Darren Criss (#4) with Team StarKid

With our criteria shifted back to artistic accomplishment in theater, dance, comedy and opera this year, our task got infinitely tougher. Because while the number of performing venues grows at a steady rate, the increase in the number of noteworthy artists seems to grow exponentially. For everyone we name on the list below, we had to leave off five, an embarrassment of riches for Chicago. We made a conscious effort to introduce a meaningful number of new faces to the list this year; the necessary absences should not be construed as a loss of worthiness as a consequence. We often find trends when we do the research these lists require; this year we’re starting to see a more meaningful effort to redefine performance itself in the internet age, from the runaway success of StarKids, to the more calculated endeavors of Silk Road. So what defines a “player”? Consider it some complex stew of career achievement, recent “heat” and, in some cases, rising stardom.

Written by Zach Freeman, Brian Hieggelke, Sharon Hoyer and Dennis Polkow

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Carrie Coon and Sean Fortunato/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Leave it to Tom Stoppard to make me rethink my position on plays about the scandals and travails of affluent white people and their lovers. But then few writers are as intellectually challenging, insightful or careful with their words  as he. (As Stoppard’s fictional counterpart Henry says in the play, “If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.”)

So even if to a degree the play is fueled by the question of did she or didn’t she “get off” with someone else behind his back, it’s the layers upon layers of reality, fiction and illusion, building as the play goes on, that make it turn in a meaningful way. Read the rest of this entry »

Studio Gang's Bengt Sjostrom Starlight Theatre

By Erin Kelsey

In the theater business, sometimes all you can do is cross your fingers and hope for the best. Michael Halberstam, artistic director of Writers’ Theatre, recalls a recent production in which their set was completed on time only because the weather happened to be cooperative during tech week. While unavoidable, these certainly aren’t ideal conditions for any theater to operate under, let alone one producing shows of the scale and quality of Writers’. To prevent similar problems in the future—and allow them to grow in a way currently not permitted by their spaces—the company is embarking upon a project to construct a new building to be the home of Writers’ Theatre. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the press release from Writers’ Theatre:

Writers’ Theatre announces 2011/12 20th Anniversary Season

20th Anniversary Season to feature work by Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Randall Colburn, Stephen Sondheim and Robert Hewett
Michael Halberstam, Ron OJ Parson, Stuart Carden and William Brown slated to direct   Read the rest of this entry »

Francis Guinan and Patrick Andrews/Photo:Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Brett Neveu’s second commission from the Writers’ Theatre follows in a long line of “one last big score” con stories, in which a scam artist decides to risk everything on one final, usually epic, con before leaving the game for good. What sets Neveu’s apart is an intimately drawn father-son relationship that anchors the double-dealings.

Sam and Eddie Sisson are a father-and-son pair of grifters who pull small hustles all over an unnamed Midwestern city. On the verge of his eighteenth birthday, Eddie feels he’s ready to strike out on his own, but his father feels otherwise. They agree to do one final con, but its consequences could be greater than a fat payday.

The play’s cons, which were perfected with the help of magician Dennis Watkins, are fun to watch unfold, but the real value of this production, the true mark of good theater, is the human element. Francis Guinan and Patrick Andrews are compelling as the Elder and Younger Sisson. In supporting roles, Joe Miñoso creates memorable, multiple marks for the hustlers to dupe, and Karen Janes Woditsch turns in a heartbreaking performance as Eddie’s drug-addicted mother. (Neal Ryan Shaw)

Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe, (847)242-6000. 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

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Jessie Mueller, Rod Thomas/Photo: Michael Brosilow

“She Loves Me” is one of those legendary musicals that you always hear about but rarely get to hear. A casualty of an early closing back in 1963 when it first opened on Broadway, it has the distinction of being the first musical ever directed by Hal Prince, contains a sumptuous score by a pre-“Fiddler on the Roof” Jerry Bock, a pre-“Cabaret” book by Joe Masteroff and featured some of Broadway’s greatest stars of the day, including Barbara Cook and Jack Cassidy, who won a Tony for his involvement.

As a follow-up to Writers’ Theatre’s hugely successful “Oh, Coward!” last year, but without key personnel that made that show work so well—namely, director Jim Corti and music director Doug Peck—Writers’ Theatre takes on its first foray into the classic American musical with “She Loves Me,” a work that, because of its intimacy and lack of big production numbers, would seem ideal for the company’s intimate approach.

To say that this production of “She Loves Me”—a charming work when done well—misses the mark is an understatement: it doesn’t even know where the target is. Typically, one either casts actors who can sing a little or singers who can act a little, and then work to bring everyone up to speed from where they are but here, the worst of all worlds is achieved by primarily casting singers but then not supplying either enough stage direction for true characterizations to emerge, nor enough musical direction to have them sound at their best. The result is a production where everyone—even obviously talented veteran performers—appear to be just going through the motions in a caricature-like manner, almost performing in italics, as it were. Read the rest of this entry »

Natasha Lowe, Matt Hawkins and Stacy Stoltz/Photo: Michael Brosilow

RECOMMENDED

Even though director David Cromer is taking New York by storm, he has thankfully not forgotten his way home.  His Writers’ Theatre production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” is one of the most anticipated shows of the season. As we have come to expect with a Cromer play in his native Chicago, the theater space itself has been torn up and transformed in such a radical way that you completely enter into the cramped space of the Kowalski New Orleans flat before one line of dialogue is uttered.

Cromer’s symbol for the play is the bed, and is the first thing that you see as you enter the space, and you practically have to walk over it to get to the section of seats running parallel to it. (There are also seats surrounding both sides of the kitchen and a “neutral” block of seats straggling both.) The audience is configured in such a way that no matter where you are, there are moments in the play where the characters will be virtually right in your face, or in another part of the house where they may be almost unseen. Thus, if you are sitting in the bedroom, for instance, you sometimes miss some of what is going on in the kitchen, and vice-versa. This could be perceived as a weakness, and yet it proves quite effective in demanding closer audience attention, of having to listen more carefully one moment, and cover your ears the next, just as in real life. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »