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SPOILER ALERT: ‘Theatre for One’ Is!
A letter of thanks to a civil rights crusader. The impassioned plea from an incarcerated mother. Social awareness in the midst of a pandemic argument. Just a few of the eight mini-theatrical offerings in a collection entitled “Theatre for One: Here We Are” Court Theatre’s compelling new series that places audience member eye-to-eye—and in the virtual room—with actor. One-on-one. Randomly. Live.
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MOURNFUL MARLEY IS A MULTI-VOICED GEM!
It’s may appear unfair to start a review of a “Christmas Carol” production—particularly the inventive and multi-faceted audio-only version that is now being performed live by A Theatre In The Dark—with mention of the famous opening line “Marley was dead, to begin with… Dead as a doornail.” Then I thought, what exactly is a doornail and why in the Dickens does that grouping of words work so well whenever this classic comes to mind?
Read MoreManual Cinema’s ‘Trudy’ Mesmerizing “Christmas Carol!”
As things get rolling in Manual Cinema’s stunning live stream holiday masterpiece “A Christmas Carol,” Aunt Trudy (N. LaQuis Harkins) is launching a holiday pandemic version of a virtual family gathering and a traditional storytelling hour with one missing member: her husband Uncle Joe, the chief storyteller and keeper of Joe’s Christmas story box. So, it is up to Aunt Trudy to pull out the stick puppets, position the slide projector and stage herself before dimming the lights to tell the tale.
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It IS a Wonderful “Wonderful Life!”
You don’t have to be a sentimentalist to be moved by the residents of Bedford Falls who come around every year about this time to teach us a lesson or two about kindness, compassion and commitment. Small town virtues and familiar faces have a way of putting you in a comfort zone, as American Blues Theater’s stellar online radio show “It’s a Wonderful Life-Live in Chicago” proves again in just under 90 heartfelt minutes.
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Grief Cries Out In The Darkness
Exposing the raw, unsettling and complicated nature of mental illness and its impact, “ ’night, Mother,” the 1983 Pulitzer-prize-winning play by Marsha Norman, speaks even more directly to our isolated culture today than ever before. Even as the conversation between Thelma and her epileptic daughter Jessie begins as any typical night at home, it pivots sharply early on, lifting a shroud on their painful and guilt-filled lives.
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“LET ME BEGIN AT THE START.”
Theatre plays to our senses. What we see: actors on a stage bathed in color and light. What we hear: tense interchanges, tender love scenes, jarring noises in the dark or voices shrouded in whispers. What we feel: joy, shock, or the rousing curiosity for what is to come. And what we can imagine that future to be: a possibility that turns into a story.
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Hershey Felder as George Gershwin Alone will stream live from the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, Italy on Sunday, September 13 at 7 p.m. CDT. As in previous livestream performances, proceeds will benefit theatres and arts organizations throughout North America and Europe severely challenged in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Porchlight Music Theatre is the Chicago beneficiary sharing ticket purchases using Porchlight’s link.
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SANDY DUNCAN - MIDDLETOWN at the Apollo
Dan Clancy’s play “MIDDLETOWN The Ride of Your Life!” is about two couples who meet and forge a 33-year friendship.
It unfolds simply, at first. The all-star cast—Sandy Duncan, Adrian Zmed, Donny Most and Kate Beddeke—take their places on a bare stage with scripts on stands and begin to present, as in a staged reading, the story of their lives together.
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“You Can’t Kill a Revolution.”
Christine Mary Dunford brings to life Chicago’s first female mayor, Jayne Byrne, in the Lookingglass Theater Company world premiere production of “Her Honor Jane Byrne,” now playing at the historic Water Tower Water Works. The play isolates the three-week period in 1981 when the mayor moved into Cabrini-Green after an eruption of gang violence that left 10 dead and 37 wounded. It frames a much broader examination of the tumultuous social, political and racial history of the area in the decades that preceded those three weeks. Whether or not Byrne’s action amounted to anything more than a publicity stunt depends upon your point of view. However, after experiencing the complexity of playwright, director and Lookingglass ensemble member J. Nicole Brooks’s multi-faceted and engaging new work, you will have a better understanding of the issues in play at the time—a volatile period of race relations in Chicago and across America that very much reflects forward to the times in which we live.
Read MoreTOGETHER AGAIN… FOR THE FIRST TIME.
PicksInSix® Review | Ed Tracy
By the time Nancy Hays and Alexa Castelvecchi settle in together for the glorious signature duet “Get Happy/Happy Days” in the second act of “JUDY & LIZA—ONCE IN A LIFETIME: The London Palladium Concert—A Tribute!” now playing at the Greenhouse Theater Center, they have already performed a brilliant series of classic solos and duets from the songbooks of Judy Garland and her daughter, Liza Minnelli.
Read More“Where do the old gods go?”
There is a lonesome wail bellowing from within the Oriental Institute’s dark and cavernous Mesopotamia Gallery. Surrounded on two sides by the carved wall reliefs from an Assyrian palace and casting shadows across the imposing winged bull in the Khorsabad Court, you first hear Timothy Edward Kane as The Poet, singing a haunting song of war. As “An Iliad” written by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare from a translation by Robert Fagles begins, the storyteller finds himself very much in the present, compelled by the gods to repeat the story of the Trojan War—that raged nine years with “nothing to show for it but exhaustion, poverty, and loneliness”—and recount the heroic exploits of its two great fighters—Achilles and Hector.
Read MoreMajestic spirit drives powerful “Mlima’s Tale”
If you are as moved as I was after experiencing Lynn Nottage’s disarming drama “Mlima’s Tale,” a Griffin Theatre Company production that opened Sunday in its Midwest premiere at Raven Theatre on North Clark, you will seek out and read the 2012 Damon Tabor article “The Ivory Highway” on which Nottage based her story. It’s not clear to me if reading the article in advance will enhance your appreciation of Nottage’s intense work, which unfolds in 90 brisk—and sometimes disturbing but intensely powerful—minutes. It will, however, provide a broad context in which to understand the complexity of the piece and Nottage’s superb skill in amplifying the international crisis of poaching elephants for their ivory tusks and profiteering by criminal syndicates.
Read MorePARAMOUNT THEATRE’S “SUCCESS” HAS MANY MOTHERS!
When the new musical “The Secret Of My Success” opens on Broadway at some date in the future–and I have no doubt that it will open on Broadway at some date in the future as it is this|close to being a smashing success all its own—I’d suggest that the date be closer to Mother’s Day than Father’s Day: The depiction of so many strong women in this show seemed to resonate more completely on the side of the mothers, daughters and sons, many of whom nodded their heads in unison during the world premiere on Friday at Paramount Theatre in Aurora. It’s that kind of show. Mother’s always know best, particularly when they are telling you to watch out for yourself or “The secret is to change your expectations.”
Read More“What’s everyone so afraid of?”
The names are haunting. You recognize several, but you quickly realize that you should know them all. The age of each one on the list. Who they were to their brothers, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and friends. And how they were viewed by others who knew and loved them before their lives ended in senseless moments of violence and rage.
Read More“four lungs… one body, same skin.”
On July 10, 2015, Sandra Bland’s promising life took an unexpected turn when she was jailed following a confrontation with an officer during a routine traffic stop. The 28-year-old Bland had just moved back to Waller County, Texas, from Chicago and was on her way to the first day of a new job at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University. Three days later, the Naperville, Illinois, native was found dead in her cell. News of the young woman’s arrest and subsequent death, which was ruled a suicide, together with dash-cam video of Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia and Bland went viral, igniting public protests and fanning the debate over police brutality. Years later, cell-phone video recorded by Bland emerged, which prompted a review. To date, no indictments have been forthcoming.
Read MoreIT’S “MADNESS” I TELL YOU!
Histories collide at the Charles Playhouse on Warrenton Street in Boston. A longtime legitimate theater, the Charles was home to productions of The Actors Company of Boston, which included Olympia Dukakis, Al Pacino and Jane Alexander. When I arrived in the fall of 1977 in search of The Actors Company, I discovered something altogether different—a group of comedians who were wildly funny, creative and destined for greatness.
Read More“STICK FLY” LIFE UNDER A MICROSCOPE.
Lydia R. Diamond’s “Stick Fly”—the poignant family comedy/drama about a weekend with an affluent African-American family on Martha’s Vineyard—has a rich Chicago-based origin story dating back to its Congo Square Theatre debut in 2006. When it broke through to Broadway in 2011, Diamond’s celebrated work joined two others written by black female playwrights that season. Back in Chicago, Windy City Playhouse mounted a Chuck Smith-directed revival of the show in 2015, which brought Diamond’s work to the attention of Writers artistic director Michael Halberstam, and has now led to the Ron OJ Parson-directed revival that opened Wednesday in the Alexandra C. and John D. Nichols Theatre.
Read MoreParty time for Windy City’s “Boys”
It’s April 14, 1968, and you’re looking for a night out in New York City. On Broadway, you might opt to see the premiere of “George M.” starring Joel Grey (and Bernadette Peters), Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite,” or “Hair,” the groundbreaking musical that defined a generation.
Read MoreTHE LINE BETWEEN WHISTLEBLOWER AND TRAITOR
It’s no surprise that the same data systems that have made the world smaller also pose the most significant threat to our privacy. But the numbers will shock you, especially when you begin to consider the myriad ways we freely feed our own data to others, from asking Alexa for the weather forecast to asking for the best route home on a map app.
Read More“‘S WONDERFUL! ‘S MARVELOUS!”
A post-World War II neighborhood along the Seine becomes a crossroad for lovers yearning for a new beginning through art, music and dance in Drury Lane’s sparkling and exuberant regional premiere of “An American in Paris.” Directed and choreographed by Lynne Kurdziel-Formato, the show is wrapped in the exquisite songbook of George and Ira Gershwin, and features the explosive performances of Leigh-Ann Esty as the young dancer Lise Dassin and Josh Drake as the artist/veteran Jerry Mulligan, who falls hopelessly in love with her at first sight.
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