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

RECOMMENDED

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

RECOMMENDED

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 »

Sean Patrick Fawcett and Geoff Button/Photo: Ryan Bourque

RECOMMENDED

This is Sean Graney and the Hypocrites doing what they do best: chilling, dark comedy that establishes an unmatched atmospheric aesthetic. Georg Buchner’s unfinished, somewhat disjointed play about the dehumanizing effects of poverty gets the Graney treatment, with thrilling, if sometimes confusing, expressionistic movement and dialogue. The forces crushing antihero Franz Woyzeck are claustrophobic but Brechtian, with haunting songs and sound design by Mikhail Fiksel; and when Woyzeck finally succumbs to murder, the rampant bloodshed approaches a true theater of cruelty without ever losing a moment of controlled precision. Particular kudos to the exquisite set design, which, with its Damien Hirst-like medicine cabinets, stuffed reindeer, plastic sheeting, and tree stumps, evokes an apocalyptic element that somehow adds even more tension. (Monica Westin)

At the Chopin Theater, 1543 West Division. Through May 22.

As the economy slowly lifts us back to our feet and we look around, we see a remarkable sight: a performance industry in Chicago that survived the worst recession since the Great Depression wholly intact. Sure, we had a few brushes with death, and no doubt a few very small, very new theater companies threw in the towel, as they do even in good years, but unlike many other cities across the country, we’re in pretty good shape. How good? The League of Chicago Theatres issued a press release last week proclaiming our town as America’s theater leader, with more than 250 professional theaters, including four Regional Tony Award winners, and a combined annual budget of $250 million serving five million audience members. Add in our thriving dance community, a comedy scene that’s the envy of the nation and two world-class opera companies and you’d have to say we’re doing pretty damn good. But neither the economy nor any cultural organization is fully out of the water yet, and the dramatic uncertainty injected into the political sea by Mayor Daley’s decision to call it a day means Chicago’s performance community will need some steady hands at the wheel these next few years. Accordingly, for this edition of The Players, we’ve broadened our horizon and taken a closer-than-ever look at the individuals in charge of the financial fitness of our local institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Those who only like their Gilbert & Sullivan served up with all of the trimmings—trained voices, full orchestrations, full chorus, et al—would be well-warned to stay away from Sean Graney’s musically minimalist version of “Pirates of Penzance.” Its famous melodies are merely approximated, by and large, by Graney’s small troupe of committed actors who dabble in singing, and 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.

And yet the charm, energy, integrity and youth of the Hypocrites re-imagining of this familiar warhorse is so contagious and so dramatically convincing that their spirited irreverence suggests a contemporary approximation of how G & S might have been experienced in their own time. Read the rest of this entry »

Greg Allen’s adaptation of Kafka’s “The Trial” is a fairly standard treatment for the Hypocrites: with a lot of poetic license, Allen replaces vast amounts of the original text with self-aware banter that constantly draws attention to its own recycled nature. What results is a play that’s much lighter than reading Kafka; the ominous, heavy tone of “The Trial” is replaced by something of a bedroom farce, with constantly slamming doors and sex jokes about how arousing an accused man is. Allen also plays up the connection between the plot of the novel—a man is tried for a crime neither he nor the audience know the nature of—and improv acting, and Brennan Buhl as main character Josef K. borders on precious in his adorable self-aware aiming-to-please showman/buffoon who slowly gains awareness and nihilism. The other actors handily take on the farce with sustained energy and intelligence. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Visual jokes are the smartest aspect of this stylish adaptation of Sartre’s existential classic about three malefactors trapped in a tiny room in hell together for all of eternity—the origin of the famous quote “hell is other people.” In this production, the scariest aspect of hell is its interior designers: the set, an inclined, cramped, shocking pink Schiaparelli-esque nightmare with a giant nude statue and ugly powder-blue furniture (with one comfortable chair the characters fight over) is a perfectly awful place to spend the hereafter. Director Sean Graney handles the story adeptly, and if anything with almost too much vitality; the exquisite claustrophobia that marks the beginning of the production gets dispelled by madcap chaos by the end. As the characters begin to admit why they’re in hell and to work their torture on one another, Graney has them pacing like caged animals, pasting torn-out pages of ”Being and Nothingness” on a wall with toothpaste, switching clothes and seducing one another crassly as they destroy the space around them. The action makes the show imminently watchable but results in a frenetic energy that seems less suited to somber Sartre than to farce. Ultimately, it’s a smart, immensely entertaining but psychologically superficial treatment. “I can’t go on without making people suffer,” one character declares; I wish the Hypocrites would let the audience suffer just a little bit of the torture Sartre’s characters go through. (Monica Westin)

The Hypocrites‘ No Exit” plays at the Athenaeum, 2936 N. Southport, (800)982-2787, through July 11.

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 »

Photo: John W. Sisson, Jr.

It’s got a crackerjack creative team behind it, and yet something about the Hypocrites’ “Cabaret” never quite clicks.

It’s certainly not the material; those elements may very well render it impossible to have a bad production of this show. For starters, there’s Joe Masteroff’s lean-but-loaded book that continues to be politically relevant. (Indeed, well-meaning citizens minding their own business and dismissing their country’s political extremists as little more than an annoying bunch of fools: German attitudes towards Nazis in the early 1930s, or that of Americans’ for Tea Party “patriots” in the 2010s?)  Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb’s superb score is packed with melodically rich and toe-tapping-good tunes. And then there’s the structure of the piece itself (the brainchild of legendary American musical theater master Harold Prince), a seamless union of traditional musical numbers that propel the plot and advance characterizations, and those that exist solely to provide ironic commentaries on them, an innovation that years later would be developed and exploited to marvelous use in such other landmark musicals as “Company” and “A Chorus Line.”

The problem here is that the production is as scatterbrained as it is unsubtle. Director Matt Hawkins’ staging never misses an opportunity to highlight a line of sexually suggestive dialogue or double-entendre lyrics to the point of reducing the material’s seediness to something synthetic and slick. Choreographer Marissa Moritz’s work only adds to an overkill of decadence that quickly peters out. Read the rest of this entry »