Frank Galati and Jon Michael Hill/Photo: Michael Brosilow

Don’t let the bare stage fool you.  Stripped down to the concrete blocks of the foundation, Tina Landau’s playing space for “The Tempest” (at the Steppenwolf) is more like a blank canvas painted with undulating video, eye-popping costumes and a sonic barrage of thunderclaps.

The visuals aren’t arresting so much as extravagant, and there is fun in that—to a degree.  Too often the choices feel random and I found myself asking: why?

The disparate narratives of Shakespeare’s play—the marooned, scheming noblemen; the budding romance; a slave who plots his revenge; the existential pangs of an old man—exist in separate worlds.  As for an overall theme?  You got me.  I’m still drowning in imagery that refuses to sort itself out.  Landau’s vision is flashy, but it doesn’t reveal the essence within.  It is the theatrical equivalent of a rave, where sensory-overload becomes the end rather than the means.  I suspect many will disagree with this sentiment.

Though busier as a director than an actor these days, when Frank Galati takes the stage it makes an impact.  His Prospero lords over this remote isle like a hippie with a god complex.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” often considered the Bard’s best and funniest comedy, was conceived as a midwinter diversion related to the end of the Christmas season, January 6, or Epiphany, which in Elizabethan times was characterized by revelry, masquerades, charades, trickery, servants and masters trading places and chaotic partying, something akin to New Year’s Eve, April Fool’s Day and Halloween combined.  Josie Rourke’s water-themed production made a splash, literally, opening in the midst of a spring blizzard that reminded us that you can schedule a Christmas-themed production virtually any time of the year in Chicago and can still get Christmas-like weather.           Read the rest of this entry »

Frank Galati (center) and the cast of Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s production of The Tempest/Photo: Michael Brosilow

By Dennis Polkow

No.  Shakespeare. Ever.  Despite Steppenwolf being the oldest ensemble theater in Chicago, there has curiously been no Shakespeare performed by the company across its nearly thirty-five-year existence.  Until now, that is, with the staging of the Bard’s last play, “The Tempest.”  Why the long drought in the first place, and why end it now?

“Ever since I’ve been in the ensemble,” says Tina Landau, Steppenwolf ensemble member since 1997, who is directing “The Tempest” and is upstairs during a company dinner break two hours before the first preview of the show, “many ensemble members have been longing to do Shakespeare.  Five years ago, I pitched ‘The Tempest’ as one of three plays that I most wanted to do and through a confluence of the right timing and the right season—particularly with this year’s overall theme of the imagination—it finally all came together.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the release from Chicago Shakespeare Theater:

Chicago Shakespeare Theater Announces
A Season of Ruthless Love and Undying Ambition
Charming Villains and Feuding Lovers Fill the Stage
Affordable Access a Hallmark of the Season

Chicago—March 30, 2009—Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) Artistic Director Barbara Gaines and
Executive Director Criss Henderson announced today the series lineup of productions, with new affordable access opportunities, for the 2009/10 Season. “Villains and lovers make for compelling storytelling, and this year–from Shakespeare’s beguiling hunchback and fiery fiancées, to Chekhov’s restless lovers and Coward’s dueling divorcées–they’re out in force,” said Barbara Gaines. “These great characters of dramatic literature will tread the boards with tales of human endeavor and folly, provoking thought and laughter in equal measure.” A three-play subscription series of classics, renowned artists from around the world and productions for the entire family set the stage for Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s tenth season on Navy Pier.  Read the rest of this entry »

By Fabrizio O. Almeida

“Here’s the story. I’d been playing Hamlet for the RSC [The Royal Shakespeare Company] for two years and I had finished it. And when you do something like that people ask you very, very serious questions. ‘Now, what’s the next great mountain you’re going to scale? What’s the next great role?’ And the first thing I was offered was five days—it might have just been four—on this new ‘Star Wars’ movie. And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a funny idea to come off of ‘Hamlet’ into that. I’ll do it straight away.” The role was Imperial Commander Moff Jerjerrod in 1983’s “Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi,” and the man discussing his career is British actor Michael Pennington, on the phone from his home in London ten days before his scheduled arrival into Chicago for “Sweet William,” his one-man Shakespeare show at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. The “Star Wars” saga continues…

“And I did this very, very small part—I never thought twice about it—and now get a regular mailbag from fans who’ve downloaded pictures off the Internet and want them signed. They don’t want them personalized, of course, because they’re going to sell them. So always I personalize them.” 4,000 miles away, Pennington’s mischievous chuckle registers loud and clear.

The saucy sense of humor is refreshing, especially coming from a man considered to be a stalwart of the classical British stage. Indeed, he was part and parcel of an unusually rich vintage of serious Shakespeare interpreters (including Judi Dench, Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart) who helped cement the reputation of the RSC in England and around the world throughout the 1970s. And his Hamlet—which in 2008 was cited by British theater critic Michael Billington of the Guardian as one of the top ten defining performances of that role of all time—was the subject of Pennington’s 1996 book, “Hamlet: A User’s Guide,” a part performance diary and part analytical riff on the role. Not surprisingly, it’s this lifelong fascination with Shakespeare, that began at the age of 11 when his parents first took him to see “Macbeth” (“I was extremely unwilling to go and yet the subsequent two hours changed my life”) and is responsible for some 20,000 performance hours over a forty-year career, that informs “Sweet William.” “I’m really accounting for my own lifetime with him, trying to say some things about the man that perhaps come as a surprise, as well as do some pieces which aren’t necessarily the most familiar or expected ones.”

You might say “Sweet William” also brings Pennington full circle back to Chicago. “There is a little bit of a trail running back about twenty years as far as Chicago and I are concerned,” explains the actor. “Back in the late 1980s, when I had my English Shakespeare Company (ESC) with [co-director] Michael Bogdanov, we came and played our seven play history cycle [“The Wars of the Roses”] which was quite a big success. It was the first time I really experienced the warmth which Chicago extends to visiting theater companies if they think they’re good. We played the Auditorium. It was absolutely wonderful and I always remember it as a real highlight of what was in fact a three-year tour altogether.”

The more Pennington goes on, the more he sounds like a Chicago theater vet waxing nostalgic. When discussing the ESC double bill of “Twelfth Night” and “Macbeth” with which he toured a few years later, he remembers them playing at the Blackstone Theater, now the Merle Reskin. (“It was up on Wabash somewhere.”) And when, in 1995, he directed American actors in a new production of “Twelfth Night,” he recalls that Chicago Shakespeare Theater was then called the Chicago Shakespeare Repertory, and that they performed at the Ruth Page Theater. Pennington, who subsequently returned to Chicago to celebrate the opening of CST’s new home on Navy Pier, considers “Sweet William” a sort of follow up to all this. Or, as he simply puts it, “The latest development in a gentle but long-lasting relationship with Chicago and with Barbara Gaines’ [Chicago Shakespeare Theater artistic director] company in particular.”

Still, an insider’s knowledge of the Loop isn’t the only surprising thing coming out of Pennington. On the old guard: “As much as I admire and have regard for the great actors of the past—and I knew Gielgud and Olivier and Richardson—any old-fashioned style of playing or production that fails to keep pace, or that lets itself fall behind is going to lose its audience.” On Shakespeare’s relevance today: “It is relevant today. But there are things that are a little uncomfortable and not relevant today. But something about him seems to speak to us all the time. I mean, I haven’t taken the time to look but you’ll find something about Barack Obama in Shakespeare somewhere.” On American verse-speaking as being inferior to the British: “I would repudiate that on the whole. You have as much right to this language as we do and there is an American way of speaking this stuff which is absolutely as good as the English way.” On being part of the exclusive Hamlet club: “To be honest with you, I don’t often go and see Shakespeare and I haven’t seen a ‘Hamlet’ for years. I’m afraid that’s battle fatigue.” And, of course, on “Star Wars” conventions: “I draw the line at them, I’m afraid. Actually, I don’t even know the story of the films so I suppose I’d be regarded as a bit of a heretic.”

And what if those “Star Wars” geeks made a pilgrimage to Navy Pier? “I’d be very happy about it. Yes, maybe we’d turn a nice profit for Barbara. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m glad people are aware of me for some reason or another.”

“Sweet William” plays at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand Avenue, (312)595-5600, through February 22nd.

What makes Chicago’s theater world special? We picked up the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly for clues. In the cover story, “CSI” star William Petersen explains his decision to leave his role as one of the top paid actors in television, earning a rumored $600,000 an episode, to move back to Chicago and Chicago theater: “It was too safe for me at this point. So I needed to try and break that, and the way to do that, for me, is the theater.” EW went on to credit Petersen for much of the show’s success, notably bringing a theatrical ensemble philosophy to play in its production. Or consider the runaway success of Steppenwolf’s “August: Osage County,” which transferred to Broadway,  receiving critical acclaim and multiple Tony Awards, not by shaking it up with Broadway “names” but instead by virtually transferring the Steppenwolf production intact, with the addition of lead producer and fellow Chicagoan Steve Traxler. What makes Chicago theater—or for that matter, Chicago dance or any other form of performance practiced on our stages—special? We’d contend it’s the power of the ensemble, the spirit of collaboration that champions artistic risk-taking and subordinates the commercial. And so, in that spirit, the critical ensemble responsible for Newcity’s ongoing stage coverage presents our take on the most influential people on and offstage in Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »

Karen Aldridge as Lady Macbeth

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No play has more superstition surrounding it than Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” a name and title that traditionally dare not even be spoken backstage nor anywhere near a theater lest it become haunted; hence, the moniker “The Scottish Play,” a safer alternative that will keep the goblins and witches at bay. That is certainly one interpretation. Another is to see “Macbeth” as conscience gone berserk in blood-lusting after power and, ergo, nothing in the play is taken literally.

And then there is Barbara Gaines, who updates “Macbeth” to the present day but where nothing, absolutely nothing, is left to the imagination. Given how many metaphorical Macbeths roam the moors of our minds, there is something to be said for the novelty of having everything spelled out, however unnerving. And from the opening moments when we see soldiers in commando fatigues machine-gunning those who are lying face down on the ground, we are reminded that however much we think that Macbeth’s era was a more brutal one than ours, think again.

When Lady Macbeth (Karen Aldridge) speaks of her plucked nipples, she does so topless and the audience is staring right at them, fully exposed. The three witches meld in and out of a hoard of paparazzi and journalists and one of them who shows us a bloody, newborn baby is male (Mike Nussbaum), not that it matters much, as they are unisex witches, and their voices during their incantations and prophecies are electronically altered to eerie effect. When Macbeth starts to lose it at the dinner table, we see what he sees: a grotesque, bloody head staring at him accusingly that gradually becomes more real, taking the physical form of a mutilated walking corpse that interacts and chases him, right into the audience. When the children of Macbeth’s rival are murdered, we are mercilessly shown the act, complete with an audible neck crack. Lady Macbeth’s death, the details of which are never spelled out in the play itself, is shown as her naked body in a bathtub of blood, making the suicide often implied in the text explicit.

Macbeth (Ben Carlson) has the physical demeanor of a skinhead and imagines himself as king via video clips of statements that he makes, ironically, which become no longer necessary nor relevant after he actually becomes king. And when an African-American becomes king at the end and those video clips are restored overhead, an analogy to the start of an Obama presidency is made complete.

All of this could be viewed as violent theater of the absurd for its own sake, but whatever we may chose to make of all of this—and I suspect that many will find it all much too much—Gaines’ gratuitous interpretation can be fully supported by the Bard’s own words. In this, the proceedings are a marked contrast from say, Robert Falls’ “King Lear” where the excesses had little if anything to do with the text and where special effects ended up concealing far more than they revealed.

In the end, Gaines’ “Macbeth” gives us plenty of haunting and disturbing images to take away, to be sure, but none more explicit or timely than bearing in mind that all of the excesses come about as the direct result of the potentially corrupting effect of power. (Dennis Polkow)

“Macbeth” plays through March 8 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand (at Navy Pier),  (312)595-5600. $44-$70.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This a new version of the review of this play, based on the critic’s viewing of the second act. See this for the original and the comments that accompanied it.

Having now seen both halves, I still find that the high point of of Zeljko Djukic’s production takes place in its very first moments, when two suspicious Capulet servants circle one another ambivalently and vulnerably, creating a tension and hypersensitivity that could have set an exquisite emotional compass for the play, but unfortunately the aura evaporates almost immediately. Instead, the show feels increasingly less controlled and meaningful throughout the first act, as actors rush on and offstage with little palpable motivation and with a real sense of free-floating anxiety as they attempt to maintain one high note of emotional timbre. The second half suffers from the overzealous intensity of the first; when the real climaxes should occur, they feel curiously stilted, and the final scene, which is performed silently and with arresting visual effect, feels like the result of exhaustion and tacked on rather than in dialogue with the rest of the show. Romeo and Juliet come across as more childish than foolishly adolescent, with a Juliet who seems to be always on the verge of stamping her foot and whose most memorable gesture is curling up in her mother’s lap; during the lovers’ “morning-after” scene there’s no sense of motivation for their pairing, sexual or otherwise. With the exception of Carolyn Hoerdmann’s earthy Nurse and Peter DeFaria as a Friar Laurence who creates something close to a moral center of the play, the actors seem apprehensive rather than commanding, the show seems to be stuck in the text rather than deploying or appropriating it. And at the risk of sounding like a philistine, I might suggest that for a production that deliberately doesn’t try to do anything progressive, three hours plus is simply too much to ask of an audience.  (Monica Westin)

At Chopin Theater, 1543 W. Division. www.tutato.com. Through December 21.

A pure spectacle of multicultural burlesque epic, but not usually in a good way. Visually gorgeous but fairly incoherent, the show’s biggest obstacle is that very little of it is actually comprehensible; instead, while many lines are in English, the actors speak in a number of languages that seem to reflect their ability to speak English rather than the importance of their words. For example, the actor playing Oberon doesn’t speak any English, which makes much of the plot hard to follow. In addition to the story getting lost, the acting takes a back seat as well, most of it quite weak except for Ajay Kumar as a charismatic Puck and Aporup Acharya as a Bottom who brings the only real element of real human character into the show. Director Tim Supple’s obvious Peter Brook influence doesn’t seem to be much updated, with drumming and sound that one might expect at a sort of “ethnic dancing/drumming” festival; and the show feels dated, all bright lights and flashy colors and excitement about the exotic without any critical element to it. It’s also immediately obvious that this production is something of a colonial enterprise rather than an independent theater company—in fact, Supple traveled for a year in India hand-picking actors for himself, a fact that sits uneasily over the show, which also moves much too slowly for all of the running and shrieking that happens onstage. The experience is of a colorful tornado of actors rolling on top of one another and climbing up and down ropes—but all this action doesn’t seem to really take us anywhere, especially when the lines recede into unintelligibilty. The ending borders on a love-fest, with actors singing, holding candles, and asking the audience to clap along with them, in a moment that would make Edward Said roll over in his grave; this is Orientalism at its most insidious.  (Monica Westin)

At Chicago Shakespeare‘s Courtyard Theater, 800 East Grand, (312)595-5600. Through December 7.

By Valerie Jean Johnson

“Late at night in the guts of an abandoned theater, a company of actors gathers to rehearse Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” They soon realize that they’re not alone. As they are drawn deeper into the Bard’s most magnetic play, the ghosts that have haunted the story since its inception hover and encroach.”  So goes the story behind “Radio Macbeth,” the latest offering from the renowned New York City-based SITI Company. Founded in 1992 by Anne Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki, this ensemble-based theater company is no stranger to Chicago, having made the city both a regular stop for many of the nearly thirty shows they’ve toured around the US and abroad over the past sixteen years, as well as a home for an annual two-week intensive training workshop in the summer. This will be their second time taking the stage at Hyde Park’s Court Theatre, after the highly successful 2006 run of “Hotel Cassiopeia,” written by the company’s resident playwright Charles L. Mee. And whether the play be by Mee, Noel Coward, August Strindberg or a completely original work devised by the ensemble, each production carries the indelible strength that comes from SITI’s singular (and rigorous) style of training and development. I caught up with artistic director Anne Bogart about the working life of SITI Company, the desire to take on arguably the Bard’s best (and bloodiest) tragedy, and the delights to be found in being haunted.

For our readers who may not be familiar with SITI Company, would you please tell us a bit about your process of devising work as an ensemble?

We work very collaboratively.  I start by describing the world of the play and I tell the actors and designers and all involved everything that I have imagined about our production.  Then we put our heads together and begin to work.  Except for songs and dances, which we develop and practice every day, we always rehearse in the order of the play, never skipping.  Once we have staged one scene, we move on to the next, in order.  It is a slow process.  When we get stuck we wait until consensus about how to move forward.

SITI Company’s first foray into the work of Shakespeare was “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” What were the driving influences behind the decision to tackle “Macbeth?”

Well, we had such a grand time working on “Midsummer” that I was anxious to tackle another Shakespeare.  And why not move from one of his greatest plays to the next?  These two plays are thematically and structurally diametrically opposite which seems right when moving from one to the next.  Also, “Macbeth” was the very first play I ever saw as a child and it is what made me decide to become a theater director.

“Radio Macbeth” is presented as an adaptation from Shakespeare. How do you define “adaptation” in this way? How much of Shakespeare’s original script is a direct part of this piece?

We are not doing the entire play, rather it is a cutting of the original.  A few of the bits are rearranged but ultimately I believe that we have stuck rather faithfully to Shakespeare’s play.  We try to keep out of the way of the rich language and situations.

Director Darron L. West describes “Macbeth” as “the ultimate ghost story.” What about ghosts entices you personally, and artistically?

I believe that all theater is ultimately about dead people; giving dead people voice.  The Japanese Noh theater, for example, was originally built over graveyards.  The actors stamped the ground to allow the spirits from below to inhabit their bodies.  This sounds morbid, I know, but it is actually quite delightful to allow for the voices and memories of the past to be filtered through one.

So, are there any superstitions in the company about saying “Macbeth” in the theater?

Oh gosh, we joke around about it.  Ultimately though, I do not think that we are overly superstitious.

What’s next for “Radio Macbeth?” Will the tour continue after the run here in Chicago?

Absolutely!  I hope to tour the play for many years.  But I will state here that I share the company’s enthusiasm for performing in Chicago in particular.

At Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis, (773)753-4472, through December 7