Chicago

FRENZY IN FEBRUARY Detonating across the Auditorium Theatre’s vast stage through February 21, Joffrey Ballet’s Bold Moves has more of the latter than the former stuff. But this kinetic winter program–two favorites and a world premiere’”reprises worthy returns as it showcases a troupe at its top.  The overall mood of these pieces is noisy desperation: Couples…

MAJESKI’S MAJESTIC MARSCHALLIN Lyric Opera’s new production of Der Rosenkavalier is beautiful, charming, and magnificent. It delightfully exceeded my expectations and gave me a new appreciation for the operas of Richard Strauss. I’m not quite sure what I expected, but I’ll admit to being apprehensive. Four-hour operas in German are, well, long, especially on a…

TALLY LOW Doggedly determined to fight yesterday’s battles, Nell Benjamin’s chronic farce The Explorers Club manically mocks the heyday of male British explorers. Fuddy-duddy adventure seekers with aboriginal blood on their hands, these intrepid trekkers did a lot more than find the source of the Nile; they blazed a trail for imperialism, colonialism, racism and…

A DAMNED GOOD PAIRING What could be a more appropriate title for an opera than La Voix Humaine? What better source material for an opera than Dante’s Divina Commedia? Chicago Opera Theatre combines the two in the unusual pairing of Poulenc’s operatic monologue and Puccini’s one-act Gianni Schicchi. It is a surprisingly successful and enjoyable…

TO BAKER STREET AND BEYOND! Not to give anything away but the title character in The Man Who Murdered Sherlock Holmes is not Professor Moriarty, “the Napoleon of crime.” In this life-imitates-art parallel to City of Angels and Six Characters in Search of An Author, a character clashes with his creator. So the villain is…

IF BREVITY WAS THE SOUL OF ETHICS: One of the advantages of one-act plays is that if they’re bad, you don’t have to wait long for them to be over. (I can’t ever remember wishing a good play would go on longer.) Fortunately, Neil LaBute’s Vices and Virtues isn’t at all bad. Some of the…

STAGNANT STAGING AND CRAZY COSTUMES, BUT THE  CAST AND CHORUS CAPTIVATE There’s a good reason why Verdi’s operas are typically described as “grand opera.” They’re big and bold, requiring massive orchestras and choruses. Soloists need strong voices with ample range and power. If this makes them somewhat formidable to produce, then Nabucco has a reputation for…

THE DESCENT OF MAN AS DRAMA Another incendiary offering from Oracle Productions, Monty Cole’s bold take on Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape is pugilistic and powerful. In his athletic tour-de-force, a vibrant sextet stomp, leap, clamber, dangle, and swing like the title from stage-wide scaffolding. For all its force and fury, this latest Ape never…

COMMITMENT CRISES FUEL A CRACKLING COMEDY Many, many gay plays since Stonewall have pitted fidelity against promiscuity, love against sex, and, nowadays, marriage against friendship. Same-sex weddings have clearly intensified the painful choice between “sexual outlaw” and legal spouse. If children aren’t reason enough to keep folks together after sex wears thin, is sheer devotion?…

EVERYTHING’S FINE IN ‘59 It’s as welcome as flowers that bloom in the spring: A cascading, minute-by-minute hit,  Bye Bye Birdie  is a showcase for happiness even as it merrily mocks the pseudo-innocent “togetherness” of the Eisenhower Era and the scary advent of rock ‘n’ roll. For coy or legal reasons, Elvis Presley never gets mentioned in…

LEARNING TO BE LOVED The past clashes with the future in Dominique Morisseau’s  Sunset Baby, a drama more of reckoning than reconciliation. Despite her rage at the father she thinks deserted both her and her late mother in the name of impossible idealism, a daughter is forced to face a legacy of radical activism. Inevitably, a…

ANOTHER WALTZ WITH TENNESSEE Tom “Tennessee” Williams never buried his treasures. The ultimate, unashamed “bleeding heart,” this passionate playwright put his soul and guts into every show he ever wrote–actually into every character, with contagious compassion and dependable shocks of recognition. Sometimes, his works even capture his state of soul while writing them. Few do…

TOO TRUE TO BE NEW Subtitled “A Tale of Today,” Mark Twain’s early novel  The Gilded Age  was written in (and from) 1873, a dozen years before Huckleberry Finn rafted down the Mississippi. A conventional potboiler, its chapters were presumably grabbed from headlines detailing the scandalous Grant administration. Mr. Clemens’ 630-page epic, which anticipates Gore Vidal’s insider…

A SERIOUSLY STUPID SCREAMFEST Premiering in politically correct San Francisco in 2014, Christopher Chen’s cartoon drama purports to address multi-culturalism in politics. This two-act trifle focuses specifically–and improbably’”on two Asian-American presidential candidates from both parties. (I guess Latino or African-American “mixed race” prospects weren’t available.) A blatant and simplistic satire of race-baiting and identity politics,…

BAGGAGE HANDLING Unprocessed pain can supply grist enough for a playwright’s mill. But an unprocessed play is a lot less. Alas, there’s little design for loving in William Donnelly’s  No Wake, its plot almost an exact replica of Noël  Coward’s famous 1933 comedy. Deficient at supplying the psychological context for its emotional payoff, this 80-minute one-act, richly…

A SOUL STORM SUNG TO THE SKIES A tribute to women of soul,  Dynamite Divas, despite the title, is not about terrorists with tonsils. A remake and update of a 2001 hit at the Black Ensemble Theater, it’s a very generous showcase for a ton of talent. There’s everything to enjoy in producer/playwright Jackie Taylor’s earnest…

A VOICE GETS ITS OWN SHOW Despite the name,  Baritones UnBound  is no comedy about musical kinkiness. A kind of theatrical rebuttal to  The Three Tenors  (and its many spinoffs), it offers equal time and retributive justice to the middle voice in the repertory of male vocalists. The baritone register, occupying a strategic place between the heroic and heavenly…

A POUND OF LOVE EXPLODES INTO A TON OF HATE Short of screaming “Fire!” in the theatrical darkness, you can’t imagine a more polemical provocation than  Domesticated. As with  Grand Concourse  and  Good People, Steppenwolf Theatre Company delivers another gadfly masterpiece with this Chicago premiere. There’s toxic irony in the title of  Domesticated, a demure euphemism for some less pleasant…

LEAPING TO THE SOLSTICE Between now and Sunday, four innovative female choreographers offer an evening of motion quests. The Harris Theatre is the backdrop for themes of not-so-close encounters contrasted with sometimes cloying connections. It makes sense: What can show the mutability of desire better than dance, where what might have been and what must…