Dan Zeff

MAMET CONFRONTS RACISM David Mamet’s Race looks at the racial situation in this country and sees an unbridgeable chasm between blacks and whites in our society. It’s a bleak vision, fortunately delivered with scintillating dramatic tension and some very funny dialogue.   Indeed, audiences will spend much of the evening laughing at what’s happening onstage at…

KLEA BLACKHURST IS QUEEN OF THIS GYPSY Gypsy is a musical theater biography of striptease performer Gypsy Rose Lee; but it’s really about Gypsy’s mother, Mama Rose, immortalized by Ethel Merman in the original 1959 production. Merman’s performance set the bar for all future performers brave enough to take on the role. Every revival of…

SUITORS SUIT ILL-FITTING SUITS Enda Walsh, scribe of The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom, is one of the great polarizing writers in modern theater:   his admirers love the English dramatist’s quirky theatrical imagination and his command of language, while his detractors complain that his stories are improbable, if not incomprehensible, and that his…

IT’S A WONDERFUL PRODUCTION A stage adaptation of the movie classic It’s a Wonderful Life premiered in Connecticut in 1997 and, before long, the adaptation became a staple of the regional theater circuit during the Christmas season.   The show now challenges A Christmas Carol as the preeminent live theater attraction of the holidays.   There is…

A CAROL FOR THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE The Goodman Theatre is the custodian of the most popular tradition in Chicagoland holiday entertainment, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The 2011 production does not depart in any major way from the 33 previous presentations (excluding a disastrous revival many years ago that turned the story into…

THE 1700s MEET THE 1960s Back in the early 1700’s, Pierre Marivaux was a major playwright in France, but his romantic comedies never made much of an impact on the American stage until the 1990s, when opera and theater director Stephen Wadsworth translated Marivaux’s plays into English. Wadsworth’s successful adaptations made Marivaux a significant presence…

THE JACKIE TAYLOR STORY TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER THE JACKIE WILSON STORY Jackie Taylor is a happy lady these days, and everyone with a fondness to Chicagoland theater should rejoice with her. Taylor finally has her new theater, a sumptuous multi-story that is the home of Taylor’s Black Ensemble Theater. The architectural ornament stands just a…

HO HO HUM Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings is an anti-holiday-cheer comedy which should be appropriate for audiences ready for an excursion into the dark side of the Christmas season. There’s drunkenness, attempted adultery, endless family bickering, a shooting, and a preposterous marionette show. For anyone who has endured a dysfunctional family holiday gathering, this show…

A HOMER RUN One-actor shows are by their nature demanding, but Timothy Edward Kane’s volcanic storytelling in An Iliad is a stunning marvel. This retelling of the famous epic The Iliad – attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer – is an exceptionally staggering test of a performer’s physical and emotional resources. The adaptation is…

STILL WAITING TO SEE IF THIS DOUGH WILL EVER RISE The Baker’s Wife never made it to Broadway. The musical folded in Washington. D.C. in 1976 before reaching New York City but has since gained something of a cult status in both the United States and England. Area audiences now have the opportunity to see…

TAKING CARE TO CREATE EXCELLENT THEATER The plot of Harold Pinters’ The Caretaker is uncomplicated on the surface and densely complex in its subtexts; it is a melding of realism and theatre-of-the-absurd which places a thuggish and volatile young man, his brain-damaged older brother, and a scruffy old tramp together in a rubbish-strewn room.   From…

PROFILES OF A DREARY EXISTENCE The Profiles Theatre has carved out an essential niche for itself on the local Chicagoland theater scene with sexy, violent, and edgy modern dramas. Recently, playwright Deirdre O’Connor gave Profiles one of its major hits with Jailbait, about a pair of teen-aged girls who venture into the adult world of…

A DREAMBOAT IN DREAMCOAT In just two productions, the Paramount Theatre has elevated itself to the top of the class in Chicagoland musical theater, in company with Drury Lane in Oakbrook Terrace and the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire. The Paramount opened with an ecstatically reviewed revival of My Fair Lady in September and is now…

PROMISING PREMISE PRODUCES PREPOSTEROUS PRODUCT Katha and Ryu are a modern married couple fed up with their harried lives: Ryu hates his 60-hour workweeks as a doctor and Katha is discontented with her job in front a computer screen. Plus, she is drenched in depression following a miscarriage. Katha accidentally meets well-groomed, mild-mannered, and middle-aged…

HAND OVER GIST Martin McDonagh, the English dramatist known for his quirky and violent plays set in rural Ireland, sets A Behanding in Spokane in the United States, but the setting hasn’t inspired him to create the rich ethnic canvas that makes his Irish plays such vivid playgoing experiences. Although it is not a great…