Archive for November, 2009
Review: Silent Theatre’s “Carnival Nocturne”
Quirky, Murky, Malarkey
The Silent Theatre Company presents
Carnival Nocturne
At DCA Storefront Theatre
Conceived and written by Gillian Hastings
Directed by Tonika Todorova
Thru December 20th (ticket info)
review by Katy Walsh
Words cannot express… because there are none. The Silent Theatre Company presents Carnival Nocturne, the story of a traveling circus plagued by a curse. Carnival Nocturne is the last of the three theatre company 2009 series produced by Chicago’s Department of Culture Affairs (DCA) Theatre and performed at the Store Front Theatre. The play is performed with the music accompaniment of a live band and minimal vocal narration. It’s a creative and challenging genre that is reliant on body language to convey the tale. There are no words to answer the questions that Carnival Nocturne provokes.
Gillian Hastings has conceived and written the Carnival Nocturne. One gets that there is indeed a curse, but its origin is unclear. A woman is killed in the very beginning by her husband. Why? He loves her, right? Did someone switch knives? Who? And why? Did the girl run away to join the circus? Or did she grow up with the circus? Does the Ring Master fall in love with her? What about his wife? Wait, she’s dead – or is she? Is that guy a dog? Or does he just think he’s a dog? Is this the end of the show? Though the plot is disjointed, do you go to the carnival for the story?
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Nonetheless, Carnival Nocturne has many whimsical and colorful moments. Costumes designed by Barb Staples are an explosion of vibrant imagination. It’s old school carnie with an underworld twist. Lindsey Marks and Taylor Bibat play Siamese twins. Mostly their synchronicity is flawless yet eerie. During an aerial bit, they do get out of sync and the clunkiness breaks the spell. The barker (played by Marvin Eduardo Quijada) is pure animated entertainment from his surprise entrance to his curtain pulling ending. The cat act, Flim and Flam, (played by Dean Evans and Molly Plunk) is playful antics; Evans is exceptionally expressive. Yohanna (played by 
Rachel Rizzuto) delivers a vulnerable performance as the girl who runs away to join the circus (…or grew up with the circus?).
Clever and imaginative are the perfect words to describe this Silent Theatre Company experience. I admit that I’d probably need a to see this a few more times to completely understand the story-line. Unfortunately the program doesn’t help decipher the components of Carnival Nocturne. Without dialogue or program pictures, we’re left to guess: Who is who? What is what? What’s going on? Talk to me, Silent Theatre Company!
Rating: ★★
Review: Rubicon Theatre’s “Becoming Ingrid”
A Charming Tale of Transformation
Rubicon Theatre Project presents:
Becoming Ingrid
Written by Liza Lentini
Directed by Jamie Stires
Thru December 5th (ticket info)
reviewed by Katy Walsh
Although Rubicon Theatre Project’s production, Becoming Ingrid, has all the makings for a psychotic stage version of “Single White Female,” spoiler alert: no one gets a stiletto in his eye.
Lead character Christine is unhappy and bored with her life. She reads a book and becomes infatuated with Ingrid, the author. Finding out that the real-life Ingrid (April Taylor) is actually teaching a writing course in Scotland, Christine moves to Scotland, determined to become a writer as well. This obsession with Ingrid leads to her renting the adjacent apartment, collecting her discarded paper scraps, cutting off her hair, and enrolling in Ingrid’s class.
Meg Harkins, playing Christine, narrates Becoming Ingrid as if she is writing a story. Painstakingly choosing the right words throughout the play, Christine unknowingly transforms herself from damsel-in-distress to protagonist. Playwright Liza Lentini has crafted just the right words to make Becoming Ingrid a charming tale of transformation.
Delivering an energetic, enthusiastic performance. Harkins pulls off the delicate balance between idolizer and psycho. Christine leaves the dance floor to hunt down Ingrid in the ladies’ room to give her a handmade Christmas present. It sounds creepy, but the way Harkins does it with big-eyed nervousness, it’s ultimately sweet. Transformation continues to take main stage as actors take on dual roles. Billy Fenderson plays a sophisticated English artist and an obnoxious loud-mouthed Scottish student. Within moments of taking off her sweater, Heidi Katz goes from the bent over gregarious Scottish landlady to the uptight professor. Jessica Thigpen rounds out the trifecta transformation by switching between a Scottish student and a French artist. Kudos to dialect coach Lindsay Barlett for conversion direction.
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Becoming Ingrid has a running time of two hours with a ten minute intermission. In 22certain spots, the activity on stage drags ever so slightly. To continue its transformation, director Jamie Stires could tighten up the scenes. Any lasting makeover requires additional moments of cinching it. Katie Schweiger has adorned the set with books and page-covered walls. These are reminders that Becoming Ingrid is the well-written tale of a wannabe writer’s obsession with a successful writer. Because of that, there is a certain amount of pressure to end a review with just the right crafted words to convey meaning: Go see it, and become a fan of the talents of small Chicago theatre companies.
Rating: ★★★
Raven Theatre takes action again school violence
RAVEN THEATRE TAKES ACTION AGAINST SCHOOL VIOLENCE
A Bird of Prey
Written by Jim Grimsley
Directed by Mechelle Moe and Sullivan High School teacher Stefanie Rivera
Presented in coordination with students from Sullivan High School
Wednesday, December 16 at 6:00 p.m.
No charge for admission (more info)
In a groundbreaking community event, Raven Theatre and students from Sullivan High School join forces to take a stand against school violence with the one night show, A Bird of Prey. Over twenty students are participating in this production in a brave step toward neutralizing the violent forces lurking in their own school in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood.
A Bird of Prey is an educational theatre piece that discusses the lives of today’s youth and the harsh realities they face every day. From difficult situations at home to blatant cruelty from their peers, this play brings to light the extreme danger and inevitable isolation felt by teenagers.
In a tumultuous and frightening year for Chicago Public School students, this Raven Theatre outreach event gives a voice to students whose everyday lives are effected by school violence. Sullivan students present scenes from the play A Bird of Prey, as well as pieces they’ve written on topics of exclusion, violence and community.
The primary goal of this outreach is to shift the source of dialogue from parents and local politicians to the teenagers who are directly effected by violent events – discussing their fears in a safe environment and empowering them to be proponents for change in their own neighborhoods. The evening’s events are sure to resonate throughout the community, not only bringing awareness to this horrifying situation but elevating these students past the label of "victim", giving them the support they need to play a part in a positive, proactive solution.
Review: UIC Theatre’s “Stars in the Morning Sky”
Touching, if limited, performances in “Stars In the Morning Sky”
UIC Theatre presents:
Stars in the Morning Sky
adapted by Peter Christensen and Yasen Peyankov
directed by Lupa Lopatina Solomon
thru November 22nd (ticket info)
reviewed by Paige Listerud
Lupa Lopatina Solomon last directed Stars In the Morning Sky with co-director and translator Yasen Peyankov as a member of the now-defunct European Repertory Theatre. A retelling of Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths by Russian playwright Aleksandr Galin, the play depicts the desperate lives of women in prostitution at the opening of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. In an attempt to present a clean face to the world, Soviet authorities have rounded up the city’s sex workers and deposited them on the outskirts of the city in rundown barracks that once served as a mental hospital.
Solomon has honed a well-integrated student production; the cast is a fairly even and cohesive ensemble, set with strikingly imaginative lighting (Carl Ulaszek) and sound (Lea Palmeno) design. At this stage in their craft, all of the students deliver on their characters’ intentions and motivations, while not all face the same challenges. In a play that would test the limits of mature, professional actors, some fall short like horses that have been handicapped from the starting line-up.
Erin Yucus and Rashida KhanBey carry the additional burden of playing older women with more arduous and twisted histories than the rest. Valentina (Yucus) is a hardened Soviet style worker who runs the barracks that house the temporarily homeless whores. Ana (KhanBey) is an older, alcoholic prostitute who, while merciless about her own self-appraisal, acts with instinctive motherliness toward the younger women hauled in. While both actors convey women under lifelong hardship, both also sink heavily into their portrayals with little nuance, suggesting the need for greater life experience as well as technique. Ironically, their characters’ significant moments of sorrow lack the depth to be realistic.
By contrast, those cast members with roles within their age range fair better. Jessica Roach’s Lora is believably flighty and childlike in her idealism, while Zarinah Ali’s Klara virtually dominates the stage with insouciant energy. Perhaps Carolyn Molloy is the most seriously tested of all the cast, since her character, Maria, becomes assaulted in an attempt to leave the barracks. It’s a role that Molloy unabashedly takes on but also at moments loses her bearings, slipping in and out of convincing interpretation.
UIC Theatre’s production is most successful in creating ensemble and maintaining even, progressive storytelling. The last moment of the play where the tech crew revolves the stage is the only disturbance in the fourth wall and it is worth the payoff—it reveals the banished women waving to the city in pride over the Olympics they have been denied. With all it shortcomings, this production still shows its power to touch the audience.
Review: Magpie Project’s “The Happy Family Series”
A Weird and Gifted “Family” Pulls It Together
The Magpies Project present:
The Happy Family Series:
Demonstrations Exploring “Harmonic Antagonisms”
inspired by P.T. Barnum’s “The Happy Family”
Curated by Shawn Reddy
Emceed by H.B. Ward a.k.a. "The Tamer"
thru December 6th at Viaduct Theatre (ticket info)
reviewed by Paige Listerud
I hardly knew what to make of the press put out by The Magpies Project over The Happy Family Series: Demonstrations Exploring “Harmonic Antagonisms” inspired by P. T. Barnum’s museum piece “The Happy Family.” Living by the creed “There’s a sucker born every minute,” Barnum constructed a fallacious exhibit wherein an assortment of animals, both predators and prey, were forced to live in harmony with each other as a spectacle of example to humankind. As such, The Magpie Project’s own assortment of talented misfits, drawn together from the usual fringe theater suspects, could easily be collected under any random title. Maybe the overwhelming wholesomeness of the holiday season has wormed its way into the company’s artistic direction. Never mind. Any excuse to see these performers is good one.
Emceeing the madness is H. B. Ward, aka “The Tamer,” who delivers the funniest, most intelligent opening comic monologue I’ve witnessed in years. He’s a man in complete control of the audience—without need of whips and little need of chairs! Most of the rest of the collection, curated by Shawn Reddy, follows in this comic and quirky vein. Whether any of it refers to family hardly matters, but one will find some startling depth along with the laughs.
The first weekend run in particular saw a short memoir simply read aloud by writer and critic Brian Nemtusak. It was the sort of thing one might hear on Public Radio’s This American Life, only with greater psychological depth, quiet power, and less desperate need to please the audience. It came closest to all the evening’s exhibits in articulating the antagonisms between three generations of men and what each generation tried to do to compensate for them. Ira Glass, eat your heart out.
Other sketches executed by Ian Belknap and Edward Thomas-Herrera, such as the subtext of corporate meetings and the dramatic, glamorous imaginings of a lone gay child, were more conventionally funny, but no less entertaining for being so. Far more far out performances were dealt by the musical stylings of Jenny Magnus of Curious Theatre and Chris Schoen of Theatre Oobleck. I kept thinking Jenny was coming up with any old excuse to sing her songs under the rubric of “family.”
Stopping by to see The Happy Family Series over the next few weeks will be more than worth your while. Who knows, maybe the oddness of the “exhibits” will strike some familial similarity.
Rating: ★★★
Curated by Shawn Reddy
Emceed by H.B. Ward A.K.A. "The Tamer"
Featuring work by: Martha Bayne, Ian Belknap, Dave Buchen, Chris Bower, Eiren Caffall, Mark Chrisler, Robin Cline, Barrie Cole, Elvisbride Band, Idris Goodwin, David Isaacson, David Kodeski, Jenny Magnus, Brian Nemtusak, Beau O’Reilly, David Pavkovic and Vicki Walden (of DOG), The Lawrence Peters Outfit, Diana Slickman, Edward Thomas-Herrera, and David Wilcox.
Review: Circle Theatre’s “Little Women”
Holidays with the March Sisters
Circle Theatre presents:
Little Women
adapted from the novel by Louisa May Alcott
directed by Bob Kuth
thru December 19th (ticket info)
review by Timothy McGuire
Circle Theatre offers another quality production of classic literature with their world premiere adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. This story is perfect for the holiday season and entertaining anytime of the year. The unselfish themes of giving and love along with warm naturally occurring musicals scenes create a performance that can be enjoyed by the whole family, as well as those other singles out there.
Circle Theatre’s production of Little Women is only based on part one of the series (so no, Beth does not die,) but it is still packed with plenty of drama and conflict to accompany the vibrant personalities of the March sisters. The four sisters are spiritually played by Laura McClain (Meg), Kieran Welsh-Phillips (Jo), Jill Sesso (Beth) and Abigail St. John (Amy.) They playfully tease but overwhelmingly cherish each others company. With their father away serving as Chaplain in the Civil War and their mother doing everything she can to support her husband and country, the four sisters bond together as they grow into their own individuals. The March Family is financially struggling (something many of us can relate to this holiday season) yet still finds ways to constantly support those around them in need and those they want to show they care. Besides the wealthy Aunt March, the whole family is inspired by the closeness between them, and their kind spirit is an inspiration to those that witness them as well.
The set is designed far more sophisticated than you see at even most of the best storefront theatres in the city. Bob Kuth (Director/ Scenic & Lighting Designer) has created the inside of the March home in Maine warm and delicately decorated for the winter season. The windows are covered in 19th-century drapes and a faded portrait of Mr. March hangs above the fireplace. In the back corner is the simple piano played by Beth to lighten the family’s mood and bring in some holiday cheer and the living room is complete with antique furniture for the family to join together for gossip and companionship. The staircase in back of the stage and second level leading to the door add depth to the large country house, and the performer’s ability to look beyond the audience and through the windows at a scene fictionally taking place off stage turn the small staging area into the open lands of Concord, MA.
Each actress and actor brings a special individuality to their character. The enduring qualities in each sister are brought out by the talented natural performances of each actress. I fell in love with Jo and her rebellious attitude and drive to go after he own desires. Each individual performance in the play strengthens the connection you feel with the relationships that are being formed. Watching this family evolve and connect with their characters can naturally bring out a loving emotional connection to your own family, and that is what the holidays are all about.
Rating: ★★★
At Circle Theatre, 7300 W. Madison, Forest Park, IL, call 708-771-0700, www.circle-theatre.org, tickets $20 – $24 ($2 off for seniors/students), Fridays at 8 pm, Saturdays at 3 & 8 pm, Sundays at 3 pm, running time is 2 hours, 15 minutes with intermission.
FEATURING: Kevin Anderson • Peter Esposito • Eileen Ferguson • Anita Hoffman • Laura McClain • Jeremy Myers • Brian Rabinowitz • Mary Redmon • Jill Sesso • Abigail St. John • Kieran Welsh-Phillips.
Review: “Dr. Harlon’s Keys to Better Living”
Strong Acting Brings Out the Comedy in this One-Man Show
ComedyChicago presents:
Dr. Harlon’s Keys to Better Living
Performed and written by Will Clinger
directed by Kevin Theis
thru December 13th (ticket info)
review by Keith Ecker
It is in the most desperate of times that we become desperate for our search for happiness. In these cloudy days of economic gloom, war and reality television, many cling to religion or spirituality as a guide to a better tomorrow. The title character in Dr. Harlon’s Keys to Better Living considers himself a sort of shaman, leading the audience on a supposed path to self-fulfillment. In reality, the doctor is much more of a sham than a shaman, and his advice—played out vicariously through characters—is more of a sure-fire path to self-destruction than fulfillment. All this irony, and a very committed actor, makes this one-man show an entertaining spectacle.
The brains behind the play is Will Clinger, a veteran of the Chicago stage and screen. He is probably most known for his work as host of WILD CHICAGO, a long-running television show that aired on WTTW.
The play begins with Clinger donning the role of the over-enthusiastic self-help guru Dr. Harlon. Jokes fly fast as the doctor accidentally steps out of the spotlight and receives a call from his good friend David Hasselhoff. Meanwhile a video screen enhances the downstage action, displaying visuals that graphically depict the doctor’s terrible advice, advice that includes such nuggets as the importance of assimilation and suppressing the negative attributes of one’s personality.
After the first scene with the doctor, we never actually see the character again. Yet his advice periodically appears on the screen, serving as transitions from one vignette to the next. These vignettes showcase a variety of followers of Dr. Harlon’s advice. The motley cast of characters includes a father who will go to great lengths to get the perfect Christmas photo of his infant son, an American wine connoisseur dishing about his trip to rural France and a lounge performer who teeters between manic highs and depressing lows.
Clinger’s commitment to the characters represents a skilled comedic actor. Although his range might be narrower than other performers—some of his characters seemed to be slightly altered clones of each other—he does a convincing job of breathing life into each personality, providing them with unique points of view. And with only a matter of seconds between one scene and the next, Clinger pulls off quite the transformative feat.
The writing too is worthy of praise, though this praise is tempered by a couple glaring flaws. The play begins with a steady stream of humor with Clinger portraying Dr. Harlon, and there are some big laughs to be had at the wine connoisseur character who delivers a monologue reminiscent of David Sedaris at his best. But there are parts that drag, where the jokes are too dispersed to hold up the scene. There are also a couple of vignettes whose endings undermine the entire scene, particularly one featuring a hack talent agent who’s rehashing days gone by. I won’t give away the scene’s ending, but basically it is an unnecessary cliché that devalues an otherwise rich character.
Director Kevin Theis should be commended for setting vivid scenes when the only props available are a chair, a screen and Clinger. Still images of a landscape with subtle sounds of birds chirping and a frame of a cocktail party accompanied by murmurs and glass clinks help provide vivid, yet minimalist, environments for Clinger’s characters to live in.
Overall, Dr. Harlon’s Keys to Better Living is a comical portrayal of self-destructive self-help. At times the writing falls a little flat, but Clinger knows how to pick up the mood and get the play back on track.
Rating: ★★★
Review: Theatre Seven’s “Cooperstown”
Theatre Seven presents:
Cooperstown
by Brian Golden
directed by Brian Stojak
thru December 20th (ticket info)
reviewed by Catey Sullivan
Intertwined aspects of race, love and Civil Rights have been examined ad infinitum in many a previous drama. But with Cooperstown, playwright Brian Golden brings an original perspective to such well-trod topics. The times they are a changin’ in this 1962-set drama. Golden frames those remarkable changes within the context of something altogether ordinary, a Cooperstown diner. Here, as employees toil for a minimal $1.40 an hour, a monumental combination of baseball, racism, social unrest and the arrival of Jackie Robinson collide during one flashpoint weekend.
It’s the basis for a wonderful story and as directed with understated nuance by Brian Stojak, it’s told well on the whole. There’s a refreshing lack of anguished over-emoting by the able cast, even when (especially when) events take on painful, life-changing significance. That’s the upside. The downside goes to the nitty-gritty of Golden’s script. The overall story has terrific potential. Its particulars are pocked with nagging holes and improbabilities that erode its basis in truth.
The first of these is snags apparent almost immediately, as Junior (Cecil Burroughs), the diner’s black supervisor, labors over a notebook. This “report,” Junior insists, is the key to a better life, as it is certain to get him a promotion from white diner owner Jimmy Fletcher. Never mind that Fletcher hasn’t set foot in the restaurant in years – Junior speaks of the notebook as if it possessed magic. It will, he asserts, secure him the title of manager, a pay raise and better working conditions all around. Burroughs plays Junior as a man of intelligence and depth; it simply doesn’t ring true that this character would so naively believe his situation would instantly improve simply by presenting a worn ledger full of hand-written notes to a boss he hasn’t even seen in years. The more Junior talks about how his battered notebook is going to change everything, the more artificial Cooperstown sounds.
There’s a parallel contrivance and lack of specificity with several other plot elements. A photo-op with Jackie Robinson in the diner is somehow directly connected to Governor Rockefeller’s patronage plans. A black protest group defined by the letter “S” (underscored and never explained) decides that “taking down” the diner will achieve…well precisely what it will achieve is as muddled as the link between Robinson’s meal there and the Governor’s job appointments. Finally, there’s a scene late in the story that requires immediate action (to say more would reveal spoilers) by Junior and the staff. But instead of tending to the crisis at hand, all and sundry stand around talking for a prolonged period. Emotional exposition trumps situational veracity.
A different but equally vexing problem is apparent in the all-important, star-crossed love story between Junior and Fletcher’s wife, Grace (Emjoy Gavino.) Despite otherwise fine performances by Burroughs and Gavino, they have no chemistry between them.
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Far believable is the sweet romance between waitress and baseball stat savant Dylan (Tracey Kaplan, sometimes truly difficult to understand thanks to her machine-gun speed speech) and Huck (Chance Bone), a plain-spoken out-of-towner with a similar passion for America’s Pastime. It’s a lovely subplot, although it wouldn’t hurt to tone down Dylan’s tomboy streak a tad – when she becomes almost physically ill after kissing Huck, she seems more like a prepubescent girl than a young woman.
Golden’s got hold of the core of an engaging, important story. It’s got a fine setting in Michelle N. Warner’s believably lived in, detailed diner. Would that the details were more rooted in probability.
Rating: ★★
Cooperstown continues through Dec. 20 at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, Tickets are $18 general admission, $14 students, seniors and industry. For more information go to www.theatreseven.org or call 773/404-7336.
Wednesday wordplay: Marlene Dietrich’s friends…
Inspirational Quotes
It’s the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter.
— Marlene Dietrich
The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.
— Robert Fulghum, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It
Work is not always required… there is such a thing as sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.
— George McDonald
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest her or his patients in the care of the human frame, in a proper diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.
— Thomas A. Edison
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
— Woody Allen
Human pain does not let go of its grip at one point in time. Rather, it works its way out of our consciousness over time. There is a season of sadness. A season of anger. A season of tranquility. A season of hope.
— Robert Veninga
I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.
— Og Mandino
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
— Albert Einstein
Review: Next Theatre’s “End Days”
Elvis and Jesus on stage at last
Next Theatre presents:
End Days
by Deborah Zoe Laufer
directed by Shade Murray
thru November 29th (ticket info)
reviewed by Ian Epstein
End Days, playing through December at the Next Theater in Evanston, is a light-hearted family comedy with dark, dramatic roots. Penned by playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer, End Days borrows a few oblique bits and pieces from Samuel Beckett‘s Endgame and pushes them into orbit around a lighter, domestic version with similar, less philosophical and philosophically bleak, core themes.
Laufer’s End Days focuses on a dysfunctional family trio: the Steins. At the play’s outset, the family has descended into a kind of isolated, feuding madness. Spear-heading this romp is Sylvia Stein (Laura T. Fisher), who hunts through the house for impurity and sin with Jesus literally at her side. Whether hallucination, incarnation or just some by-product of Sylvia’s recent mental deviation, Jesus helps Mrs. Stein out around the house. This gives her frequent exhortations of “Thank you, Jesus” an added jolt of credibility that might otherwise be lacking. But Sylvia has only recently discovered how much she identifies with evangelical Christianity. And she’s taken to all this — to stacking bibles, preaching the good book, and admiring her evangelical handiwork– perhaps in part because her husband has withdrawn into pajamas and her daughter has gone over to the dark lord.
Once upon a time at Sylvia’s side there was Arthur Stein, whose hollow husk is played impeccably by William Dick. Arthur is a defunct businessman who has traded his Senior VP suit-and-tie for the depressed terrycloth comforts of a bathrobe and constant attempts at eternal slumber. He can’t even make it to the grocery store, though. From the few snippets of his past that carry through to the audience in dialogue, it becomes clear that Arthur used to work at the Word Trade Center…until 9/11.
The last member of the family — wedged between this raving, recently religious mother and droopy father — is high-school student Rachel Stein. With a few colored streaks in her dark hair and eyes painted with all the spite of Satanic teenage rage, Rachel is the kind of daughter one might expect find in this fractured home. She’s goth and she’s too damn smart for her own good. Carolyn Faye Kramer plays the part with a delightful, earnest, heartfelt angst.
And in case the combination of those three with Jesus helping out in the kitchen doesn’t sound like enough, enter the king: their new 16-year-old, Elvis-impersonating neighbor with a crush on Rachel as ample as his bell-bottoms are wide. The new teenage neighbor, Nelson Steinberg, might just have the otherworldly determination to see it through. His determination is so otherworldly, in fact, that by passing along a book to Rachel, Nelson manages to introduce Stephen Hawking into the fray. Hawking plays a very adept hallucinated foil to Jesus (both are played by Joseph Wycoff).
Nelson’s arrival sets off all the action and by the end we arrive with characters that have undoubtedly changed. That is, something happens. The predictability of that something might disappoint a few, but Laufer’s characters are paced quick enough to shove any concerns about her character’s psychological accuracy to the wayside. The audience barely has time to realize that the play has its hands wrapped deeply around the effects of 9/11 trauma before Stephen Hawking scoots in on a motorized wheelchair to give good advice to a stoned teenage smarty-pants.
Andre LaSalle‘s set complements the fractured situation in the Stein home with awkwardly tilted living spaces and Melissa Torchia‘s costumes, with Rachel dressed all in black and Nelson in a bedazzled white Elvis gettup, while heavy-handed, are not unearned. The show is fun. That’s for sure. But can you really crack open 9/11 trauma and play it just for laughs and not something fuller?
Rating: ★★½
Review: Piccolo Theatre’s “Perseus and Medusa: Or it’s all Greek to me!”
Children’s play best-suited for adult audience.
Piccolo Theatre presents:
Perseus and Medusa: Or it’s all Greek to me!
by Jessica Puller
directed by Glenn Proud and Brianna Sloane
thru December 19th (ticket info)
reviewed by Keith Ecker
Piccolo Theatre’s new holiday panto, Perseus and Medusa: Or it’s all Greek to me!, is a hilarious parody of the well-known Greek myth about a young, boyish hero who must slay the vile Medusa out of a sense of duty. The slapstick-filled production plays like a bawdy cabaret, with sexual innuendo and gender-bending peppering the piece. Adults will definitely get a kick out of the humor, which includes a character whose name sounds like a part of the female 
anatomy. However, much to their dismay, their children may also get a kick out of these same antics, which often are too low-flying to be over even an 8-year-old’s head.
This isn’t to say there is something negative about the baseness of the humor of the play. The original script, written by Northwestern alumni Jessica Puller, is self aware enough to make both the blue humor and the eye-roll-inducing puns entertaining. Its brashness itself is a joke, almost nudging the audience as if to say, “Can you believe we just said that?” This is especially true in a moment where the Dame, a clownish character played by a cross-dressing Andrew Roberts, is collecting dragon snot in a bucket with the plan to sell it as a face cream. Once a bucket is full, she remarks, “It would take me a month to fill that myself.” Although children might not understand, the adult’s in the audience know, we have ceased discussing dragon snot.
And although the piece really is a vehicle for a string of off-color jokes, there is a plot. The liberal retelling centers on Perseus (played by female ensemble member Liz Larsen-Silva), a young boy who just wants to fish. The center of town is the bait shop/hair salon, run by juvenile Linus (Dominic Furry) and Evander (Maxx Miller). The evil king (Vic May) and his daughter Andromeda (Laura Taylor) enter the picture, and, upon first sight, Perseus falls for the princess. In an effort to win her heart and at the request of the King, Perseus sets out to collect the head of Medusa, the mythical villainess whose mere glance turns men into stone.
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From here the play becomes a journey story, with Perseus and his band of comical misfits overcoming challenge after challenge. The Greek god Hermes (ensemble member Leeann Zahrt) makes an appearance to assist the hero, and even the magical horse Pegasus has a cameo. Characters directly address the audience at times, and audience members are encouraged to actively cheer for the good guys and boo for the villains. There are a few song and dance numbers throughout, including a loungey, seductive tune by the voluptuous Danae (ensemble member Vanessa Hughes), who could be at home on top of a piano
The play is separated by an intermission, with the first half dragging on longer than necessary. But overall the script’s pacing is good, though it might cause younger children to squirm in their seats.
The acting is solid, with no weak links in the cast. Roberts delivered a stand-out performance in his role as the clownish Dame. His fluctuating falsetto and wild hand gestures were belly-achingly funny throughout.
Ensemble members Glenn Proud and Brianna Sloane shared directing duties, balancing the cast of more than a dozen so that the production never felt cluttered. Their talents really shine in the fight sequence between Hermes and the villainess Nestor (ensemble member Deborah Craft), which is a well-orchestrated example of stage combat and puppetry.
Perseus and Medusa is a fun, fanciful play, but be warned: this children’s theater production might be a little too risqué for its intended audience.
Rating: ★★★
