers a brilliant version of the Mad Tea Party as performed by demented futuristic mimes—a cross between Beckett and the Teletubbies. And Brian Torrey Scott, Nicholas Monsour, and Jeff Harms enact a lovely bit of Tarantinoesque nonsense in the confines of Simon’s Tavern. Episodes that stick more closely to the book sometimes threaten to fall into children’s-theatre clichés. Even these lapses, though, make sense given that the White Rabbit’s elementary-teacher tirades (leading us, for instance, in “buddy chants”) transport the audience to the vulnerability and mystery of the second grade. Throughout, the production displays impeccable logistic skill and a striking sense of space; in the best environmental theatre tradition, it renews the audience’s sense of wonder at their surroundings. (John Beer)

“Alice” runs at six Andersonville venues, with walking tours beginning and ending at The Neofuturarium, 5153 North Ashland, (773)275-5255, through October 24.

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We’ve always known we were a town for theater. But this year perhaps we needed outsiders to remind us of just how great Chicago’s theater community is compared not only with New York, but with the rest of the world. Venerable London theater critic Michael Billington went so far as to herald our city as the “current theatre capital of America” after a recent visit, citing not only the three big S’s (Chicago Shakespeare, Second City and Steppenwolf), but also Victory Gardens and the Goodman. Other critics from New York and Toronto sent similar, although not quite as superlative, love letters this year. So it seems fitting this year that  our Players issue, in the past reserved for members of the theater community who wield the most power, focus on the artists—those both on stage and behind-the-scenes who make out-of-towners go home and drool. Read the rest of this entry »

Not quite two years ago, a trio of Neo-Futurists bellied up to the bar over at T’s in Andersonville and prattled on for an hour or so about some of America’s greatest writers and their love of the drink. It was a loose, amiable show that I described in my review as a “cunning ode to fermented prose,” and clearly the laid-back vibe and subject matter—a drunken literary seminar, if you will—found an audience; the show has popped up again and again at various locations since its inception. Too bad this effort to expand on this original idea—or rather, narrow its focus—is such a disappointment. In “Volume II: The Noble Experiment,” Sean Benjamin, Chloe Johnston and Steve Mosqueda focus on the writers who thrived and boozed it up during era of Prohibition (1919-1933) and ask: “What is the connection between drinking and writing and Prohibition? And why is it that when you tell Americans not to do something, they do it anyway?” A few cursory hypotheses are mentioned, but rarely do these writer-performers shed any light on the subject matter at hand. The deadpan, understated contributions from Benjamin are the wittiest and pithiest of the bunch, whether its his essay, “The Continuing Journey of Drunk Man,” or a description of his father sitting alone in a dark kitchen late at night, drinking warm beer and smoking a cigarette, listening to country music turned down low on the radio. The cast graciously offers up pints of free beer to anyone who can correctly answer boozy trivia questions, but the show itself feels scattered and is in desperate need of better pacing. The 7pm start time doesn’t help matters, with the bright evening sun flooding through the large windows in T’s back room. A show like this needs to take place somewhere dark and cozy—far from the joggers and dog-walkers of summer. (Nina Metz)

This production is now closed.