“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” not to mention the much less holy head that governs in the name of the crown. I believe that little piece of Shakespearean wisdom sits at the core of Sean Graney’s new play “Sugarward,” which opened on Saturday night at The Side Project, but I cannot be entirely sure. Frankly, I am still somewhat perplexed as to the play’s plot, which is unbelievably convoluted and directionless for such an intimate, two-person (four-character) comedy-drama. The playwright’s laborious, heightened speech detailing a smattering of issues of eighteenth-century British imperialism—the morality of slavery, the limitations of the governorship, the Triangular Trade—is impossibly difficult to follow and hard to enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »

Christine Stulik, Matt Kahler, Dana Omar, Emily Casey/Photo: Matthew Gregory Hollis

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Following in the footsteps of its highly successful and innovative “Pirates of Penzance,” which is being revived and running in repertory alongside of this offering, the Hypocrites are once again turning to Gilbert & Sullivan this holiday season.

Those who only like their Gilbert & Sullivan served up with all of the trimmings, i.e., trained voices, full orchestrations, full chorus, et al, would be well-warned to stay away from Sean Graney’s musically minimalist version of either “Pirates of Penzance” or his newest G & S adaptation of the Victorian duo’s most famous work, “The Mikado.”

As with “Pirates,” Sullivan’s orchestrations are stripped down to the lowest-common-denominator guitar chords, largely strummed by the performers themselves hootenanny style, sometimes incorporating clarinet, banjo, mandolin, ukulele and accordion.

From the opening change of lyric from “If you want to know who we are, we are gentlemen of this land” instead of “from Japan,” it is clear that the Japanese contours of the allegorical work are minimalized. And yet, the Victorian ambiance is retained by the characters having faux British accents and often singing in a highly stylized manner, cleverly making G & S performance traditions themselves part of what is satirized here. Read the rest of this entry »

By Eric Shoemaker

Sean Graney was not content with “Seven Sicknesses.” It seems that his successful and now traveling adaptation of every Sophocles tragedy merely opened a can of worms—extremely long, bloody, cathartic worms. He wants to go bigger, up to the adaptation of every extant Attic Greek tragedy, to compose a two-part day-long epic event. The script, already read-through by a group of Graney loyals and at a whopping 650 pages, could be a masterwork. Or it could be a pain in the ass for the eternally seated audience.

I chatted with Chicago’s tragic laureate about his penchant for Grecian blood. Read the rest of this entry »

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Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot… So begins the rhyme that commemorates the central event of Bill Cain’s immensely entertaining ode to art, politics and the perils of negotiating both. It’s a play about learning to lie honestly and artfully.

A past-his-prime “Shagspeare”(a reliably deadpan Marc Grapey) is approached by Sir Robert Cecil (a suitably poisonous Mark Montgomery) to write a drama about a current event, the foiled attempt by Catholic rebels to blow up Parliament. Shag is drawn into a cat-and-mouse game of political intrigue and in the process, discovers himself as a man, artist and father. Read the rest of this entry »

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“Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!” says the all-too-curious narrator as his eyes befall a boon friend, Roderick, in Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Reuniting with his pal, he observes, not only a change in Roderick’s demeanor, but a stunning physical transformation–a person familiar, but mysteriously altered. Perhaps “stunning” is not a strong enough word to describe the visitor’s initial impression of Mr. Usher in The Hypocrites’ new staging of the tale, however. For, in director Sean Graney’s hour-long adaptation, Usher is portrayed by a woman in top-hatted drag. Well, three women actually, in breathtaking rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Ryan Bourque

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While the theater struggles like never before to maintain its shrinking audience, the not-so-simple question of how to get butts in seats has arisen once again. Is it about time to give up and go back to the drawing board? Not just yet, for a offbeat solution is currently being tested by The Hypocrites in their world-premiere adaptation “Romeo Juliet”: Having tea with the audience.

“Romeo Juliet” is not the first time a theater company has incorporated food and drink into a play, but never has it been served with such cheerful comfort. Read the rest of this entry »

Victory Gardens announces its 2012-2013 season

Season to include works by Bill Cain, Philip Dawkins, Anupama Chandrasekhar, Samuel D. Hunter, and Marcus Gardley with directors Sean Graney, Seth Bockley, Dexter Bullard, Joanie Schultz and Chay Yew

Chicago, IL— Artistic Director Chay Yew and Executive Director Jan Kallish announce the 2012-2013 Victory Gardens season. The season will include Equivocation by Bill Cain, directed by Sean Graney; Failure: A Love Story by Phillip Dawkins, directed by Seth Bockley; Disconnect by Anupama Chandrasekhar, directed by Dexter Bullard; The Whale by Samuel D. Hunter, directed by Joanie Schultz; and Chicago is Burning by Marcus Gardley, directed by Chay Yew.  Read the rest of this entry »

Dana Omar, Robert McLean, Ryan Bourque, Lindsey Gavel and Shawn Pfautsch/Photo: Matthew Gregory Hollis

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The Hypocrites haven’t simply reimagined this Gilbert & Sullivan classic; they’ve wholeheartedly re-appropriated it, paring its grandiosity down to a much more streamlined, folksier scale. Light-opera purists might scoff at the idea of putting the Major General in Big Bird slippers or introducing the daughters by having them sing “Milkshake,” but those people would be forgetting that G&S had a sense of humor in their own time. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Matthew Gregory Hollis

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It feels almost beside the point to note that, in turning Sophocles’ seven surviving plays into a four-hour theatrical event (with dinner), some elements are going to get edited out or lost. Each of the plays has been compressed to half an hour or less, so that the tension inherent in, say, the dramatic irony of Oedipus’ self-delusion, never builds over enough time for it to be unbearable for the audience, as with the Hypocrites’ 2009 adaptation of the play. And the most common critique volleyed at writer-director Sean Graney—that he butchers literature to make entertaining theater—could certainly be applied here, for Graney’s trademark high and low language is out in full force, modernizing the stories and adding in comedy at every turn. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from The Hypocrites:

THE HYPOCRITES’ 15TH SEASON FACT SHEET:
A SEASON OF WORLD PREMIERE ADAPTATIONS

Sophocles: Seven Sicknesses
Based on Sophocles’ seven surviving texts: Ajax, Antigone, Trachinian Women, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes & Oedipus at Colonus)
Adapted & Directed by Sean Graney
WHEN: September 6-October 16, 2011
A FIVE HOUR EVENT!

Pirates of Penzance (Remount)
Music by Arthur Sullivan, Libretto by W.S. Gilbert
New Arrangement by Kevin O’Donnell
Directed by Sean Graney
WHEN: November 24, 2011-January 22, 2012

Six Characters in Search of an Author
By Luigi Pirandello
Adapted by Steve Moulds
Directed by Halena Kays
Winter 2012 TBD

Romeo and Juliet
Based on the libretto for the Bellini opera I Capuleti e i Montecchi by Felice Romani
Adapted & Directed by Sean Graney
Spring 2012 TBD  Read the rest of this entry »