Theatre
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Fugard Theatre's A Human Being Died that Night
Truth and Reconciliation at the BAM Fisher
By: - Jun 03rd, 2015Both Plato and Aristotle wrote about the catharsis of tragedy in drama. South Africa with some success took the idea and tried to find truth and healing post apartheid. In large measure they succeeded. This wonderful play, conceived by Eric Abraham and written by Nicholas Wright, suggests why in a personal and incredibly moving adaptation of a true story.
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The How and the Why at S&Co.
Going With the Flow
By: - May 31st, 2015After a brutal winter on ever level Shakespeare & Company has launched the season with an intense and absorbing two hander The How and the Way by dramatist Sarah Treem. It stages a tense meeting between two brilliant women and scientists. A seething graduate student Rachel (Bridget Sacarino) has just learned the identify of her birth mother Zelda (Rod Randolph) a renowned scholar. By coincidence and one of many impossibilities the women are remarkably alike and even share the same field of evolutionary biology. If you can get beyond that unlikely twist of fate and other absurd literary devices this is an absorbing evening of tense and spellbinding theatre with superb performances by two fine actresses.
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A.R.Gurney's What I Did Last Summer
Jim Simpson Directs at the Signature
By: - May 28th, 2015What I Did Last Summer is A.R. Gurney's latest play and a delight. How could it be a dream summer at the beach when Dad is off fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, Mom is lonely, Elsie is trying to lose weight and Charlie is trying to become a man without a model around? Yet it is as directe by Jim Simpson
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Arms and the Man at Old Globe
First Class Shavian Production
By: - May 27th, 2015“Arms and the Manâ€, crisply directed by Jessica Stone is blessed with cast of talented and seasoned performers who when they find themselves on a stage in a sharply and insightfully written farce/satire, know exactly how to handle their characters and the situations.
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Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Raven Theatre
Adapted by Christopher Hampton from Novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
By: - May 26th, 2015The script and production are the same as earlier versions in most every way, with the addition of a few Russian place names and two characters with Russian accents. The playbill doesn't mention the era and geographic setting (or any of the scene locations) that AstonRep has chosen.
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Masha's Seagull at Berkshire Theatre Group
Stunning Solo by Virginia Scheuer Launches Season
By: - May 23rd, 2015Launching the season on a chilly Memorial Day weekend Bekshire Theatre Group is presenting a variation on Chekhov with Masha's Seagull. In a transfer from Bentonville, Arkansas, directed by Eric Hill it proves to be a family affair. The play is written by Justin Scheuer, stars his wife, Virginia, with set and lighting by their son Nathan. Given the quality of the production it deserves a longer run.
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Playwright Lillian Hellman
Reflections on Two Chicago Productions
By: - May 23rd, 2015Last week I saw two masterpieces of 20th century theater by Lillian Hellman, the great playwright and left wing political activist. (I‘m a fan on both counts.) The two shows were extremely different in production values but demonstrated the power of performance.
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Ensemble Studio Theatre's Marathon of One Acts
Series A Opens the 35th Year
By: - May 22nd, 2015The Ensemble Studio Theatre is presenting its 35th anniversary Marathon of one act plays. Although proud of their production, Hand to God, which is now on Broadway with five Tony nominations, they are hardly sitting on their laurels.
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Hand to God at the Booth on Broadway
Stunning Performances in an Edgy Play
By: - May 21st, 2015Robert Askins' play started at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and has not stopped since. It arrived on Broadway in time to receive five Tony nominations this year: three for actors, one for the play and the other for direction. Shows you what aa hand to God can do.
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Butler by Richard Strand
Civil War Comedy Launches Berkshire Season
By: - May 21st, 2015With a striking resemblance to the Civil War General Benjamin Butler the hilarious performance by David Schramm in "Butler" launches the Berkshire season at Barrington Stage Company. Based on actual characters and events the playwright, Richard Strand, stretches the facts to create an evening of outrageous comedy.
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The Last Two People On Earth Sings at A.R.T.
An Apocalyptic Vaudeville Full of Fun and Despair
By: - May 20th, 2015Literally Apocalypse Wow, it’s the end of the world as we know it. A flood of biblical proportions leaves the earth with only two people. An always happy one and a mostly despairing one discover their common language is song and dance. Together they chronicle the rise and fall and hopeful rise again of humankind through music. Song and dance run the gamut from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim, and R.E.M. to Queen.
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Inana by Michele Lowe
Timeline Theatre's Chicago Premiere
By: - May 19th, 2015Playwright Michele Lowe started out as a journalist with a degree from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism. Her plays have been produced around the U.S. and in other countries. Both Inana and Victoria Musica were finalists for the American Theatre Critics Association/Steinberg New Play Award in 2010, the first time that a playwright was nominated for two plays in one season.
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Light Up the Sky Beacons Us to Theatrical Laughs
Comedic View of Putting On A Show
By: - May 19th, 2015Set in the Ritz-Carlton Boston in the late 1940s, Light Up the Sky is a backstage comedy about the eccentric, colorful artists and producers involved in breathing life into a Broadway-bound play. Here we witness that frightening moment of anticipation and terror just before an audience sees the opening performance. We view the grand, charismatic leading lady, the hopeful young playwright, the high-strung director, the boorish producer and his comical wife along with a monster mother in this affectionate, hilarious and even a bit corny look at what used to be referred to as the "legitimate" theatre. With a wonderful cast, it is an entertaining way to spend some time smiling in the dark.
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Mandy Greenfield of Williamstown Theatre Festival
Discusses First Season as Artistic Director
By: - May 18th, 2015Meeting for Happy Hour we discussed the strong, star studded first season for Mandy Greenfield the artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival. We explored an overview of the elements that must mesh under the pressure of a tight festival format to result in richly compelling theatre.
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Thyphoid Mary by Tom Horan
Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis
By: - May 17th, 2015The play’s strength lies in Tom Horan’s ability to balance humor, historical fact, and moral dilemmas with aplomb. He threads together Mary’s religious beliefs, scientific understanding of that time, and a larger picture of the way disease in viewed in our culture. His whip-smart dialogue keeps the audience laughing despite the serious subject. The show also includes a description of the actual breakdown and effects of the disease. That inclusion was important and brought home the seriousness of the pain and fear that people were experiencing during the epidemic.
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The Provincetown Theater
Announces the 2015 Season
By: - May 15th, 2015The Provincetown Theater announces its 2015 season. An eclectic blend of the old and new, this year's lineup reflects key moments in the history of theater on the Outer Cape and beyond. Eugene O'Neill to Ryan Landry, Lonely Planet to Oleanna will join Broadway veterans on the stage in Provincetown to help celebrate 100 years of exhilarating performances, inspired new American plays and powerful theatrical experiences in Provincetown..
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The Little Foxes in Chicago
Hellman's Play at Goodman Theatre
By: - May 15th, 2015Goodman's excellent new production of The Little Foxes, directed with style by Henry Wishcamper, stars a galaxy of Chicago's finest actors and surely resonates with some of the current discussions about racism, sexism, domestic abuse and income inequality. If you have a drink with friends after the show, those topics probably will be part of your post-play discussion.
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Capital Rep's Hamlet in Albany
Bare-bones Take on a Shakespeare Classic
By: - May 14th, 2015A troupe of solid actors takes the Albany stag at Capital Rep to provide a nail-biting and juicy performance. From the ghost's first walk to the final bloodbath, this fast paced modern and crisply spoken rendition illustrates the timelessness of all the plagues of humanity: murder, revenge, madness and love.
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The Drowning Girls at Signal Ensemble Theatre
By Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson and Daniela Vlaskalic,
By: - May 13th, 2015Signal's production is the Chicago premiere of a script by playwrights Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson and Daniela Vlaskalic, Canadian theater artists, whose play was first performed in 2008 in Alberta. Their script is poetic prose and requires the actors to speak in lists, finish each others' sentences and read their own obituaries from the wet newspapers they bring out of their tubs.
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The Project(s) by American Theatre Company
Dramatizes Chicago's Public Housing
By: - May 11th, 2015Paparelli and his co-writer, Joshua Jaeger, conducted about 100 interviews over five years with current and former residents of public housing, plus scholars and city officials. His docudrama isn't a dreary recitation of blame and political failure. The problems are not ignored, but the resulting production is a lively and thoroughly engrossing story in words, rhythm and music.
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Tony Winning Play Side Man
Chicago's American Blues Theater's Warren Leight Jazz Riff
By: - May 11th, 2015Warren Leight's Tony-award winning play, Side Man, tells the story of a few horn players who thrived in their own way in the 1940s and '50s jazz era. They worked their 20 weeks per year, then met at the unemployment office every Friday to collect their checks. Their motto was "keep your nut small" -- live as frugally as possible -- so you can live on a sideman's salary.
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Mothers & Sons Bond at SpeakEasy
Brilliant Acting Underscores Touching Narrative
By: - May 11th, 2015A touching play exploring our evolving understanding of what it means to be a family. At times funny, provocative, and poignant, this drama follows Dallas matriarch Katharine Gerard on an unexpected visit to New York City to meet with her late son’s former partner, who is now married to another man and raising a young son. Forced to consider the life that her son might have led, Katharine must now come to terms with her own life choices. And certainly, society has changed around her. Wonderful acting underscores this quality production.
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Two Gentlemen of Verona at Theatre for a New Audience
Fiasco Production in the Polosky Shakespeare Center
By: - May 05th, 2015What may well be Shakespeare's first play is produced as a wild and charming mashup of The Book of the Courtier, Match.com and luscious language. Fiasco Theater out of the Folger in Washington, DC has collaborated with Theatre for a New Audience in the past. Now they arrive in full blossom at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn with Two Gentlemen of Verona.
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Tony Simotes Part Three
Act Two with Berkshire Theatre Group
By: - May 02nd, 2015In the third and final installment of an interview with Tony Simotes he describes the epiphany and divine intervention that resulted with leaving Shakespeare & Company and beginning what he calls act two with Berkshire Theatre Group. Having overcome personal and family adversity he views each day as a gift and the opportunity to have a positive impact in theatre and the cultural community of the Berkshires.
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Three Sisters at The Hypocrites
Chekhov in Chicago
By: - Apr 29th, 2015Director Geoff Button adapted Chekhov's script to use more modern language without trivializing it or breaking the mood of the story. Both his adaptation and direction are very strong. The eponymous Prosorov sisters lead the excellent 14-person cast in a story that progresses over several years in a provincial Russian town at the turn of the 20th century.
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