This show exemplifies the limitations of what even the most gifted directors and actors can accomplish with an outdated playscript; Fugard’s 1960’s South African anti-apartheid play is quintessential political art that doesn’t stand the test of time. “The Island” refers to the infamous Robben Island prison (that held Nelson Mandela, among others), where two cellmates perform hard labor during the day and rehearse “Antigone” at night for a prison talent show. The parallels between the two stories (Antigone, of course, is sentenced to life) is just as heavy-handed as the dialogue, which is full of frankly hackneyed lines about liberation: when one learns he has only a matter of months left on his sentence and counts the days on his fingers, the other shouts “I’m jealous of your freedom—I also want to count!” The show ends with their short DIY production of the Sophocles, which is both funny and surprisingly compelling, but the first ninety minutes of the show really drag from predictability. Very few lines hit home, despite masterful acting by La Shawn Banks and Kamal Angelo Bolden, who manage to draw out the comedy of the production while lending it a sense of nobility. It’s a shame that the writing simply doesn’t stand up to the thought that’s obviously gone into this production; even the set, minimalist and reticent, says more about the power of invention and imagination as instruments of freedom than the play itself. Director James Bohnen adds  interest by highlighting the sisyphian and mind-numbing nature of their work in a gorgeous drawn-out first scene of each digging holes in the sand that the other fills in with a wheelbarrow, so that we feel as much relief as the characters when the whistle blows. (Monica Westin)

At The Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, (773)404-7336. Through March 7.

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 »

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 »

2000

Milestones

500 Clown, Steep Theatre, the side project and Teatro Luna are founded

Broadway In Chicago launches as a joint venture between Live Nation and the Nederlander Organization

Goodman departs its original home in the Art Institute of Chicago and moves into $51 million new digs in the North Loop

Chicago Shakespeare moves into a $24 million theater on Navy Pier

Collaboraction produces its first Sketchbook

The City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs opens The Storefront Theater

Passings

Michael Maggio, Goodman Theatre Associate Artistic Director and Dean of The Theatre School at DePaul University 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 »

RECOMMENDED

The antidote to overdone appeals to emotions, this understated and unexpectedly touching show stays with you like a rock in your shoe. The scope of Gerard Siblyeras’ play is deceptively slight: examining the subtly changing relationships between three WWI veterans, divided by class and all suffering physical or emotional damage from the war, who sit on the terrace of a nursing home in late 1950’s France. At heart it’s simply a character study showcasing the talents of its elegant trio of actors. David Darlow is particularly effective as cynical, wounded Gustav. Tom Stoppard translated the play, and it shows, as the friends’ dialogue transitions smoothly and naturally between bawdiness and poignancy. The best exchanges are pure poetry, without any melodrama or rhetorical flourishes; but it’s the humane comedy in between, created by each man’s neuroses and ability to push the others’ buttons, that fuels the honesty of the production and reflection after. (Monica Westin)

At the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, (773)404-7336. Through November 29.

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 »

RECOMMENDED

Nobody knows anything. So we fudge and cheat and rely on shorthand cues to get by, boxing our experiences into compartments. People are idiots and we think: Why is it my job to educate you? We stereotype the world while it stares and judges and stereotypes us right back.

Forget post-racial America; we live in a most-racial America—a nation at once curious and bumbling, absurdist and inspiring. A place where misperceptions are commodified and commercialized and available On Demand. We make a fetish of our differences but chafe when someone is stupid enough to single them out. “What’s your problem?”

To some extent, “American Ethnic” (developed for Remy Bumppo Theatre Company’s thinkTank program) does the very thing it decries, pointing a finger at the media and calling it “other.” But see, we are blogs and YouTube and Facebook, and if you think these things aren’t media—if you think theater isn’t media—you’re kidding yourself.

That said, this is one helluva show. Three writer-performers occupy the stage like they’re standing on the ledge of a building: Usman Ally (seen last fall at ATC in “Celebrity Row”), local rap artist and playwright Idris Goodwin and Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, a Chicago native and spoken word performance artist now based in Brooklyn. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

“You say you want a Revolution, well you know,” there are pieces that talk about it and then again, there are pieces that actually start one. Napoleon considered Beaumarchais’ “The Marriage of Figaro” the straw that broke the camel’s back that ushered in the French Revolution and, even today, France’s leading newspaper Le Figaro is named after the fictional servant who outwits his aristocratic master. How badly did the French public want to see “Figaro” when it finally was staged in 1784 after having been officially banned for six years? So badly that that play had to be moved to a larger theater before opening night and even so, people were actually crushed to death trying to get in. Fast forward almost two-and-a-half centuries, and what comes to mind now for most of us is Mozart’s opera adaptation, still universally performed and far less explicitly political, versus the Beaumarchais original, which is today mostly done merely as a curiosity. Even Remy Bumppo’s ads trumpet, “A risqué look at what’s behind the music.”

Those Mozart and opera lovers who will doubtless inevitably catch this production will be immediately struck by the fact that this production weighs in at less than two hours, including a single intermission, whereas an uncut version of the opera can take up to four hours. Much has been edited and altered—sometimes entire scenes and characters are missing while contemporary slang referring to male anatomy is added—in this free adaptation and translation by Ranjit Bolt. Yes, you do miss Mozart’s music when situations arise that seem to demand hearing it, so much so that Remy Bumppo has added other music, much of it in a post-World War II Euro-pop style associated with contemporary French farce which further underlines the comedy rather than the serious issues behind the comedy. A particularly fun moment is when the maids all set aside their dust mops and end up picking up their skirts and aprons to do an impromptu “Can-Can,” complete with Offenbach’s music.

What often remains ambiguous, however, are the class distinctions that need to be drawn to make the action credible. Yes, Figaro is given a provincial Robin Leach-like British accent but he comes off as if he owns the place, whereas the Count is initially monotone and timid and only slightly better-dressed and could well pass as the same age as Figaro. (The comedy depends on the fact that the Count is old, rotund and decrepit, making his interest in fulfilling his “rights” as master of the house with his much younger and more handsome valet’s girlish fiancé all the more outrageous.)

But there are aspects of this production aside from the fact of how rarely such an historically important play is performed that make it worthwhile, particularly the sight gags and comic timing, which are superbly done and fun. And the timely discussions about what politics, if anything, has to do with intelligence and the notion that truths are lies that are repeated often enough to be believed got the biggest laughs in these waning days of a vocabulary-challenged administration that likes preemptive strikes and sees hallucinatory WMDs. “If things keep up as they are,” muses the Count, “the next thing you know, the lower classes will be running the whole show.” (Dennis Polkow)

“The Marriage of Figaro” plays through January 4, 2009 at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, $40-$55, (773)404-7336.

RECOMMENDED

In a time when corporate bailouts and shady business dealings feature prominently in our headlines, Remy Bumppo’s “The Voysey Inheritance” is a refreshing look at one man’s attempts to right his company’s grievous wrongs.

In David Mamet’s adaptation of Harley Granville-Barker’s script, Edward Voysey (Raymond Fox) discovers money missing from several clients’ accounts at the family bank. Voysey confronts his father/partner (David Darlow), and is told that the larceny is business as usual. When informed about the theft, his family is more concerned about the scandal and urges Edward not to go public.

A tight ensemble sharply captures business’ moral Gordian knot. Fox’s gently principled portrayal of a man burdened with his honesty stirs sympathy. Dan Kenney as Edward’s blowhard brother squeezes comic relief out of a serious situation. Rebecca Spence as Edward’s fiancée Alice shows us the importance of backing the man who defies corruption and craven self interest. (Lisa Buscani)

At the Greenhouse Theater, 2257 North Lincoln, (773)404-7336, remybumppo.org, through November 2.