Erika Mikkalo

ALICE IN ANDERSONVILLELAND Fall down the rabbit hole of the thoughtfully absurd Alice, written and directed  by Noelle Krimm. This performance’”a reprise of the popular 2004 staging’”showcases work by multiple companies as well as individual artists. Loose interpretations of Alice in Wonderland’s twelve chapters are executed in local businesses, alleys, and street corners. Upon arriving at…

STOREFRONT SHENANIGANS Have you ever heard of Bad Settlement Theatre Company? Well, don’t worry about it if you haven’t. Up until the opening of House Theatre’s production of Season on the Line, this off-off-off-Broadway theater company only existed in the imagination of playwright Shawn Pfautsch, whose new work celebrates the theater as it deconstructs it….

THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A CITY As artist, poet, and actor Tony Fitzpatrick prepares to leave Chicago for New Orleans, he presents his theater piece, The Midnight City: a personal conversation that documents the Windy City, certainly, but also history, heroes, and art. Friend and co-writer Stan Klein’”who previously appeared with Fitzpatrick in This…

A JEWEL OF THEIR SOULS The Gift Theatre’s production of Othello – their first Shakespeare, and my first exposure to this company – is a gift indeed. The doubly minimal set, combined with the decision to frequently execute the Elizabethan script with contemporary vernacular rhythms, serves to rid the production of any period distractions and…

BUILD-A-BEAR NARRATIVE In this year’s Spring Spectacle, Redmoon provides some characters, some comedy, some cruelty, their trademark whimsy, and ornate production values, but the chronological and structural aspects of Bellboys, Bears and Baggage are left to the audience. Visitors are admitted to performances in small groups and are confronted with three doors, each bearing an…

WHEN PLAYTIME IS OVER Somewhere between “Once Upon a Time” and “Happily Ever After” there is a very adult world of tests, losses, disappointments, and grief. Despite this, we assert our agency; or as a baker’s wife sings in Into the Woods, “If you know what you want, then you go and you find it,…

WAY BETTER THAN A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE Redmoon’s seasonal performances are not events or even experiences, but passages to a fleeting world of contemporary fable, complete with masks, music, machines, puppetry, and particularly in this years’ Winter Pageant, dance.   Forty multi-talented performers take the stage to tell a pigeon’s tale: An unpresuming bird…

TO KNOW, KNOW, KNOW HER: Singer, comedienne and anti-glam diva Sandra Bernhard thrives on delightfully toying with her adoring throngs. I remember the first time I saw her on the David Letterman show when she snarled into the mic: “It’s that time of the month again.” When the audience responded with nervous titters, she nailed…

A CHORUS FE-LINE A prolific author and auteur, Rainer Werner Fassbinder exulted in display of the seamy and hypocritical side of the post-war German bourgeoisie. He directed forty films, wrote twenty-four plays and performed thirty-six roles before his death at age thirty-seven.   His frenetic pace of production is echoed by the structure of his play,…

THE SPECIFIC ENIGMA OF A BUNNY A play is generally defined as “a staged representation of a story – see: DRAMA.” A circle ensues, because drama is explained to be “a piece of writing that tells a story and is performed on a stage.” Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit, Red Rabbit meets these basic standards –…

HAND IN HAND TO HELL’S ANGELS Deceit and destruction reign in Wayward Productions’ hell-bent for leather staging of Richard III, which has been reimagined  as biker gang mayhem in a bar named London. This reinterpretation of Shakespeare has extended its run from the Underground Wonder Bar; given the deft direction of Carlo Lorenzo Garcia and committed…

THE HORROR OF SELF-DENIAL FUELS INVENTIVE STAGING Chicago Opera Theater has teamed up with Long Beach Opera in California to produce a delightfully disturbing presentation of Philip Glass’ adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s renowned horror text, The Fall of the House of Usher. While the clichés of such American Gothic might seem to call for…

THEATER FOR SOCIAL CHANGE With fifty-two murders to date in 2013 as I write this review – over a murder a day – the death toll in Chicago seems as ubiquitous as it is tragic. Collaboraction Theatre Company strives to raise awareness, puncture apathy, and perhaps even instigate change in their new work Crime Scene:…

FEARFUL SYMMETRY In Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, inspired by an actual 2003 event involving occupying soldiers in Iraq, a slain tiger takes center stage and discusses from the perspective of the newly dead that there is a flash of retrospective honesty which instills a global rather than personal viewpoint. The Tiger…

PIôATA FULL OF DARKNESS Don’t be concerned if you don’t receive an invitation to Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party – the Steppenwolf’s revival production is still an event not to be missed. Caretaker Meg Bowles and her deck-chair attendant spouse, Petey (Moira Harris, returning to the Steppenwolf for the first time since 1998, and John…

A SPECTACULAR AND FASCINATING JOURNEY IN WHICH THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY SEEM Cameras have evolved from room-sized camera obscuras, to the box-like contraption of the nineteenth century, to the mundane and miniscule phone cameras in every modern pocket. We are now subject to constant documentation and the distribution of images can be global and…

WHEN THE DECONSTRUCTION OF COMEDY BUILDS LAUGHTER Jeff Garlin, comedian and star performer in HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, appears in his one-man show Closer Than I Appear at the Steppenwolf Theatre Upstairs. Although it is possible to describe the evening through a seemingly free-associative list of objects – a suitcase, plastic jack o’ lantern, orange…

MEMORIES MAY BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH Freshly Fallen Snow, by Chicago Dramatists’ resident playwright M. E. H. Lewis, builds its plot upon a recent scientific advancement:   the possibility of mitigating the effects of traumatic memories by physically removing them, potentially erasing long-term memory as well. This intriguing prospect is examined through an alternately stylized…