TIMELINE THEATRE COMPANY ANNOUNCES 2012-13 SEASON

Chicago, IL — TimeLine Theatre Company, named one of the nation’s top 10 emerging theatre companies (American Theatre Wing, founder of the Tony Awards®, 2011) and Chicago’s “Best Theatre” (Chicago magazine, 2011), announces its four-play 2012-13 season. TimeLine is dedicated to presenting plays inspired by history that connect to today’s social and political issues, and its upcoming season includes one world premiere and three Chicago premieres.  Read the rest of this entry »

Bret Tuomi as Jeffrey Skilling/Photo: Lara Goetsch

RECOMMENDED

Jeffrey Skilling (Bret Tuomi) comes to Enron with new ideas: mark-to-market accounting, electricity trading. The company makes fistfuls of cash and causes fatal, rolling blackouts in California. But it’s not just Skilling’s ideas that are scandalous; it’s that everyone (Enron lawyers and accountants, the financial industry) lets him get away with it. Read the rest of this entry »

David Parkes and Janet Ulrich Brooks/Photo: Lara Goetsch

RECOMMENDED

In 1982, American arms negotiator Paul Nitze and his Soviet counterpart Yuli Kvitsinsky made a radical break from sit-down nuclear negotiations in Geneva by taking a walk in the woods of Switzerland, where they hashed out a new proposal that they would bring back to their respective governments. This event is the basis for Lee Blessing’s 1986 play, which still resonantly reflects the hazards of the technological advancement of destruction outbalancing humanity’s essential desire for peace. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Theater Wit:

THEATER WIT ANNOUNCES 2011-12 SEASON, PLUS CHICAGO’S FIRST NETFLIX-LIKE LIVE THEATER MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM

Become a Theater Wit Member, see the company’s Chicago debuts of Jason Wells’ The North Plan, Kim Rosenstock’s Tigers Be Still, David Sedaris’ The Santaland Diaries, plus Chicago’s most diverse slate of off-Loop plays and musicals, whenever you like, as often as you like

CHICAGO, July 20, 2011 – Theater Wit Artistic Director Jeremy Wechsler has been busy pinning down the company’s 2011-2012 season line-up, which boasts the Chicago premiere of Jason Wells’ spine tingling apocalyptic drama The North Plan, the Midwest debut of Kim Rosenstock’s hot new dark comedy Tiger Be Still, plus the return of Chicago’s favorite alt-holiday comedy, The Santaland Diaries. Read the rest of this entry »

PJ Powers/Photo: Lara Goetsch

RECOMMENDED

In the first act of “The Front Page,” one of the fast-talking newspapermen condemns his own kind as “a cross between a bootlegger and a whore.” The depiction of reporters as salty, drunken rascals is a huge indicator of how unfamiliar the golden age of  newspapers can be to today’s audiences. With the iPad, blogs and Twitter overtaking print journalism, the typical reporter is, well, anyone with internet access. Playwrights Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur wrote the play at a time when the editor’s controversial voice was the reason you picked it up, and TimeLine sells its own production on the strength of its personalities too.

Artistic Director PJ Powers plays Hildy Johnson, ace reporter for a leading Chicago paper whose resignation happens to coincide with the contentious, scheduled hanging of a man convicted of murdering a black policeman. But when things go wrong, they go really wrong, and it’s a testament to the bottomless energy of the huge Powers-led cast that the freight-train plot never loses momentum or derails. Collette Pollard’s set immerses the audience in a close replica of a 1920s Chicago press room, Lindsey Pate’s costumes pop, and Nick Bowling’s direction makes short work of two-and-a-half hours’ worth of gallows humor. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

At TimeLine Theatre Company, 615 West Wellington, (773)281-8463. Through July 17.

Here’s the press release from TimeLine Theatre Company:

TIMELINE THEATRE COMPANY ANNOUNCES 2011-12 SEASON

One production of 15th Anniversary season to be presented at Theater Wit to accommodate audience growth

Chicago, IL — TimeLine Theatre Company, named the nation’s theater “Company of the Year” for 2010 by Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal and “one of the Chicago theater’s most impressive growth stories” by Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune, announces its four-play 2011-12 season. Dedicated to presenting plays inspired by history that connect to today’s social and political issues, TimeLine’s 15th Anniversary season includes one world premiere, two Chicago premieres, a revival of a Pulitzer Prize-nominated work presented with a twist, and the TimeLine debut of two of Chicago’s most prominent directors.  Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Human rights activists use the “Never Again” rally cry when it comes to genocide. But it has happened again: in Bosnia, in Rwanda, and now in the northern regions of the Sudan. Winter Miller’s “In Darfur” attempts to break down the conflict’s complicated politics and put a face on the tragedy.

Journalist Maryka (Kelli Simpkins) needs proof to put Darfur’s genocide on the front page. She finds it in Hawa (Mildred Marie Langford), a local who has been raped. Maryka publishes her story against the wishes of doctor Carlos (Gregory Isaac), creating violent repercussions.

Langford is a revelation; she nails her character’s humanity. Simpkins and Isaac show the longing and frustration of those forced to stand by and watch. But the star of the show is the multimedia set; Amanda Sweger’s set design and Mike Tutaj’s video and projection work give us the images we need to understand the unthinkable. (Lisa Buscani)

At TimeLine Theatre Company, 615 West Wellington, (773)281-8463. Through March 20.

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 »

Krapp's Last Tape/Photo: Liz Lauren

Top 5 Shows
“The Brother/Sister Plays,” Steppenwolf
“August: Osage County,” Broadway In Chicago
“Hughie”/”Krapp’s Last Tape,” Goodman
“1001,” Collaboraction
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
—Brian Hieggelke

Top 5 Play Revivals
“A Streetcar Named Desire,” Writers’ Theatre
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
“To Kill a Mockingbird,” Steppenwolf Young Adult
“Private Lives,” Chicago Shakespeare Theater
“After the Fall,” Eclipse Theatre
—Dennis Polkow

Top 5 Performances
Brian Dennehy, “Hughie”/”Krapp’s Last Tape,” Goodman
Karen Janes Woditsch, “To Master the Art,” TimeLine
Tracy Letts, “American Buffalo,” Steppenwolf
Amy Morton, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Steppenwolf
Mary Beth Fisher, “Seagull,” Goodman
—Brian Hieggelke

Read the rest of this entry »

Karen Janes Woditsch, Terry Hamilton/Photo: Lara Goetsch

RECOMMENDED

It’s no small challenge to play an iconic celebrity of the likes of Julia Child, especially when a recent film portrayal featured Meryl Streep in Oscars-nom-worthy form. Karen Janes Woditsch is so absolutely perfect in the role at TimeLine, capturing not only the singular vocal style, but also the peculiar mix of bookish intelligence and gee-whiz awkwardness that made up so much of Child’s charm, that we left the theater discussing the possibility that she is actually a better Julia Child than Streep.

Another challenge when you’re dealing with the story of television’s first food celebrity’s discovery of the sumptuousness of French cuisine, and her journey from novice to master, is communicating food’s sensuality. Certain movies, like “Big Night,” have done it, but limited space, time and budgets can lead theaters to shortcuts that exile food out of the senses and into the imagination, like the production of “Po Boy Tango” at Northlight in 2009 that used pantomimed cooking and eating in a distracting manner. No such disappointments here, as the use of smells as a staging device come to the fore in the very first scene, when the succulent odor of shallots cooking in butter punish the theater-goer who’s failed to feast beforehand or, at the very least, made a post-theater reservation at a bistro. This even becomes a certain kind of high-risk theater when, Terry Hamilton, playing Chef Max Bugnard, teaches Child and her classmates how to make perfect oeufs brouilés (scrambled eggs), by actually doing so on stage. Call it theater of the delicious. Read the rest of this entry »