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Chicago
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Chicago Theater Review: THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS (Eclipse Theatre Company)
INGE’S NOISY DESPERATION Mission accomplished: Eclipse Theatre Company characteristically concludes its season with a play that wears a big heart on an open sleeve. The troupe, which cultivates one playwright per year, delivers a vintage family saga for the all-Inge year — a sad tale of thwarted affection and canceled happiness. Following Natural Affection and Bus Stop, Eclipse…
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Chicago Opera Review: IL TROVATORE (Lyric Opera)
A FORMIDABLE CAST CASTS ITS CAST AROUND YOUR HEART Perhaps Verdi’s most popular opera, Il Trovatore (The Troubadour) was revived at Lyric as recently as the 2014/15 season, which itself was a revival production. Now as then, audiences are transported back in time to experience Sir David McVicar’s Goya-esque interpretation of Verdi’s gypsy drama. While…
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Opera Review: IOLANTA (Chicago Opera Theater)
HOT IOLANTA, OR LOVE REALLY IS BLIND A glorious 126-year-old discovery just happened again. First performed at Saint Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater in 1892 (on a double-bill with The Nutcracker), the one-act Iolanta is the last of eleven operas written by the great Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Running for only one more weekend, this 85-minute Slavic gem, performed in Russian…
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Chicago Theater Review: THIS BITTER EARTH (About Face Theatre at Theater Wit)
THE BITTER END The gulf is clear from the start. Joe Schermoly’s set consists of interconnected boxes that create shelves which suggest two apartments separated by a crosswalk. It’s an apt depiction of the divide between the interracial gay lovers in This Bitter Earth. An earnest if unfulfilled one-act by Harrison David Rivers, this Chicago premiere…
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Opera Review: SIEGFRIED (Lyric Opera of Chicago)
FANTASTIC FANTASY, BUT STILL LEAVES YOU FRIED Beautiful. Exhausting. Whimsical. That’s how I would describe Siegfried — in that order. The third installment of Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle has all the gorgeous music you would expect, played by an excellent orchestra and sung by an international cast of musician-actors. At a run-time of five hours,…
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Chicago Theater Review: 110 IN THE SHADE (BoHo Theatre at Theater Wit)
A SHOW TO END ANY THEATER DROUGHT It’s a “big sky” story with a ton of heart, this other musical created by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones, composer and lyricist of The Fantasticks and I Do! I Do! Wonderfully revived by BoHo Theatre at Theater Wit, 110 in the Shade deserves packed audiences for a sweet show steeped in down-home decency and wise…
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Chicago Theater Review: LADY IN DENMARK (Goodman Theatre)
WHEN REALISM IS NOT ENOUGH, SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN DENMARK It’s strange that an enterprise as lavishly bounteous as Goodman Theatre should seem to shrink itself: Currently it’s hosting two world-premiere solo shows in both its big Dearborn Street stages. (Talk about taking “less is more” too literally: Also, in the last year, Goodman has…
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Theater Review: WOMEN OF SOUL (WITH A TRIBUTE TO ARETHA FRANKLIN) (Black Ensemble Theater)
A CELEBRATION OF DIVAS Three years ago, Black Ensemble Theater’s associate director Daryl D. Brooks created a kinetic tribute called Men of Soul. The revue embraced solid singers whose hearts were as strong as their lungs. Now proper, perhaps overdue, homage is paid in a celebration called Women of Soul (With a Tribute to Aretha Franklin). Seeing…
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Theater Review: CIRCOLOMBIA: ACÉLÉRÉ (The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare on Navy Pier)
A COLOSSAL CIRCUS CARAVAN FROM COLOMBIA Three rings do not make a circus, any more than “two boards and a passion” make a play. Sometimes all you need is fifteen performers for sixty power-packed minutes. That’s the fantastic formula working in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s all-purpose Yard space on Navy Pier. Making its North American debut…
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Chicago Theater Review: MASTER CLASS (TimeLine Theatre at Stage 773)
LA DIVINA EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU After she prematurely destroyed her once “smoky,” soaring voice, the “prima donna assoluta” — Greek soprano Maria Callas — decided that if you can’t sing, teach. Semi-tragically separated from her billionaire lover Aristotle Onassis, near the end of her too-short life (she died at 54 in 1977), the…
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Theater Review: HELLO, DOLLY! (National Tour)
IT ONLY TAKES A MUSICAL To start with, let’s agree to never say “Goodbye, Dolly.” Thornton Wilder’s genius for the common touch isn’t just a golden legacy in Our Town or The Skin of Our Teeth, two perfect comedies of life. There’s almost as much warm wisdom in The Matchmaker, Wilder’s craftily-plotted 1955 mating romp that Michael Stewart and…
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Theater Review: PRIVATE PEACEFUL (Greenhouse Theater Center in Chicago and on tour)
TRENCH STAGEFARE It’s a small-scale marvel, a feat to treasure: In only 80 minutes director/adaptor Simon Reade and performer Shane O’Regan do total justice to Private Peaceful, Michael Morpurgo’s 2003 anti-war novel for older children. Not to be missed at Chicago’s Greenhouse Theater Center, it’s an enthralling achievement, this solo reenactment of childhood, peace, coming of…
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Chicago Theater Review: GYPSY: A MUSICAL FABLE (Porchlight Music Theatre at Ruth Page Center)
LET HER ENTERTAIN YOU! Some people say Gypsy: A Musical Fable is the greatest Broadway musical ever written. And some people are probably right. It isn’t just a stirring story of an ugly duckling turning into a swan, or a stage mother from hell morphing into a humble fan (and admitting that for years she was living…
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Opera Review: IDOMENEO (Lyric Opera of Chicago)
IDOMENABLE After nearly a week of striking musicians and cancelled performances, Lyric Opera is now back on schedule and giving audiences what they want. With Mozart’s Idomeneo, audiences are more likely getting what they didn’t know they wanted because they’ve never experienced this opera before. Last performed at Lyric during the 1997-98 season, Idomeneo is…
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Theater Review: FRANKENSTEIN (Remy Bumppo Theatre Company at Theater Wit)
MARY SHELLEY’S ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: FRANKENSTEIN’S TRICK IS OUR TREAT Creating a Halloween story for all seasons in a novel that launched a terror genre, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley named Dr. Victor Frankenstein the “modern Prometheus” (the monster, among other deprivations, has no name). It’s a sardonic slam at this very debatable benefactor for making this re-animator…
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Theater Review: IT’S ONLY A PLAY (Pride Films and Plays at the Pride Arts Center)
THIS TURKEY IS SO SCARY, YOU HAVE TO KEEP REPEATING TO YOURSELF, “IT’S ONLY A PLAY… IT’S ONLY A PLAY…” There’s a glaring contradiction in It’s Only a Play: Written by the usually crafty Terrence McNally, a 20-time Broadway playwright, this two-act love letter to Broadway theater and its “plays of fools” — depicted in full…
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Theater Review: PIPPIN (Mercury Theater Chicago)
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR AS FLOWER CHILD Some shows stay young by never growing up: Stephen Schwartz’ silly-stupid 1972 musical is the (im)perfect example of a musical that’s saved by its songs and spirit. A sort of ninth-century, one-ring circus crammed with presentational glee, it was practically a tribal sequel to Schwartz’s Godspell (with homage…
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Theater Review: FLYIN’ WEST (American Blues Theater)
FLYIN’ HIGH: THE HEARTLAND SOLIDARITY OF SODBUSTING SISTERS For a while it must have seemed like a black Eden. Founded in 1877, Nicodemus, Kansas was a Reconstruction success story founded on a racial covenant. It offered a second chance for former slaves and future dreamers: The reputedly all-black town was the enlightened creation of the…
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Theater Review: CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY (Raven Theatre in Chicago)
CRUMBS IS A RICH MEAL Much like Lorraine Hansberry and Tennessee Williams, Lynn Nottage is a memory-monger. She sees truth in small stuff that looms larger later. And as with Arthur Miller or Clifford Odets (especially the latter’s Awake and Sing!), she also has the gift of moral magnification: She can make family feuds stand for…
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Opera Review: LA BOHÈME (Lyric Opera of Chicago)
PUCCINI’S PARISIAN OPERA ROMANCES AND ENCHANTS Lyric Opera’s 64th season opened with fizz, frocks, and fanfare last night. Once the red carpet had emptied and the evening’s audience settled into their seats with tumblers of wine, the curtain rose and the music began — and what a magical experience it was. The ladies in glamorous…
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