Archive for January, 2011
Dolly Parton celebrates 65th Birthday in Chicago!
Dolly Parton wows at “9 to 5” in Chicago
Fans of Dolly Parton were in for a big treat on Wednesday night as she made an appearance at opening night of the Broadway tour musical 9 to 5. On stage before the show, Illinois’ Governor Pat Quinn presented Dolly with a certificate proclaiming the 19th as “Dolly Parton Day” in Chicago. Dolly made another appearance at the final bows, where – as you can see in the video below – the cast wheeled out a big chocolate cake and then led the audience in singing “Happy Birthday” for Dolly’s 65th Birthday. Can you believe that she’s 65 years old??? Wow, she looks great! We love you Dolly!
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn announces January 19th as “Dolly Parton Day”
 |
 |
 |
 |
Dolly Parton joins cast at final bows, and helps cut her birthday cake!!
This is *very* blurred photo of Dolly Parton posing with the 3 leads of the show:
- from left, Diane DeGarmo as Doralee (played by Dolly Parton in film)
- Dee Hoty as Violet (played in film by Lilly Tomlin)
- Mamie Parris as Judy (played in film by Jane Fonda)
REVIEW: Grey Gardens (Jedlicka Performing Arts)
Technical problems, tame performances mar Jedlicka production
| Jedlicka Performing Arts Center presents |
| Grey Gardens |
| Book by Doug Wright Music by Scott Frankel, Lyrics by Michael Korie Directed by Michael A. Kott at Jedlicka Performing Arts Center, Cicero (map) through Jan 29 | tickets: $17 | more info |
Reviewed by Oliver Sava
When documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles ventured into Grey Gardens, they could never have expected the kind of cultural effect two reclusive relatives of a former first lady could have on America. “Grey Gardens” became a cult classic, spawning a Broadway musical, an HBO original film (starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange), and thousands of revolutionary Halloween costumes (including some for babies). The home of “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Grey Gardens was once a regal Hampton estate but deteriorated after years of neglect from its two inhabitants. Frankel, Korie, and Wright’s musical Grey Gardens examines the majestic past and tragic fate of the Beales and their dilapidated cage of memories, setting the first act in 1941, the second in 1973, and having one actress play a different Edie in each. Mary Nigohosian fills the dual role in Jedlicka’s production, and is undeniably the best part of a show plagued with technical problems and otherwise uninspiring performances.
The beauty of Grey Gardens is the emotional intensity of the music in relation to these eccentric yet incredibly real characters. The tragedy lies in the truth behind the Edies’ circumstances, and Jedlicka’s production simply lacks honesty. In the first act, much of the music is light and whimsical fare in the vein of Porter or Berlin, so the actors have to use the dialogue to make the gravity of their situation as real as possible. Unfortunately, many of these early scenes are underscored, and due to space constrictions in the theater the pit is in a different room. The actors have to rush through most of their dialogue to keep up with the orchestra, which plays beautifully, but needs to give the actors a little more room to breathe. A lot exposition is lost in these scenes because the actors have trouble keeping up with and staying louder than the orchestra, and as a result it’s hard to get a feel for who these people are beneath the broadly drawn caricatures.
Nigohosian shines in the first act, where she is able to play the more traditional diva role as Edith Sr. in 1931, a glamorous attention whore of a housewife. With her pianist and gay best friend George Gould Strong (Austin Cook), Edith plans her set list for Little Edie’s (Jill Sesso) engagement party. Meanwhile, Edie is concerned with only one thing: getting out of Grey Gardens once she marries Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr. (Charles Lane Cowen). As they wait for Mr. Beale to arrive back from the city, Edith’s father Major Bouvier (Gary Saipe) harps on his daughter for her bohemian behavior, which Frankel and Korie capture in hilariously offensive musical numbers. Bits like Edith’s “itty bitty geisha” and full-on songs like “Hominy Grits” are written to be exaggerated, yet Nigohosion is too restrained during these scenes. It feels like the entire ensemble is holding back; the director hasn’t brought the actors to a point where they’ve found the truth of their characters.
When Edith performs her horrific Mamie routine, her black butler Brooks (Steven Perkins) barely reacts. When Gould tells Edie he is leaving he doesn’t look sad or heartbroken, he just looks bored. Moments like these help flesh out character relationships, and are glossed over too much in this production. It doesn’t help that most of the time the actors are facing out to the audience despite speaking to each other, which is fine during singing, but not so much during dialogue. Eye contact helps. Another problem is maintaining dialects, and as difficult as it is to sing in dialect, it’s essential to keeping the illusion of the characters real in this play. This ensemble struggles with the difficult New England accents, which is major problem in act two, when the characters become defined by their shrill, nasal voices.
In the second act, so much of Little Edie’s character comes through her hyper-nasal voice, and the act two musical numbers require an amazing amount of technique to maintain her vocals. In the opening of act two, “The Revolutionary Costume for Today,” Nogohosian has so much extra business with her costume that she isn’t able to focus on the incredibly difficult music, and despite a strong start the number fizzles at the end. Act two crawls toward its climax, and Edie’s concluding solos are affected by the difficulties with the pit. Tempo changes are jarring, and as Nogohosian tries to match the speed of the orchestra she devotes less to the actual emotion of the music. There are moments of “Another Winter In A Summer Town” (one of my favorite ballads of the last decade) when Nogohosian clicks with the orchestra and there is a glimpse of the Edie-that-could-be, but they shouldn’t be coming this late in the show.
In the end of the documentary (and thus the play) the Grey Gardens estate was a complete wreck, its two residents living in piles of trash, cats, and corn. Jedlicka’s production of Grey Gardens is messy in all the wrong ways, with the actors giving bland performances that don’t capture the desperation of these spectacular women. The transformation of Grey Gardens from act one to act two is the perfect physical representation of what is wrong with this show. Selective piles of rubbage are placed on Edith’s bed and the refrigerator, yet the rest of the space remains completely clean. If we are supposed to believe these women live in a garbage dump flea bag of a home, it has to look that way. Everything needs to be taken to the next level – the acting, the set, the technical design – if the tragedy of the Beales is to be believed.
|
Rating: ★½ |
Grey Gardens continues at Jedlicka Performing Arts Center, Cicero (map) through January 29. Tickets are $17. More info.
Artists
GREY GARDENS stars Mary Nigohosian of Batavia, Mary Hobein of Woodridge, Tessa Newman of Naperville, Gary Saipe of Libertyville, Katelyn Smith of Broadview and Austin Cook, Charles Lane Cowen, Jill Sesso and Steven Perkins of Chicago.
GREY GARDENS is directed by Micheal A. Kott with music direction by Adam Gustafson, Choreography by Sarah Bright, Scenic Design by Michael Nedza, Costume Design by Jennifer Ring and Lighting Design by Dante Orfei. Music direction is by Adam Gustafson who will lead an 8-piece live orchestra.
Theater Thursday: Ghosts of Atwood – MPAACT
Theater Thursday: January 20th
| Ghosts of Atwood |
| by Shepsu Aakhu |
| MPAACT at Greenhouse Theater Center 2257 N. Lincoln, Chicago (map) |
Meet the MPAACT family for a wine and cheese reception before the show and stay for a post-show discussion with the playwright, director and cast. Atwood School for Boys–an ivy covered paradise tucked away in the rolling hills of Wisconsin. Quinn finds himself "alone with white people" for the first time in his life. The challenges of isolation and racial tension greet him as he begins to navigate this new world. But in the Ghost of Atwood, deeper questions erupt as Quinn discovers that there are far greater dangers lurching in the hallowed halls of the Academy.
Tickets: $25 / Event begins at 7pm / Show begins at 8pm
For reservations call 773.404.7336 and mention MPAACT THEATER THURSDAYS.
REVIEW: Carmilla (WildClaw Theatre)
WildClaw starts the year with fang-tastic Gothic treat
| WildClaw Theatre presents |
| Carmilla |
| Written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Adapted by Alyrenee Amidei Directed by Scott Cummins at DCA Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph (map) through Feb 20 | tickets: $20 | more info |
Reviewed by Paige Listerud
Purist fans of J. Sheridan LeFanu might curl their toes in horror over the liberties taken with his novella “Carmilla” in WildClaw Theatre’s latest action-packed production, now onstage at the DCA Storefront Theater. But then, not knowing any LeFanu purists, just revel in this adaptation’s delightful mix of classic gothic style, self-conscious and knowing humor, insightful take on relationships, energetically executed fight scenes (Scott Cummins and David Chrzanowski) and–oh yes–lesbian vampires.
In our Buffy-Twilight-True-Blood saturated culture, you’ve seen vampires, you’ve seen lesbians, you’ve seen lesbian vampires–that’s entertainment. But WildClaw’s production, under Scott Cummins’ direction, cunningly returns audiences to the original dangers of women loving women, plus the wild danger inherent in giving oneself over to love, period.
Young Laura (Brittany Burch) is on the cusp of womanhood, passing her days at her father’s (Charley Sherman) rural schloss with only her governesses Madame Perrodon (Mandy Walsh) and Mademoiselle LaFontaine (Moira Begale-Smith) for feminine company. Amusing as the older women are, Laura craves a companion for which to socialize. The visiting and slightly amorous General Spielsdorf (Brian Amidei) has a ward, Bertha (Sara Gorsky), who just might fill the bill. However, word of her sinking into a mysterious illness cancels any chance of Laura making her acquaintance and draws the General away to see to his ward’s care. Laura faces her disappointment stoically, as well as the teasing Perrodon and LaFontaine give her on being a prospective match for the General. Living where they are, few options exist from which to choose a mate who could appeal to Laura romantically. She accepts that any marriage might have to be sensibly arranged for her future security more than anything.
During a family outing in the moonlight, a carriage careens by and almost crashes—three strangers emerge from the accident, a veiled woman, a younger woman who has collapsed and a servant in an eye patch. The veiled woman (Erin Myers) seems mysteriously familiar to Laura’s father but she refuses to reveal her identity. She only discloses that she must hurry on to take care of business critical to their family’s welfare, but doesn’t dare to take her weak daughter any further on the journey. Laura’s father offers to take the girl in for the three months the woman requires to secure their future. So it is that Laura becomes friends with the strange and fascinating Carmilla (Michaela Petro), who has seen Laura’s face in a dream, just as Laura has seen hers in a similar dream.
Cummins’ direction strikes a steady and creative balance between building eerie tension and swinging into bursts of action that enliven the storyline and push the plot forward. Beyond the excitement of fight scenes, the play’s interjection of gypsies, either at play or at mourning, work to disrupt the close, fever/dream relationship between Carmilla and Laura, as well as suffuse the play’s atmosphere with foreboding, unrelenting superstition. Superstition is gospel among this play’s lower orders, but its upper class characters are never far from its infecting influence. Dr. Hesselius (Steve Herson) seems at times as helpless as any medieval physician—resorting to bloodletting as part of Laura’s “cure” when she falls under the same wasting illness that takes Bertha’s life.
But more to the point, Burch and Petro successfully capture the delicate sensuality that was an intricate part of 19th century genteel women’s relationships. Even before Carmilla begins to put the moves on Laura, their relationship wobbles along a fine line between friends and lovers. Carmilla may have seduced others, but she invests earnest passion more in the chase than in the conquest. As for Burch, she skillfully renders Laura with all the befuddlement of a young woman who, besides not knowing about the birds and the bees, simply cannot know or imagine the emotional impact overwhelming love can have. Carmilla dominates Laura from the possession of greater knowledge and experience and maintaining the mystery about her.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Aly Amidei’s script has taken the best of LeFanu’s poetic text and interwoven it with a clearer feminist impulse. Carmilla comes across as more of an intellectual in this play than she does in LeFanu’s novella. Carmilla’s story also benefits from Amidei integrating 19th century beliefs about suicide leading to vampirism and the dead needing to be staked down so that they do not rise and prey upon the living. The men who come after Carmilla, the General and the Ranger (Josh Zagoren), strike the exact note of righteous masculinity prevailing against the disorder of a feminine fiend. Going after vampires is not without its humorous moments, though, and these are well played by Herson and Sherman.
Having so much going for it, it’s disappointing when instances of amateurism plague the show. There were times I simply loved Bertha (Sara Gorsky), Carmilla’s earlier prey-turned-vampire, prowling the countryside like a feral beast, only to watch her animality go over the top in other scenes. Carmilla’s occult powers over Henri (Scott T. Barsotti), her competition for Laura’s affections, also strained credibility and made his departure to go hang himself more laughable than convincing.
All in all, though, Wildclaw shows real dedication to intelligent horror entertainment. Audiences won’t be fed the same old vamps but something that evokes the rich subtly of women in close personal relationships. They will also find Charlie Athanas’ special effects and the sound design of Mikhail Fiksel and Scott Tallarida well paired with LeFanu’s language, rounding out Carmilla as a good, solid gothic treat.
| Rating: ★★★ |
REVIEW: Odradrek (House Theatre)
House Theatre finds its groove
| House Theatre of Chicago presents |
| Odradrek |
| Written by Brett Neveu Music by Josh Schmidt Directed by Dexter Bullard at Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division (map) through March 5 | tickets: $25 | more info |
reviewed by Barry Eitel
The House Theatre of Chicago isn’t known for their gloominess. They often dip into darker subjects, especially death (Dave DaVinci Saves the Universe, The Nutcracker – our review ★★★½), sometimes drugs (All the Fame of Lofty Deeds – review ★★★), and, once, children killing each other with metaphorical handguns (Girls Vs. Boys – review). Their newest offering, Odradek, a riff on Kafka via Brett Neveu, is easily the bleakest story I’ve seen by the puckish group. The promotional material compares the play to Hitchcock, and in a semi-disclaimer, artistic director Nathan Allen warns that the “show is scary.” I firmly believe that the hardest emotion to evoke in an audience is not glee, or sadness, or despair, but fear. To be honest, Odradek never really scared me. And it’s not very Hitchcockian; it feels more like “Saw” meets Beverly Cleary.
The play is beautifully realized by designers Collette Pollard and Lee Keenan. The play works best when seen as performance art, not a intellectual venture. Neveu and Dexter Bullard, two newcomers to the House, want this play to be both a tragically complex story and a macabre poem. They can’t nail down either. Neveu’s language is delightfully lyrical, but it doesn’t make for a coherent piece of drama. Realities, fantasy, and hallucination are blurred and the three characters’ motivations are convoluted. However, the show still takes the audience on a ride in true House style.
The play centers around a Boy (Joey Steakley), who comes from a broken, but not abusive, home. He lives with his Father (David Parkes), who enters into an ethically-questionable romance with the Boy’s Doctor (Carolyn Defrin). The Boy, on the other hand, enters into a relationship with a monster that lives under the stairs, Odradek. Slowly, the Boy slips down a path of confusion and self-mutilation.
The plot has a few holes, which I’ll wager are intentional. The Doctor is pretty clearly a primary care physician, and the Boy very clearly requires some facetime with a psychologist. The Boy’s wounds provided another puzzle, because it wasn’t clear if they were imagined or actual. As the play progresses, the grip on reality loosens and every aspect of the story comes into question.
The Boy’s affliction is linked to his parent’s divorce, but not much is explained. Neveu relies heavily on images, metaphors, and anecdotes for mood, but none of these provide stakes for the Boy. Colors are especially important—the Doctor asks the Boy what color his mother’s eyes are, while Odradek quizzes him about the hues of blood and sinew. But these tangents don’t explain why he misses his mom or why he chooses to hurt himself.
Even with the stylistic clashes, the cast handles the play well. Parkes’ performance is fascinating to watch in his House debut. He gives the Father a gritty, Chicago-style treatment that isn’t found in many House shows. Defrin, always a pleasure, plays against him decently, even though she’s more presentational. Steakley comes off zombiefied in a challenging role, and his age is very hard to pinpoint (I sort of figured he was around 25 but still living at home). He hits astride as his story unravels.
Infusing the company with new blood this season is a truly refreshing idea. In recent years, the House seemed to be stumbling at times. Odradek is a worthy venture and dives into territory that the company had successfully plunged into in the past. But it lacks heft. The play doesn’t reveal much about mental illness, divorce, or a connection between the two. Its value lies in how it strikes the ear, the eye, and the soul – not the mind.
| Rating: ★★★ |
REVIEW: The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Shattered Globe)
Shattered Globe is back, better than ever
| Shattered Globe Theatre presents |
| The Beauty Queen of Leenane |
| Written by Martin McDonagh Directed by Steve Scott at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport (map) through Feb 27 | tickets: $25 – $32 | more info |
In The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Martin McDonagh has crafted one of drama’s greatest monster mothers, a matriarch of such suffocating dominance and staggering selfishness that she almost makes Medea look like June Cleaver. At least Medea had decency to put her children out of their misery at a fairly young age. Mag Folan, by contrast, seems to live solely to make her grown daughter Maureen’s life as close to hell on earth as one can get. It’s no wonder things get blisteringly, destructively hot in the Folan kitchen by the shocking finale of McDonagh’s tragic-comedy.
With a pair of intensely complex roles for women whose ingénue days are well behind them, The Beauty Queen of Leenane is an excellent vehicle to usher in the rebirth of Shattered Globe to the Chicago theater scene. One of the most dismaying arts stories of 2010 came with the announcement that the off-Loop powerhouse was disbanding. The dissolution surely wasn’t for lack of talent – with shows including Requiem for a Heavyweight (our review ★★★★) and Suddenly Last Summer (review ★★★★) and Days of Wine and Roses, the company consistently delivered dramatic riches.
Many of Shattered Globe’s best productions were anchored by the team of Linda Reiter and Eileen Niccolai, whose reunion as (respectively) mother Mag and daughter Maureen is reason for a bit of post-holiday rejoicing.
As stories of survival and sanity go, Beauty Queen’s a corker. And just when you think McDonagh has shown the plot’s full hand, the tale takes a twist that’ll stand the hair on the back of your neck on end. In those final moments, key events are called into tantalizing question, and the foundation of what you thought to be true turns out to be no firmer than shifting quicksand.
Equally disconcerting is the sudden, scary revelation McDonagh implies about the stranglehold the twin hands of fate and genetics can have on society’s most economically and emotionally vulnerable. The rich and the strong may have the means to escape heredity and circumstance. The poor and the fragile get crushed by them.
Director Steve Scott keeps a nicely controlled rein on the storytelling here: Less is infinitely more as Niccolai’s Maureen simmers in a slow but inexorable burn toward an explosion of rage. Under the ruthlessly demanding edicts of her mother, Maureen moves with precise control but has the wild-eyed, feral look of a fox desperate enough to chew off its own leg to escape the trap it is entangled in. As Mag, Reiter scrunches her face into a permanent gargoyle grimace, making the character both monstrous and pathetic – and making Maureen’s plight all the more untenable. Something has to give between mother and daughter before the last scene, and so it does, with all the violence and horror one expects from a McDonagh play.
 |
 |
Of course, Beauty Queen wouldn’t be nearly as powerful if it was a relentless grimfest. There’s more than a little humor threaded through McDonagh’s text – although humor of the dangling gallows variety to be sure. The cast is mostly up to the demands of the script, from its bleakly absurdist lighter moments to the irrevocable tragedy of its darker ones.
As Pato, the loving young man who represents Maureen’s only chance of escape, Joseph Wiens provides the narrative’s tender moments, portraying just the sort of gentle, understated and stout-hearted hero one suspects could heal Maureen’s deepest wounds. As Pato’s brother, Kevin Viol was a bit too tightly wound at the production’s final preview. Hopefully, his exaggerated jitteriness will lessen as the run continues.
Here’s hoping that run is long and prosperous for Shattered Globe, and that many more SG seasons are in store.
| Rating: ★★★½ |
REVIEW: Aftermath (Signal Ensemble Theatre)
The battle for the soul of Rock ‘n’ Roll
| Signal Ensemble Theatre presents |
| Aftermath |
| Written/Directed by Ronan Marra at Signal Ensemble Theatre, 1802 W. Berenice (map) through Jan 23 | tickets: $20 | more info |
Reviewed by Paige Listerud
Coming late to the Aftermath party, I wanted to see how well the production has held up since switching to Signal Ensemble’s own theater space. Extremely well, it would seem, from the sold-out crowds. Chicagoans are undeniably enjoying playwright and director Ronan Marra’s musical bio and tribute to Brian Jones, the eclectic 60s rock genius and tragic founder of The Rolling Stones.
Clearly, critical kibitzing may mean nothing, now that Signal’s production has rolled along just fine, both reawakening Boomer nostalgia and exposing a younger generation to the Stones with a laudable facsimile of the original band’s performances. In fact, Marra’s requirement for musical proficiency in his cast stands at the throbbing heart of Signal’s production. Much as Aaron Snook charismatically captivates the audience, intrepidly holding attention under a fabulous mop top of blonde hair, he also pulls his weight hinting at Brian’s natural facility with multiple instruments by playing dulcimer, sitar and electric guitar. The music is the thing. The band’s excellence is the show’s mainstay. Once Mark J. Hurni’s dramatic lighting comes up on “Paint it, Black,” you know that this train is stopping for no one.
Except for one small, perceivable flaw—as Mick Jagger, Nick Vidal’s voice achieves a suitably approximate timbre but is almost drowned out by the force of the band. At least at my Sunday matinee viewing, seated in the front row, most song lyrics were indiscernible. Only during “Lady Jane” does Vidal hold his own, volume-wise. That’s too bad, especially since every other aspect of Vidal’s portrayal is electrifying. He has captured Mick’s strut, the liquid energy that made Jagger a consummate showman and indisputable sex idol. When acting, Vidal has Jagger’s snarky insouciance down pat, but behind the mic his voice pales. Joseph Stearns also doesn’t make for a thoroughly realistic Keith Richards—but the pressure isn’t on him as it is Vidal. He’s not the front man.
Dramatically, Marra’s writing also is lacking. His jukebox musical has an excellent sense of structure, with each number placed to move the action and characters forward; the boilerplate dialogue and predictable storytelling, however, may as well have come from MTV’s “Behind the Music.” Marra wants a balanced reflection on Brian Jones’ life and forgotten contributions to the Rolling Stones’ aesthetic. Yet, he simply hasn’t taken risks to plumb the depths of his troubled but fascinating rock idol. Instead, the audience is lead through a pageant of Brian’s struggles—his battles with Mick for artistic leadership of the Stones, his musical giftedness, his affair with model Anita Pallenberg (Simone Roos) and his downward spiral into paranoia and drug dependency.
 |
 |
In Snook, the show has an actor whose performance gives more ballast to Marra’s two-dimensional writing, but even he cannot redeem the material from its well-worn clichés. Once Brian suspects Anita in an affair with Keith, he and Roos together carry out especially visceral performances, but most of the rest of the action is a predictable dance of rock star dissolution that skirts the edges of both Jones’ genius and his darker side. We leave knowing no more about what made Brian Jones tick than before.
Plus, for hardcore rock aficionados, Marra’s work is just as much an act of forgetting as it is a loving tribute to the fallen Rolling Stone. Significant figures in Brian Jones’ life get tossed wholesale from Aftermath’s storyline. Instrumental to Jones’ ouster from the band was the arrival of Andrew Loog Oldham, who eventually took over most of Jones’ managerial duties and pushed for Jagger/Richards’ songwriting in the name of sustained financial success. Without Oldham’s presence or mention in the drama, Mick Jagger comes across as the principal villain behind Brian getting sacked from the group.
What’s more, significant musical creations get lost in Marra’s truncated retelling. At one point Marra has Brian Jones bring up “Their Satanic Majesties Request”, only to toss it off as just a forgettable, sub-par Stones’ album. Actually, the album was the Stones’ brief venture into psychedelic rock, which reached its apex in 1967. This was the direction in which Jones, with all his world music influences, was going. But its production, broken up by court appearances and random showings by band members and their friends, proved to be a monster to complete. Once produced, it looked like a cheap knock off compared to the Beatles’ wildly successful “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which had beaten the Stones to release by six months.
“Their Satanic Majesties Request” was Jones’ last hoorah in terms of his musical influence on the band. According to Richie Unterberger of Allmusic, the album “. . . incorporated African rhythms, Mellotrons, and full orchestration. Never before or since did the Stones take so many chances in the studio. In 1968, the Stones would go back to the basics, and never wander down these paths again . . .” A 1998 bootleg box set of the outtakes of the Satanic sessions reveals Jones in fruitful collaboration with Keith Richards and session pianist Nicky Hopkins, creating the album’s eerie soundscapes. But psychedelic rock was soon to fade as quickly as it had blossomed and Brian was going with it.
Obviously not everything about the Jones’ life can be mentioned, but certainly these milestones deserve more than a glossing. In the end, however, Aftermath remains an enjoyable evening of nostalgic entertainment.
| Rating: ★★½ |
Unleash the Rhino!! (a festivus for the restofus)
Okay, Chicago theatergoers, time to get your fringe on
Written by Paige Listerud
Curious Theatre Branch opened its 22nd Annual Rhinoceros Theatre Festival this past Friday, January 14th, drawing hundreds of avant-garde theater artists from around the country to showcase over 20 off-beat and experimental works and performances at the Prop Theatre space. Curious Theatre remounts Sarah Kane’s critically acclaimed 4:48 Psychosis under the direction of Beau O’Reilly, plus an adaptation of Gertrude Stein’s little known play, Mexico. Expect mind-opening and consciousness-bending theater experiences from School for Designing a Society, Deja Links, Strange Lupus, BoyGirlBoyGirl, The Whiskey Rebellion and many, many more.
“We’ve struck an interesting balance between past and future with this festival,” explains Beau O’Reilly. “We decided to accept Deja Links—they’re a continuation of Club Lower Links which Leigh Jones ran in the 1990s. Even though Rhino Fest began around the same time, they’re really pre-Rhino and a lot of performance art was generated out of there. It’s where Ira Glass and David Sedaris got started. So, we have a significant number of people represented from that period—older artists doing some very mature and complete work, like Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman Duo and then, of course, we showcase some student work from the SAIC and full-length work from young writers.”
Curious Theatre also kicked off the Fest with a benefit opening night–the Full Moon Vaudeville, hosted by Curious and the Crooked Mouth String Band.
Rhino Festival Schedule
for more information, visit the Rhino Festival website
All tickets $12 in advance, $15 at the door | Buy tickets | See calendar.
Curious Theatre Branch presents
4:48 Psychosis
By Sarah Kane
Sarah Kane’s last play returns in a critically acclaimed production directed by Beau O’Reilly.
The play charts the journey from life into death, from darkness into light, from pain into love.Spiked with gallous humor, the play charts the journey from life into death, from darkness into light, from pain into love. Talk back / post show panel discussion with director John Moletress, the cast and crew and invited guest speakers (TBA).Spiked with gallous humor, the play charts the journey from life into death, from darkness into light, from pain into love Spiked with gallous humor, the play charts the journey from life into death, from darkness into light, from pain into loveSpiked with gallous humor, the play charts the journey from life into death, from darkness into light, from pain into love
Performance Dates: Friday, January, 14, 21, 28, February 4, 11. All dates at 7pm
School for Designing A Society presents
10 to 4
directed by Susan Parenti
An acoustic play which twists shards of political activism and thought’s aging into the brain of language.
Saturday, January 29 and Sunday, January 30 at 7pm
Lisa Fay & Jeff Glassman Duo presents
Currency
Dense theater shorts in which ‘natural-looking’ behavior is subjected to contortions, subversions and convolutions, letting ‘natural’ show its socially constructed face.
Friday, January 21, Saturday, January 22 and Sunday, January 23 at 7pm
See the rest of the schedule after the jump.
REVIEW: Six More Scary Tales (Clock Productions)
Spookiness and slapstick give play unexpected charm
| Clock Productions presents |
| Six More Scary Tales |
| Written by David Denman Directed by Jesse Stratton and Mark Dodge at National Pastime Theater, 4139 N. Broadway (map) through Feb 26 | tickets: $15 (call 773-327-7077 for tix) |
Reviewed by Keith Ecker
Although it’s more than nine months until Halloween, you can still get into the spooky spirit with Clock Productions‘ Six More Scary Tales, the second play in the “Scary Tales” series. Written and produced by David Denman, the play is composed of six vignettes, each a cross between a campfire story, a morality play and a comical farce. The blend of genres usually works, though at times the cheese factor can be off-putting. But, overall, the six pieces come together to create a reasonably entertaining whole.
The play opens with "A Tale of Super Powers." The extremely short piece, which comes off more as a clunky sketch, is about a mugging victim who claims to have super strength, speed and imperviousness to bullets. There really is no fear factor in the short at all. It’s strictly a comedy, and a rather poor comedy at that. It certainly didn’t set the right tone for the pieces that would come, but fortunately it ended up being the weakest link of all the stories.
The next story is "A Tale of Curiosity." It’s that often told tale about the woman with the choker around her neck, the one that she refuses to remove—ever. Of course, when the man of her dreams finally convinces her to remove it, he gets a shocking surprise. Although stronger than the previous piece, this tale also is weak. The story alone is trite. I’ve probably read it more than half a dozen times in various scary story collections. There is nothing added to the plot to give it a twist. The only redeeming quality is how laughably hokey it is when [spoiler alert?] the woman’s head pops off.
It is here at the third story where Six More Scary Tales finally begins to deliver. "A Tale of Avarice" tells the story of an Arabian man who is tempted to enter the harsh desert by a stranger who promises him great wealth. Eventually the man encounters three bewitching women who magically replace his tongue with an evil doppleganger. The result is a comic tragedy that works theatrically on a number of levels. The story is compelling, the acting is decent and the blend of spooky and silly is a good balance.
"A Tale of Morality" is next, and the only short to elicit applause at the end. Actress Andrea Young steals the piece (if not the whole production) with her portrayal of Death as a godfather-like figure imbued with genuine maternity. The story is about a young Sicilian man who is taken up as the godson of Death. With such a benefactor, he grows up to become a successful doctor. However, things get a little tricky when he must choose to either honor his supernatural godmother or save the woman he loves.
"A Tale of Vampires" is a predictable piece that works only because of how it pokes fun at the lack of American worldliness. Three American girls ride a train through Romania and Hungry while reading a book on the region’s history, which includes vampire folklore. Two strange locals board the train as well, and, as you’d imagine, suspicions rise. Although it doesn’t have the story of "A Tale of Avarice" or the heart of "A Tale of Morality," it’s still an entertaining segment.
Finally, the play ends on "A Tale of Monsters in the Attic," a piece that is introduced early in the production and resolved at the end. It’s a pretty traditional tale about a mad scientist, an attic and, of course, monsters.
Although spotty throughout, there’s real heart to this small production. That heart shines through, almost making up for the faults of the play. Still, some of the faults, especially those committed early on, weigh the entire piece down. My advice: Skip the first 10 minutes, and you’ll enjoy Six More Scary Tales.
| Rating: ★★½ |
REVIEW: Betontanc and Umka – Show Your Face! (MCA)
The Face of Freedom and Struggle
| Betontanc and Umka.lv presents |
| Show Your Face! |
| Written by members of Bentontanc and Umka.lv Directed by Matjaž Pograjc at MCA Stage, 220 E. Chicago Ave. (map) through Jan 16 | tickets: $28 | more info |
Reviewed by K.D. Hopkins
I admit that I was left in awe of the Betontanc and Umka.lv production of Show Your Face! at the Museum of Contemporary Art. I was expecting something out of the ordinary because of the origins of the companies presenting. Slovenia and Latvia were mysteries when I was growing up. They were obscured by the politics of the dreaded ‘Iron Curtain’ and came into my consciousness in the 90’s with the fall of the Berlin Wall and unrest in the Balkans. This energetic and gripping production exposes how much we all are alike in our struggle for individual freedom, no matter the ideology of our origins.
Show Your Face is a multi-disciplinary production involving mainly dance, music, theatre, and puppetry. A faceless individual fights against the larger collective trying to possess him and his ideas. “The Faceless One” is portrayed by a child’s snowsuit used as a puppet. The scale of the snowsuit as a puppet gives an animated quality to the entire production. The human interactions take on a surreal quality that play on the psyche in a convoluted manner. None of the players seem to be human as a result – they are all emotion, enveloping the various manipulations of emotion: anger, fear, sex drive, and need for companionship or camaraderie.
Umka.lv is the collective that performs on the stage. They are the acting and puppetry part of the production in collaboration with Betontanc (Concrete Dance) a Slovenian dance theatre company. The collaboration is brilliant and terrifying all at once. No one is immune to the terrors of war and oppression these days. Water boarding and other tortures have been amply demonstrated for all to see. The question is: Do we really see it? Do we have empathy? The Faceless One is on the run constantly. The baby blue of the snowsuit has a gray and worn quality to it and the excellent puppetry gives a breathless and anxious animation to the Faceless One. The emotions are drawn in, and there are audible gasps in the audience when Faceless One is tortured. He is forced to drink liquor, clothes-lined with an iron bar, nearly drowned in a bucket, forced to stay awake, and in a particularly disturbing scene raped by a red masked seductress.
There are direct jabs at the collusion of religion and government in a scene with a priest and the Faceless One. The cast screams at the audience to tell the truth (meaning, in my opinion, see the truth and don’t turn away). The choreography element in Show Your Face! is raw and fluid. The physicality of the actors is called upon to project ragged emotion on one hand and to keep the action flowing seamlessly at the same time. There is a scene where the dancers become one organism and fall into an abyss that evolves into a stick-figure parade being swallowed by a giant red wave. Eventually the forced mating of the Faceless One and the red masked seductress results in a birth scene that is funny and difficult to watch because of the result.
Ugis Vitins and Silence provide the musical accompaniment. The words are sung in English and are a vital contribution to the narrative of Show Your Face!. Vitins’ voice is eerie and plaintive in the manner of David Byrne, and one passage pays tribute to Iggy Pop’s ‘The Passenger’. The musicians play piano, brass, percussion, and electronic embellishment. It is haunting, melodic and quite beautiful.
Show Your Face! is part of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Global Stage Series. Performance companies from all over the world bring their collective cultural sensibilities and individual interpretations of theatricality to Chicago. These are companies that may not get the same exposure of those with larger budgets or more standard interpretations. Show Your Face! is written collectively by Betontanc and Umka.lv, directed by Matjaž Pograjc and producted by Bunker.
Take a look and take the time to check out the amazing theatre resource that is the MCA Stage Series. Highly Recommended!
| Rating: ★★★½ |
REVIEW: As You Like It (Chicago Shakespeare)
An ardent Arden blooms beautifully
| Chicago Shakespeare Theatre |
| As You Like It |
| Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Gary Griffin at CST’s Courtyard Theatre, Navy Pier (map) thru March 6 | tickets: $44-$75 | more info |
Reviewed by Lawrence Bommer
Through disguise or intrigue, Shakespeare’s driven lovers test each other until they finally earn their fifth-act wedding. In As You Like It, an unconquered forest is the neutral playground for the romantic reconnoiters that will bind the exiled lovers Rosalind and Orlando. In this shelter for simple innocence, artificial privilege defers to natural merit.
If love, joy or melancholy were to vanish from the world, you could reconstruct them from Shakespeare’s merriest and wisest comedy. The play’s genius is its artful dispersion of the good and, later, bad characters from the corrupt court to the enchanting trees of Arden. There the Bard imagines the perfect play–and proving ground for Rosalind, strategically disguised as the bisexual cupbearer Ganymede, to test her Orlando by teaching him how to woo the woman he takes for a man.
Sensing how Rosalind’s high spirits and good humor could overwhelm even this teeming forest, Shakespeare balances her natural worth against the snobbish clown Touchstone, the darkly cynical Jaques and the sluttish goatherd Audrey. By play’s end every kind of attachment–romantic, earthy, impetuous and exploitive–is embodied by the four (mis)matched couples who join in a monumental mating.
All any revival needs to do is trust the text and here it triumphs. Vaguely set in the Empire era, Gary Griffin’s perfectly tuned three-hour staging moves effortlessly from the artificial wood façade of the bad Duke’s cold palace to Arden’s blossom-rich, Pandora-like arboreal refuge. Over both the city and country hangs a mysterious pendulum, tolling out the seconds without revealing the time.
But then time stands still here: The refugees in these woods have been displaced by the pursuit of power. Very good, then: It gives them all the more leisure for four very different couples to reinvent love from the inside out with all the unmatched and dynamically diverse eloquence that the Bard could give them,
Griffin is an actors’ director and he’s assembled an unexceptionable ensemble as true to their tale as their wonderful writer could wish. Though a tad older than Orlando is usually depicted, Matt Schwader delivers the non-negotiable spontaneity of a late-blooming first love. Above all, he’s a good listener and here he must be: Kate Fry’s electric Rosalind fascinates with every quicksilver, gender-shifting mood swing, capricious whim, resourceful quip or lyrical rhapsody. Fry also plays her as postmaturely young, a woman who was happy enough to be a maiden but won’t become a wife without a complete guarantee of reciprocal adoration. All her testing of Orlando as “Ganymede” is both flirtatious fun and deadly earnest. It would be all too easy to watch only her throughout and see this again for the other performances.
The contrasting characters are a litany of excellence, with even the supporting actors attractive despite any lack of lines. Kevin Gudahl’s noble exile of a banished duke, Matt DeCaro’s elaborately evil one, Phillip James Brannon’s flippant and almost anachronistic clown Touchstone, Chaon Cross’ pert and well-grounded Celia, Patrick Clear’s dignified bumpkin, Steve Haggard’s infatuated Silvius and Hillary Clemens as his less than adorable Audrey, Dennis Kelly’s venerable Adam—these are masterful portrayals drawn from life as much as literature.
Shakespeare’s most brilliant creation is the anti-social Jaques, who darkly balances the springtime frolic of Shakespeare’s unstoppable love plots. Oddly social as he waxes with misanthropic melancholy, Jaques is cursed to see the sad end of every story: He can never enjoy the happy ignorance beginning and middle. Ross Lehman gives him the right enthusiastic isolation. He’s dour but never dire.
Arden is a forest well worth escaping to and never leaving. The most regretful part of the play is happily never seen, when this enchanted company must return from these miracle-making groves to the workaday world. But that’s just how the audience feels leaving the Courtyard Theatre, reluctantly relinquishing so much romance.
| Rating: ★★★★ |
