"The Etiquette of Vigilance": Alana Arenas, Alfred H. Wilson/Photo: Peter Coombs

RECOMMENDED

Each fall, Steppenwolf puts on three “developmental productions” of new work under the “First Look” rubric. Seeing all three in one day and evening, as is the custom for the press, makes for one of my favorite days of theater each year. Developmental for Steppenwolf means stage them in the Garage space, with a fairly minimal shared set framework; it does not mean skimp on world-class directors and actors.

In “The Etiquette of Vigilance,” playwright Robert O’Hara contemplates the life led by Travis, the 10-year-old boy who slept on the couch in Lorraine Hansberry’s classic “A Raisin in the Sun.” Now he’s an old man, with a grown daughter and a life spent believing in the dream, even as the realities of living in a violently segregated Chicago kept beating him down. Read the rest of this entry »

Robert O’Hara, Jason Wells and Sam Marks/Photo: Brian McConkey

Steppenwolf’s sixth annual “First Look Repertory of New Work” includes readings of plays about family values in contemporary life—lesbian parenthood, recession mentality—but the three full productions running in rep are most striking for the way they look backwards to past history and plays. Robert O’Hara’s “The Etiquette of Vigilance” imagines the Younger family’s contemporary history in an updating of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.” Jason Wells’ “The North Plan” imagines an anarchic, not-so-distant American future that combines archetypal American dystopian elements with web 2.0 technology; a bureaucrat and an administrative assistant hack into a database that lists who will be persecuted by the new world order. And Sam Marks takes up the theme of artistic fame and the ironies of posthumous fame that have long been touchstones of American theater. We spoke with Marks about this year’s festival the week before it opened. Read the rest of this entry »

Caroline Heffernan and Phillip R. Smith/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Harper Lee novel that remains one of the most beloved books of recent decades, Steppenwolf for Young Adults is presenting Christopher Sergel’s dramatization for a short run of weekday matinees for schools with weekend performances for the public.

Wisely ignoring the also-beloved film adaptation, no easy task, Sergel and director Hallie Gordon give us the adult Jean Louise as a young adult writer (Carolyn Defrin) at a typewriter overlooking the stage, actually reliving in her mind’s eye the wonder and adventure that was her Depression-era childhood in Alabama. Very little of the novel’s exposition is dramatized in this whirlwind two-hour adaptation, which moves quickly to ground the events surrounding the trial of a black man accused of raping a young white girl in a segregated South. Read the rest of this entry »

Laurie Metcalf, Kate Arrington and Kevin Anderson/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

A title can do much to shape the expectations of the audience, or it can do very little. When Jonathan Franzen named his epic new novel “Freedom,” he was advertising his ambition, raising reader expectations before a page was even turned. Likewise, “Detroit” signals big things. Where it might have indicated, a couple of decades ago, a story about the glories of America’s greatest industrial success, automobiles, or perhaps the music of a musical city, Motown, today “Detroit” serves as shorthand for America in decline. A big topic, in other words.

Lisa D’Amour’s new play certainly touches on big ideas, and does so with a deft mastery of character development and comic touches, rather than didacticism. Set in a past-its-prime “first ring” suburb, it’s something of a Truly Desperate Housewives, as Mary (Laurie Metcalf) and Ben (Ian Barford), a seemingly prototypical middle-class couple hanging on in the face of Ben’s layoff from his bank job, open themselves up to the new neighbors next door, the striving-for-a-fresh-start substance-abuse addicts, Sharon (Kate Arrington) and Kenny (Kevin Anderson). D’Amour’s script does a nice job of interlacing a bunch of engaging themes, like the near-extinction of the idea of neighborliness, the persistent stubbornness of the American Dream even in the face of life’s real nightmares and the question of how well we actually know anyone: our friends, our spouses, our selves. In D’Amour’s world, there is no escape from grim reality: not through drugs or alcohol, not through internet fantasies, not through nature and certainly not through decamping to suburbia. Reality is depressing (as it always seems to be in the theater), but there is hope. Hope in this new friendship, hope in tenacious efforts to overcome life’s setbacks. When the neighbors start seeming to be something other than what they’ve offered themselves as, it’s not grounds for a breakup, but just some concern. Because even liars are better company than loneliness. Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Irwin and Kate Arrington/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

In Bruce Norris’ latest, Bee (Kate Arrington) confronts her blunt future self (Marylouise Burke) and explores her less-than-ideal soon-to-come. Her blowhard boyfriend (Tom Irwin) copes with Bee’s futuristic tales, even as we discover she may not be the most reliable witness.

Arrington appeals as she tries to make the most of a fate she can’t change; Burke’s no-nonsense riffing is pragmatic fun. The standout here is Irwin; he makes us feel for his self-centered sumbitch who thinks he has found love with a younger woman, only to watch her spin out.

Anna Shapiro’s driving direction keeps the timing sharp and the humor crisp. Todd Rosenthal’s airy, geometric set hints at  future possibilities. It’s a bit annoying that Norris asks us to suspend disbelief and accept the sci-fi/fantasy format only to cavalierly derail it, but the trip is worth the detour. (Lisa Buscani)

Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted, (312)335-1650, through August 29.

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 »

William Petersen and Ian Barford/Photo: Michael Brosilow

Frank Galati’s production of Beckett’s canonical play is visually elegant, with an effectively angular and alienating set, mostly faithful to the script and loaded with gifted performances. Unfortunately, many of the most affecting elements have been lost in this production, which turns it from an absurd tragic farce into something that resembles a family drama—and that serves more as a showcase for actors than a vehicle for Beckett’s text. The pace is the biggest problem; actors sprint through the first half of the script, leaving little time to linger on dark humor and striking lines, and instead spend great energy on demonstrative gestures and facial expressions rather than seeming to enjoy the language or each other. When it finally slows down, there’s no emotional foundation built. William Peterson makes a dynamic Hamm, but he dominates the stage with so much body language that it’s easy to forget he’s paralyzed, making the threat of him ending nil. Similarly, Martha Lavey as Nell, who’s literally dying, is the liveliest person onstage—in a play about being stuck and waiting for the end, the energy and dynamic arc feels misplaced. (Monica Westin)

At Steppenwolf, 1650 N Halsted, (312)335-1650. Through June 6.

Here’s the press release from Steppenwolf:

Steppenwolf Theatre Company Announces
2010-2011 Subscription Season

CHICAGO (March 10, 2010) – Steppenwolf Theatre Company is pleased to announce its 2010-2011 Subscription Season, exploring the theme of public/private self.  Season subscriptions go on-sale to the public on Wednesday, March 10 at 11 a.m.

Detroit
a new play by Lisa D’Amour
featuring ensemble members Kate Arrington and Robert Breuler

Edward Albee’s
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
directed by Pam MacKinnon
featuring ensemble members Tracy Letts and Amy Morton

Sex with Strangers
by Laura Eason, directed by associate artist Jessica Thebus
featuring ensemble member Sally Murphy with Stephen Louis Grush

The Hot L Baltimore
by Lanford Wilson, directed by ensemble member Tina Landau
featuring ensemble members Alana Arenas, K. Todd Freeman and Yasen Peyankov

Middletown
a new play by Will Eno, directed by Les Waters
featuring ensemble member Alana Arenas Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Robert J. Saferstein

RECOMMENDED

In the climax of the Steppenwolf revival of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo,” a polyester-clad, red-faced Tracy Letts tears up the stage, literally, by trashing the contents of a Chicago antique store circa 1975 so violently that audience members actually duck. But Letts’ current work as an actor, however intense and convincing, is nothing compared to the way that he is currently tearing up stages around town as a playwright.

Where else but in Chicago can you see the work of a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright in no less than three fascinatingly different guises during the same week of a dreary February?  There’s the Mamet Steppenwolf revival where you can experience Letts “in the flesh,” as it were, in the work of another playwright who has profoundly influenced him; an explosive performance of Letts’ first play “Killer Joe” in a no-holds barred production at the intimate Profiles Theatre; and the national touring production of Letts’ epic masterpiece, “August: Osage County,” the work that has brought him such unprecedented and award-winning attention and acclaim.

For those of us who missed the original Steppenwolf premiere back during the summer of 2007—which is when the play is set—or in its later incarnations on Broadway and on London’s West End and who therefore may wonder what all of the fuss was about and whether or not a play could possibly live up to all of the hype, the answer is a resounding “yes.” Read the rest of this entry »

Glenn Davis, Phillip James Brannon and K. Todd Freeman in "The Brothers Size"/Photo: Michael Brosilow.

RECOMMENDED

The question of whether the two separate “packages” of “The Brother/Sister Plays” can be seen on their own was a bit of a topic at the press opening on Saturday, one which those of us who saw both can only offer a hypothetical yes to. But we can unequivocally say that seen together they form an epic new work of theater with a power that grows deeper and richer with each installment. Not bad for a 29-year-old playwright, Tarell Alvin McCraney, who crafted the strongest of the three plays (the two shorter works are seen together) while still in school.

The loosely structured story of a Louisiana family across three somewhat timeless generations is told through a series of vignettes, dreams, songs, dances, etc.—a list of parts that can’t begin to sum its whole. “In the Red and the Brown Water,” the “sisters” play, chronicles the heartbreak and sacrifice that love in all its forms (familial, passionate) engenders when Oya, played with effusive joy and heartwrenching pathos by ensemble member Alana Arenas, seems to pay a life of consequences when she passes up a scholarship to care for her ailing mother. “The Brothers Size,” the second play chronologically and the first play of the second package (less confusing than it sounds) is a masterpiece of brotherly love, both the sparring and laughing that bonds real brothers, as well as the mysteries of friendships, perhaps even more, that can bond men. Phillip James Brannon and K. Todd Freeman will tear your heart apart and make you smile with pleasure as they jam to the sounds of Otis Redding’s “Try A Little Tenderness.” The final play, “Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet,” explores more explicitly a subject raised in the earlier plays, that is, the love that dare not speak its name, when the marvelous Glenn Davis, now playing the son of the character he’d inhabited in the earlier plays, goes through the experience of coming out, as filtered through the African-American experience. Read the rest of this entry »