Lawrence Bommer

LEAPING INTO FALL If dance can define, this recital was its own dynamic dictionary: Running through this weekend, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s 39 Fall Series is a celebration in steps. At its heart are two justly popular world premieres: Turning the transience of dance into enduring, grateful memories, the pieces instantly justified the hours of…

“THE VERY BEST WE NEVER HAD” After reviving the Bard’s stirring chronicles in Tug of War, Chicago Shakespeare Theater has mounted another history play. Except this one reveals future history, not the Hundred Years War or War of the Roses, and, though it’s in blank verse, it’s not Shakespeare. Engagingly staged by Gary Griffin, King…

CLOCKS ARE COLD COMFORT Call it the ultimate disruption of sexual security/certainty, a double life lived, as La Cage put it, “at an angle.” As the title suggests, I Am My Own Wife is a subversive true-life tale of a human born Lothar Berfelde and dying as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who redefined more than himself….

THE LEGEND THAT GOT AWAY No, this show isn’t how fans want to remember Judy Garland at the bittersweet end. End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter’s sardonic salute to a star on the skids, is a sometimes-sadistic portrait of an imploding diva. A festering Chicago premiere by Porchlight Music Theatre, Quilter’s retro take on “Little…

A MOVING PORTRAIT OF A SMALLER SAINT A show doesn’t’”can’t’”get truer or richer than this current 140-minute gem at the Athenaeum Theatre. Perfectly concluding an all-Stephen Adly Guirgis season, Eclipse Theatre’s Chicago premiere The Little Flower of East Orange is powerfully personal, authentically intimate, and convincingly detailed’”a harrowing look at raw redemption. Solidly rooted in…

BAROQUE AND BURLESQUE’”A TOXIC MIX What happens when a so-called revival needs resuscitation? That’s the D.O.A. problem with this perverse collaboration between Chicago Opera Theater and Culture Clash, an “iconic” California-based performance troupe who live down to their name. Billed as a “Restoration spectacular,” Henry Purcell’s 17th-century gem The Fairy-Queen, performed three years before the…

PERFECT PRECIPITATION Of all the legendary Oscar-winning films destined to become stage musicals (42nd Street, Grand Hotel, Fame), Singin’ in the Rain, the 1952 MGM movie musical starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor, seems the most inevitable. It always had too much energy not to seem to burst from the screen. A tribute…

ADDING DEATH TO LIFE, CHICAGO SINFONIETTA CREATES A GREATER WHOLE Halloween night at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall: This year it meant alternately sinister or soaring sounds worthy of its title Dí­a de los Muertos: The Dance of Life and Death. Yes, there was a costume contest, won by a lady in a spooktacular headdress. Yes, the…

A TILT-A-WHIRL AT THE HARRIS THEATER FUNHOUSE The big news from this weekend’s two-night showcase for the jazz-stepping Giordano Dance Chicago is the world premiere of Peter Chu’s roiling new work “Divided Against.” An American dance designer now with Nederlands Dans Theater 2, Chu brings his gymnastic and cheerleader training to Djeff Houle’s driving original…

COMMUTING TO KILL In The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe described a huge “sea change” when the space race went from fighter test pilots to astronauts. In the 1920s through 1950s, high-altitude records were achieved by derring-do hot shots like Chuck Yeager who could fly “by the seat of their pants.” As their exploits evolved into…

OUR FUNKY FOUNDING FATHERS A hip-hop Alexander Hamilton? A beat-box Father of His Country? A jumping James Madison and a jiveass Jefferson who disses bigtime in a poetry slam? The ten-dollar bill will never be the same (or the dollar note for that matter). A sassy-spunky 2015 blast from the past set to irresistible rhythms,…

A POLITICAL PROKOFIEV BRINGS R & J CLOSER TO HOME It’s been over two years since its Joffrey Ballet’”and U.S.–premiere. The Chicago troupe’s updated version of Prokofiev’s  Romeo and Juliet again re-roots the lovers in modernistic postwar Italy. Slick and lean, this literally black-and-white world (with a little maroon thrown in to suggest blood as much…

THE MONARCH OF MAKE BELIEVE The Truman Show or The Matrix have nothing on Luigi Pirandello’s puzzle play Henry IV, a double-edged blast from the past (both 1921, its inception, and the 11th century, its pretend era). Imagine a man who, after suffering a concussion falling from a horse under suspicious circumstances, has for the…

GUMSHOE GLORY It’s not as original a burlesque of film noir as City of Angels,  but in less than 90 minutes Wicked City, a musical parody  by bookwriter/lyricist  Chad Beauelin and composer  Matthew Sklar (creators of Elf and The Wedding Singer), delivers tough-talking, if overly clever, hilarity. Even better, the merry travesty shrewdly stuffs Raymond Chandler into Sophocles. A…

THE PARTY IS NOT OVER Whether the words flowed from the terrific team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the prolific and dynamic Sammy Cahn, or a very young Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne was a composer for all lyricists. As supple in his melodies as his writers were in their verse and lifting as much…

THE PAUSES THAT DON’T REFRESH Presaging more darkness to follow, The Room, the first play by the late Harold Pinter, is an hour-long psychological thriller from 1957. Full of dour portent, it’s further proof that Halloween only needs humans for horror. Creepily directed by Dado at A Red Orchid Theatre, this six-person one-act practically patents…

THREE CATHERINES, YOU’RE OUT If you were one of his sextet of spouses, outlasting Henry VIII wasn’t just a feat of survival’”it became a political statement. The last and possibly least known of this Bluebeard’s six wives, Catherine Parr was the most learned and devout consort. A shrewd negotiator in domestic and foreign affairs, she…

FRIENDLY FOOLING Is stuff magical only because it can’t be explained? Perhaps it’s more than just the absence of logic, probability, or reason. There’s a presence too: Magic evokes a child-like sense of wonder in the oldest adults, rewarding their imagination more than their ignorance. At least that’s the working philosophy of House Theatre’s master…