A folk opera about the Depression, advertising its influences as T.S. Eliot, Dante, Santos, William Kennedy and songs from the time period, “Boneyard Prayer” feels more like a Nick Cave ballad: beautiful, but sometimes a bit bogged down in its own weight. The Redmoon production is extremely stylized, with excellent use of multimedia, puppets and silent film tropes. Actors are engaging and do their best to channel the genre and time. “Boneyard Prayer” feels heavily influenced by early Chaplin movies as well, with hoboes that are reminiscent of his tramp character, providing moments of comic relief from mild physical humor. The story of redemption is universal, the visual images of the production are striking and songs are occasionally very moving. However, the play sometimes doesn’t stray far enough from cliché, from its song lyrics to the constant presence of whiskey bottles, and for a play produced at a time when America is facing a recession, it doesn’t seem relevant to present concerns and anxieties in a way that could have made it far more engaging. (Monica Westin)

At Redmoon Central, 1463 W. Hubbard, (312)850-8440 ex. 111. This production is now closed.

Redmoon first staged this show at the Steppenwolf back in 2000, and it is distinctive from many of the company’s more recent efforts which (for me, anyway) fail to convey a clear and compelling story. That’s not the case here. A solid retelling of Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” has been transformed and transmuted into something contraption-y and physical. Leslie Buxbaum Danzig directs, and you can see the same schoolyard aesthetics found in her “500 Clown” shows, a kind of rompy-stompy enthusiasm coupled with real theatrical ingenuity. There are some issues with the piece that hold it back—namely its stop-start rhythm, which feels like directorial uncertainty—but it has a strange, cumulative power. An addled version of Victor Hugo (Jeremy Sher) tumbles out of a shipping crate, and he is a meddlesome fussbudget who provides the show with its only spoken text (courtesy of Mickle Maher), describing Paris, year 1482, as a place of “epic foulness” and a “city of shit.” Love that. Forget that the original story is such a downer—Danzig finds a nice balance between the tragic and the comic, including a very funny pre-coital negotiation between the gypsy Esmeralda (Katie Rose McLaughlin) and her soon-to-be-lover, Phoebus (Matt Hawkins in full horn-dog mode). The bell tower is approximated with a kind of ladder scaffolding, which sometimes seems more complicated than necessary. Prowling the cathedral is Quasimodo, played by Jay Torrence, who conveys a gamut of emotions under that mask. (Something about it, designed by Shoshanna Utchenik, brings to mind the chubby-cheeked version worn in the film “Brazil.”) I’m not always won over by mask work, but here it creates the idea of illustrations come to life—which is just the kind of stylized permutation Redmoon does best. (Nina Metz)

At Redmoon Central, 1463 W. Hubbard, (312)850-8440 ex. 111. This production is now closed.

Redmoon’s current show begs the question: Is there such a thing as too much spectacle? What ever happened to quiet shows like “Salao—the worst kind of unlucky,” in which the company’s creative efforts felt not only unusual, but truly meaningful? In any case, “The Princess Club,” created and co-directed by Jim Lasko with cast member Vanessa Stalling, is an all-theme affair. Too often it verges on the boring. A riff on princess obsessions—from the Barbie-Cinderella fixation to the trashy modern-day Britney/Lindsay sexpot princess—the show plays out almost entirely without words. A quintet of princess wannabes, dressed in bedraggled lingerie, reenact fairytales. In between, they engage in nightclub shenanigans—drinking, smoking, drugging, falling all over the place in a stupor. These scenes have no context or point. “Oh my God, you guys,” is one of the few intelligible phrases uttered, along with “Seriously!” which becomes “Sarah-ously.” Funny. But empty. Wandering through the basement of an old puppet theater, these living dolls look like Brooke Shields in “Pretty Baby”—whore-girls with curls and ruffles. (The design is impeccable, as always.) Eventually their make-believe hijinks become weirdly scatological—to point out, I suppose, that princesses poop just like everyone else. Other than that, I’m not sure what this show is saying, exactly. The princess complex is very real, but its influence on female identity is not examined so much as represented. Let’s face it: Perez Hilton, Chelsea Handler and “The Hills” girls probe deeper on this subject—and prove to be far more entertaining. (Nina Metz)

At Redmoon Central, 1463 W. Hubbard, (312)850-8440 ex. 111. This production is now closed.

As theatrical spectacles go, Redmoon Theater and director Frank Maugeri proved that smaller can be better with 2005′s “The Cabinet,” a puppet adaptation of a black-and-white horror film. Redmoon’s normally expansive ambitions were scaled down into something spare and compact, and it was by far one of the best shows of the year. Maugeri is at it again, this time pairing with local playwright and novelist Joe Meno, who has contributed a thin story about a young girl, a professional wrestler with a heart of gold, and their battle against a bird thief who steels the feathered beasts and sticks them in cuckoo clocks. The production is not as impressive as “The Cabinet”—conceptually, the one-hour puppet show feels less of a piece, and pacing is deliberate to a fault—but the intricate design work is worth checking out. There are many witty touches—a firefighter’s brain filled with images of drunken kitties stuck in trees; or a rat-a-tat-tat wrestling announcer who speaks out of the side of his mouth. Too often, the power of these images is diminished by the narration, provided by Lindsey Noel Whiting, a talented actress who has been directed to perform in an empathetic style I’m tempted to call “story hour at the local library.” There is something cloying and insistently earnest about the performance—and therefore the entire production—that undercuts the deadpan, understated design of the puppets (from Kass Copeland). Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

When in doubt, bribe with sugar. It’s actually a pretty decent idea. Redmoon Theatre’s spectacle-cabaret combines gastro-greed-everyone in the audience gets to stuff their face with chocolate truffles-and the twin narcissistic poles of Hollywood navel-gazing-award shows and talent shows. If only the glass-clinking award show ambience weren’t milked with such veracity. (Did I mention the chocolate?) You’re stuck there at the table through the dead periods, waiting around for the next shiny thing to catch your eye. (But did I mention the chocolate?) For the concept to work, a show like this should grab you by the throat and slap you around a bit. Instead, it’s more along the lines of, “When’s this thing going to end?” (People, did I mention the chocolate?) My God, this is exactly like an awards show. (Did I mention the cash bar? More to the point, the chocolate martini?) But as with any Redmoon outing, “The Golden Truffle” is not without its charms. The stuff-literally, the physical objects, props and contraptions that are the company’s trademark-are ingeniously overwrought and elaborately nonsensical. The performances (aside from the shaky singing voices) are deadpan and funny, especially Timothy Heck’s Leading Man, a George Hamiltonesque buffoon who totes around a dress form-his very own date-stroking her breast every now and then. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

It’s a moot point whether Redmoon Theater’s latest offering is a “non-theater theatrical event,” an interactive art installation or an American take on the uniquely British form of holiday entertainment known as “panto” that makes adults as well as children equal contributors to its audience-participation success. “From Nothing” is all of these things and much more. Like its composition, a genre-blending amalgam of architectural design, performance art, dance and original music, this multifaceted experience admits fifty people at one time into its sprawling art-playground cum jungle-gym-obstacle-course of slides and swings and visually inviting nooks and crannies whose combined effect is less sensory assault than serene sensory saturation, your favorite mood music album brought to theatrical life in which each exhibition has the potential to inspire or intensify a wide range of personal emotions. Intellectually, “From Nothing” doesn’t come from nowhere: under the guidance of director and project conceiver Jim Lasko the multi-disciplined teams of artists have been inspired by the world’s different creation mythologies in shaping the more story-based installations. Visually, the ambient environment has been saturated in the soothing hues and constructed of the soft textures usually associated with therapeutic, winter-like dreamscapes, as if Superman’s majestic ice fortress had been crafted of marshmallows to render it kid-safe. Bracingly original and endlessly creative, “For Nothing” will certainly enthrall those around or below the age of reason. Its overall intelligence and insouciance is also likely to bewitch even the most cynical, sentiment-shy Chicagoan. (Fabrizio O. Almeida) Read the rest of this entry »

A pair of submerged buildings peeks out from the lagoon behind the Museum of Science and Industry, an undeniably startling about the tableau. But Redmoon’s water-bound, site-specific show—revamped at the last minute, after New Orleans became a submerged city in chaos—is muddled by good intentions. The troupe, quite understandably, scrapped its original storyline (a whimsical tale of flood survivors) only to replace it with a vague and sluggish depiction of what might be termed rooftop camping. A couple holds forth on the peeked roof of a home: she is pregnant; he is, well, he’s just there. Across the way, a lone fellow hangs out on the eves of a filling station. The connection between these two parties is unclear. Eventually, small rafts putter on and off the lagoon, brining music and a jovial atmosphere, which is silenced soon enough when a clap of thunder (Redmoon provided) brings an abrupt end to the levity. And then the show just sort of ends—not that anyone in the audience would know it. I’m hesitant to come down too hard on this company; logistically, the production looked exceedingly complicated. But it never achieves resonance or meaning, and it makes you wonder what Redmoon originally had in mind, pre-Katrina. (Nina Metz)

This production is now closed.

RECOMMENDED

In thinking small, the creators of Redmoon Theatre’s “The Cabinet” have devised something larger than is first apparent in this adaptation of the 1919 silent horror film, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” The result is a wholly absorbing puppet show of the most intricate precision—by far one of the strongest productions (puppet or otherwise) in the city right now. The black-and-white original was a freak fest of Expressionism, and director Frank Maugeri and playwright Mickle Maher imbue this production with a similar cinematic feel. The story of a sleepwalking mental patient who is compelled to murder by his diabolical physician is slowly and very carefully told in a voice-over (Colm O’Reilly) that puts you directly inside the mind of this tormented soul. Is it a nightmare or reality? A vicious cycle ensues, in which wakefulness is revealed to be a false sensation; the dreaded sleep continues. As do the murders. It’s a melancholy sort of creepiness that unfolds on two-dimensional sets painted in muddy shades of gray, all contained inside a gloriously hulking cabinet. Read the rest of this entry »

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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 »