C.J. Fernandes

SEND IN THE CLOWNS Farce is not a style of performance one sees too often these days and that’s probably because it is extraordinarily difficult to pull off, requiring complete commitment from cast and crew to its sensibilities, razor-sharp comic timing, physical comedy chops, and tight pacing and direction. There’s a lot that can go…

COLOR ME DISAPPOINTED I came to see the Goodman Theatre’s current production of The Color Purple with a complicated history. I devoured Alice Walker’s novel three times as a callow teenager and recoiled from Spielberg’s 1985 Disneyfied cinematic adaptation, abandoning the VHS midway through. Since then, The Color Purple has been adapted into a Broadway…

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ What is theatre? This was the question that popped into my head as I took my seat in the tiny TUTA Theatre space in Chicago’s Ravenswood Manor neighborhood, ready to take in their production of Celine Song’s Tom & Eliza: a…

SICKENINGLY FUNNY Noah Diaz’s You Will Get Sick, which opened last night at Steppenwolf, is an odd bird of a play. It begins with an irresistible premise: a middle-aged woman, Callan, responds to a flyer promising “$40 $20″ to anyone who will receive a phone call from a stranger; the only requirement being that she…

STORYTELLING THAT LAUNCHES A THOUSAND SHIPS There is a moment in Court Theatre’s fourth (!) iteration of An Iliad where The Poet holds a flashlight below his chin—I immediately flashed back to memories of ghost stories told in a tent while lights were supposed to be out. The conceits of Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s…