E. Faye Butler and Susie McMonagle/Photo: Starbelly Studios

During the Depression, as America experienced a drastic disillusionment with the idea of progress, a nostalgia set in for the pre-industrial past. The embodiment of that is Susannah (Susie McMonagle), an ambitious and tightly wound ethnomusicologist working for the Library of Congress, who encounters the gruff and skeptical Pearl (E. Faye Butler), an African-American prisoner originally from the Sea Islands who contains within herself a treasury of antebellum songs. She may even possess Susannah’s Holy Grail: pre-slavery songs brought over from Africa. Pearl is initially unimpressed by Susannah’s quest—“You be a white woman, and this is your dream?” Replies Susannah: “When a person dies, a library is lost.” Her primitive recording equipment is an attempt to stave off extinction and create a kind of immortality for herself and her informants. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Northlight:

Northlight Theatre announces 2010-11 Season,
including a new musical by Stephen Schwartz;
the new play about Lunt and Fontanne, Ten Chimneys by Jeffrey Hatcher;
Alan Ayckbourn’s hit Season’s Greetings;
and E. Faye Butler in Black Pearl Sings

Chicago, IL—Artistic Director BJ Jones and Executive Director Timothy J. Evans are proud to announce the 2011-12 Northlight Season, which includes the new musical Snapshots from Stephen Schwartz, the creator of Wicked, Godspell, Pippin! and Working; last year’s smash holiday hit at London’s National Theatre, Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings; Black Pearl Sings by Frank Higgins, featuring the incomparable E. Faye Butler; and a behind-the-scenes look at beloved Broadway legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne with Jeffrey Hatcher’s Ten Chimneys; and a fifth production to be announced.  Read the rest of this entry »

Felicia P. Fields and cast/ Photo: Liz Lauren

RECOMMENDED

Borrowing the template from “Ragtime” of having well-known historical characters musically interact with fictional characters representative of various classes of American society, “A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration” attempts to use the holiday season as a nostalgic look back, warts and all, at our conflicted soul-searching as a nation at the climax of its greatest national crisis. The scenario for Paula Vogel’s play—receiving its Chicago premiere from Northlight Theatre—is Washington, D.C. on Christmas Eve, 1864, when General Sherman gave President Lincoln the captured city of Savannah, Georgia as a Christmas present.

The show cleverly uses the African-American experience on both sides of the conflict as a means to look at ourselves in the mirror with the clear adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The scene of an escaped slave and her daughter finally arriving at the bridge across the Potomac only to be turned back by Union soldiers because the city already has enough of “her kind” could come right out of today’s headlines. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Eleanor Berman

By Fabrizio O. Almeida

“Angels in America, Part I”: An angel appears accompanied by a flash of light so bright you have to block your eyes. An aural cluster of classical compositions (Stravinsky, Verdi) blasts while the incessant sound of fluttering wings catches up to your heartbeat, an experience akin to the THX Dolby Digital surround sound in a movie theater that vibrates from up and under your chair and into your body.

“Adding Machine”: A visual journey into an expressionistic world of chiaroscuro lighting effects and dark sensibilities.

“Picnic”: You enter the theater and are enveloped in a world of live tree branches and gorgeous green grass.

“Our Town”: A fugue of smells—the aroma of coffee percolating and bacon sizzling—from a kitchen so real you could move in yesterday.

These are David Cromer moments. Read the rest of this entry »

Penny Slusher and John Mahoney

RECOMMENDED

Sure, it’s no surprise to encounter yet another Irish writer with a statistically unlikely mastery of this language. And it’s certainly no surprise to find John Mahoney playing an Irishman nearing life’s end with an unnaturally natural composure. Nor, for that matter, is it any kind of a revelation to tell you that director BJ Jones is consistent in his ability to assemble top-flight ensembles that he molds into a collective of outstanding quality. Unsurprising all, yes, but not to be taken for granted, especially after far too many nights at the theater that point out how exceptional this all is.

“A Life,” Irish playwright Hugh Leonard’s sequel to his Tony Award-winning play, “Da,” unfolds in a single day in the small town of Dalkey, Ireland, when Desmond Drumm (Mahoney) re-engages with important lifelong friends after a disconcerting visit to the doctor. As this happens, a parallel series of flashbacks feature the same characters nearer life’s beginning, laying the foundation for the interlocking relationships. This is no gothic tragedy; revelations are meaningful and heartbreaking, but for the reasons most of us suffer remorse. Not over great betrayals or horrifying transgressions, but rather over smaller but persistent manifestations of obstinancy of character, of insensitivity to the world right around us. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Nussbaum, Keith Gallagher/Photo: Timmy Samuel

RECOMMENDED

It’s fashionable to treat the works of playwright Clifford Odets as out of fashion. Accordingly, productions are relatively rare for a writer who gave the social unrest coming out of the Great Depression its voice, the writer most associated with the legendary Group Theatre, one of the most influential theatrical ensembles in American history.

But times have changed of late, and the out-of-favor socialist notions espoused in Odets’ work suddenly have renewed relevance. After all, the day that Northlight’s well-crafted revival of his masterpiece, “Awake and Sing!” was to open, I turned on NPR to hear Mad Moneyman Jim Cramer telling the host that our recent economic meltdown proved Karl Marx right. Marx! Hell, Cramer even trotted out Trotsky for praise.

Today’s economic misfortunes are recurring echoes of the economic backdrop of this 1935 play, with one major exception: there was a progressive utopian ideal at work then, the idea that from the carnage a better world, a better economic system would emerge, as expressed to and through the character of Ralphie Berger (played with suitable earnestness by Keith Gallagher). These days, the doctrine of capitalism seems at little risk from either side of the politcal divide, and the great hope is not a better tomorrow but simply a return to a better-working yesterday. 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 »

Peter DeFaria and Randy Steinmeyer in "A Steady Rain" at Chicago Dramatists

Annoyance Theatre
Coed Prison Sluts: $64,000, 5,380 people

The Artistic Home
Peer Gynt: $19,044 box office, 1,200 people

Chicago Dramatists
A Steady Rain: $21,000 box office,1,500 people at CD, 10,000 at Royal George Theatre
Cadillac: $23,000 box office,1,600 people at CD, 1,500 at Theatre on the Lake

Collaboraction
The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, $150,000 box office, 6,500 people Read the rest of this entry »

The 2006/07 season brought the grand opening of the new Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, following more than $11 million in renovations

Annoyance Theatre (founded 1987)
“We don’t really have a regular operating budget—just plan as we go along.”
—Jennifer Estlin, President, Annoyance Theatre

The Artistic Home (founded 1998)
End of nineties: $62,000
End of zeroes: $164,500

Bailiwick Chicago (founded 2009)
End of nineties: N/A (Bailiwick Repertory is now defunct)
End of zeroes: $120,000 projected 2010

Chicago Dramatists (founded 1979)
End of nineties: $171,000
End of zeroes: $550,000

Collaboraction (founded 1996)
End of nineties: $50,000
End of zeroes: $500,000

Court Theatre (founded 1955)
End of nineties: $2.6 million
End of zeroes: $3.2 million Read the rest of this entry »

As part of our decade retrospective, we surveyed more than forty theater companies for their observations to a couple of questions. What follows are their formatted but unedited responses.

Deb Clapp
Executive Director, League of Chicago Theatres (founded 1979)

Any observations or thoughts about Chicago theater in the last decade?
Over the last decade, Chicago has seen the downtown theater district grow and thrive, Goodman moved downtown and several theaters were re-furbished. Lookingglass moved into their new digs on Michigan Avenue and theater has flourished. Several exciting new companies have been established including The House Theatre of Chicago, Silk Road Theatre Project, New Leaf Theatre and Rasaka, among many others.

Is there a “Chicago style” anymore (if there ever was) and has it changed? What, today, distinguishes Chicago theater from anywhere else?
A number of unique characteristics distinguish Chicago theater. We have a unique ecology encompassing a wide range of theater artistry, from spectacle to culturally specific, horror to improv, houses with thousands of seats to houses with 18 seats. Our community is very collegial and collaborative, sharing ideas and resources. When one theater has a hit show, its not just a hit for that show, it’s a hit for Chicago. Our directors, authors, actors, stagehands, producers, all are Chicagoans and all create for a Chicago audience.

Outside of your own company, who or what excites you most about local theater right now?
Chicago is the best place to see and to make theater in the world. A lot of attention from other parts of the country and the world is being paid to Chicago theater right now and while that is wonderful and will inevitably lead us to greater things, what continues to happen every night in Chicago theater brings me joy. Telling our stories and the stories of others, bringing the world on stage every night, that’s what excites me most. Read the rest of this entry »