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Chicago

  • Opera Review: ARIODANTE (Lyric Opera of Chicago)

    By Lawrence Bommer | March 3, 2019
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    HANDEL WITH CARE It’s hard to believe that, following its Covent Garden debut in 1735, this glorious  opera seria  endured 191 years of neglect. It returned to the boards in 1926, even more so in the 1970s, selling its stuff with dazzling vocal pyrotechnics, courtly dances, and a hard-driving tale of innocence traduced and true love vindicated….

  • Theater Review: THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY (Lifeline Theatre in Chicago)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 25, 2019
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    IF IT’S THURSDAY, IT MUST BE LIFELINE Deemed a “metaphysical thriller,”  The Man Who Was Thursday  is religious writer G.K. Chesterton’s celebrated satire from 1908. Intentionally confounding its characters as much as its plethora of plots, it’s a very rational romp. Chesterton’s political parable conjures up a conspiratorial world of bomb-throwing anarchists, proletarian poets, and single-minded and…

  • Chicago Theater Review: ACT(S) OF GOD (Lookingglass)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 25, 2019
    in

    TOO MANY ACT(S) Even apocalypses, it seems, can be goofy, disruptive, and “meta” — if you go by Lookingglass Theatre Company’s irritating and overlong world premiere. With two intermissions that sprawl across 150 not so necessary minutes, this dark offering by ensemble member Kareem Bandealy indulges in some very cute doom. Before it’s over the…

  • Opera Review: LA TRAVIATA (Lyric Chicago)

    By Barnaby Hughes | February 24, 2019
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    MISSING A FEW NOTES It’s quite a treat to have two Verdi operas in one season, especially two of the composer’s best. Yet neither of these similarly named operas gets a new production. Whereas Il Trovatore had first been performed during the 2014/15 season, so La Traviata was performed in 2013/14. I did not see…

  • Chicago Theater Review: TWILIGHT BOWL (Goodman)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 20, 2019
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    SHE STRIKES! SHE SCORES! WELL, BOWL ME OVER It’s only women who perform, design, direct, write, and otherwise shape this Goodman Theatre world premiere. Rebecca Gilman’s  Twilight Bowl  represents a healthy change of insiders. Making up for lost chances and time, this coming-of-age, slice-of-life depicts six small-town, twentysomething friends across several seasons. Their getaway time is spent…

  • Review: THE SCARLET IBIS (Chicago Opera Theater)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 17, 2019
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    A SMALL STORY SOARS IN THIS NEW OPERA Right now the Studebaker Theater houses a wonder. A chamber opera with a heart of gold,  The Scarlet Ibis, with a supple score by Stefan Weisman and lyrical libretto by David Cote, is based on a 1960 short story by the late James Hurst. In only 95 minutes…

  • Dance Review: ANNA KARENINA (World Premiere by Joffrey Ballet at the Auditorium Theatre)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 14, 2019
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    LEO TOLSTOY TURNED TO LEAPS AND TWIRLS IN THIS WORLD PREMIERE BALLET MILESTONE So many superlatives to savor. Newly created by 35-year-old  wunderkind  composer Ilya Demutsky, who replenishes the rhapsodic romanticism of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, and genius choreographer Yuri Possokhov, who finds new depths in dance,  Anna Karenina, Joffrey Ballet’s first commissioned score, redeemed its promissory notes perfectly…

  • Chicago Theater Review: A DOLL’S HOUSE, PART 2 (Steppenwolf)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 13, 2019
    in

    A SEQUEL WITHOUT A SOUL Some nerve. It takes chutzpah on top of arrogance to dare to continue, let alone complete, another playwright’s stand-alone masterpiece. Lucas Hnath has the temerity to imagine a sequel to  A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen’s proto-feminist classic from 1879. It remains the still-controversial tale of a Norwegian wife who, refusing to…

  • Theater Review: HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE (Raven Theatre in Chicago)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 12, 2019
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    HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE THEATER Some plays take time to come into their own but they’re well worth a wait. Over two decades after its Off-Broadway debut, Paula Vogel’s  How I Learned to Drive  is only now reaching full impact. That’s thanks to the consciousness-raising of #MeToo, among other seismic changes in the body politic. With…

  • Chicago Theater Review: PIPELINE (Victory Gardens)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 10, 2019
    in

    A PIPELINE TO GREAT THEATER The title of  Pipeline  refers to the much-reviled “school-to-prison” conduit that keeps minority kids from any outcome but incarceration, soft or hard. It’s driven by a fatal fusion of low and self-fulfilling expectations of failure, endless and pointless discipline, and inadequate encouragement or alternatives to crime. Disadvantage can take many forms. It’s…

  • Theater Review: THE FATHER (Remy Bumppo Theatre Company at Theater Wit)

    By Lawrence Bommer | February 10, 2019
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    THE SOUND OF A BRAIN BREAKING Uncertainty is the default drive behind the 95 excruciating minutes of French playwright Florian Zeller’s  The Father. Seldom has a staged mystery shifted so suddenly and strongly between competing realities. As the protagonist Andre says, “There’s something funny going on here.” But it’s not amusing: Yes,  The Father  is crammed with mistaken…

  • Opera Review: ELEKTRA (Lyric Opera of Chicago)

    By Barnaby Hughes | February 5, 2019
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    AN ELEKTRA WITHOUT ELEKTRICITY The first show I ever reviewed in Chicago was The Hypocrites’ All Our Tragic at the Den Theatre, a marathon twelve-hour distillation of every surviving Greek tragedy. It was an extraordinary experience. I’ve also seen a one-night performance of the complete Oresteia of Aeschylus and read both Sophocles’ and Euripedes’ versions…

  • Theater Review: A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE & MURDER (Porchlight Music Theatre; Ruth Page Center)

    By Lawrence Bommer | January 30, 2019
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    A DEATH OF FRESH AIR It’s a tour de force times ten as Monty Navarro, distant heir to the D’Ysquith fortune, slaughters his way to an earldom and marriage, for better or worse, with a doting cousin. A romp where vengeance gets served up hot and cold,  A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder  is  convulsing the Ruth…

  • Chicago Theater Review: HOW TO CATCH CREATION (Goodman Theatre)

    By Lawrence Bommer | January 29, 2019
    in

    CONSIDER CREATION CAUGHT IN THIS SEMINAL WORLD PREMIERE It’s a tour-de-force to take home and reverently recall: A Goodman Theatre world premiere,  How To Catch Creation  lives up to a lovely title. In little more than two hours, Christina Anderson chronicles the intersected passions, both procreative and artistic, of three very different couples. They’re contrasted and combined…

  • Theater Review: US/THEM (Chicago Shakespeare)

    By Lawrence Bommer | January 24, 2019
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    OUT OF THE BLOOD OF BABES It’s a probably thankless and certainly unsettling undertaking:  Us/Them  is an hour-long performance piece by two young members of the Belgian troupe BRONKS. It dares to depict the 2004 Beslan school siege and massacre from the point of view of two child victims: One survives the take-over by 35 Chechen separatists….

  • Theater Review: THE REALISTIC JONESES (Shattered Globe Theatre and Theater Wit)

    By Lawrence Bommer | January 22, 2019
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    IS IT TOO REALISTIC, OR NOT REALISTIC ENOUGH? Is it smoke and mirrors or a trick of the light? No matter — the fact that nothing urgent is at stake in the 100 minutes of Will Leno’s  The Realistic Joneses  is not beside the point: It  is  the point. Next-door neighbors in a cookie-cutter suburb, four married characters —…

  • Chicago Theater Review: EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL (Black Button Eyes Productions)

    By Lawrence Bommer | January 19, 2019
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    BRINGING DEAD TO LIFE An import from our neighbor to the north that’s almost as inebriating as Canadian Club,  Evil Dead The Musical  is a blood-splattering, silly-ass, ham-acting confection based on a franchise of three gag-inducing 80s’ films. (How come the “good dead” never get a show? I guess it would be too dull.) A huge hit…

  • Theater Review: DADA WOOF PAPA HOT (About Face Theatre at Theater Wit in Chicago)

    By Lawrence Bommer | January 18, 2019
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    FRIENDS WITH CHILDREN Gay parents — for centuries that seemed a contradiction in terms. How could promiscuity engender anything beyond itself? But, if, as Delmore Schwartz said, “With dreams begin responsibilities,” along with (modern) marriage comes children. A lot of stuff suddenly altered in 2015 when marriage equality passed. Theater is just now catching up…

  • Theater Review: CARDBOARD PIANO (TimeLine)

    By Lawrence Bommer | January 17, 2019
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    THEATER AND RECONCILIATION Love never seems greater than when hate sets it off. Then, as if to prove its power, it finds so much to rise above. A huge hit at the 2016 Humana Festival of New American Plays and now making its Chicago premiere in a forceful staging by TimeLine Theatre,  Cardboard Piano  is an exercise…

  • Chicago Theater Review: FUENTE OVEJUNA (City Lit)

    By Lawrence Bommer | January 14, 2019
    in

    #ME TOO, 15th-CENTURY STYLE If it didn’t actually happen, this play would not be believed. Its climax soars as, tortured by the Inquisition to reveal the murderer of the evil-doing Commander of Calatrava, 300 villagers declared that it was Fuenteovejuna — not a person but their town that struck the blow for freedom. Their defiance,…

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