Chicago

LATE NIGHT CHUB THAT’S HARD TO SWALLOW The only excuse for reviewing this 70-minute trifle is that they’re charging $20 to see it when it would be worth twice as much to pay to get out. Mired in forced rhymes and scansion, forgettable tunes, lame lyrics, grade-school props, seemingly improvised dialogue, and a plot that…

STAGNANT YET SATIATING Giuseppe Verdi wrote Simon Boccanegra in 1857, but it is the revised 1881 version which the  Lyric Opera is presenting in a stiff yet satisfying production.   After searching for his lost daughter (reappearing later as Amelia), Simon Boccanegra (Thomas Hampson) returns to Genoa to find the corpse of his lover and her vengeful…

A POWERFUL WASTELAND AT TIMELINE Wasteland is a two-character play but the audience only sees one in this drama about two American soldiers held as prisoners during the Vietnam War, now receiving a gripping world premiere at TimeLine. The other character is separated behind a wall in a connecting room. The rooms exist an in…

GIVE IT  THE BOOT UNTIL IT WORKS OUT THE KINKS Prepare yourself for some disparate reviews of Kinky Boots, which had its pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago’s Bank of America Theater last night. One camp will see the sterling talent and the highly expensive glitz and glamour that many Broadway outings need to disguise mediocre writing and…

AFTERGLOW It’s with good reason that Chad Beckim’s After has been extended at Profiles Theatre. Yes, Beckim’s script undoubtedly tries to cover too much territory as he tells the tale of Monty, who has been exonerated after serving 17 years for a trumped-up charge of rape. Yet even with faults in both the playwriting and…

INTO THE TOILET The 1996 film Trainspotting was notorious for its spare-no-sensitivity, take-no-prisoners look at Edinburgh heroin addicts. Based on Irvine Welsh’s bottom-feeding novel, it traced the tailspins of a fractured family of junkies. Always meaning to go clean, these loud losers would do anything for their next fix: they stole and sold electronics, drugs…

OXYGEN? YES. FUEL? YES. HEAT? NO. There are arsonists who want to burn down  a town, and they want  the citizens  to help. In Max Frisch’s absurdist play, a  city has whipped itself into a frenzy over manmade fires, but they won’t acknowledge their complicity in the conflagrations. And while they know theoretically how to stop the arsonists, they…

SMOKIN’ When Smokey Joe’s Café opened on Broadway in 1995, the critics were only mildly impressed, and suggested that this revue of rock “n” roll songs composed by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller would be better served  by a small club setting than a large Broadway theater. Audiences thought otherwise, and the show ran on Broadway…

EVIL WILL TRAVEL In his great works, like Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, and even in his  lesser efforts, such as Broken Glass, Arthur Miller forces us to confess a greater loyalty than those based on our obvious ties to family, class, and country. He asks us to honor our ideals, and further challenges…

THE LANGUAGE OF THE ZOMBIE Over a decade ago, author Tony Burgess penned the experimental novel Pontypool Changes Everything, which featured what could be called “zombies” but focused more on semiotics in a highly stylized and sometimes off-putting way. A few years ago, Burgess adapted that novel into a screenplay for the well-received film Pontypool,…

THE FORCE OF FAMILY Looming over this long multi-generational family epic by Adrianna Sevahn Nicholas is the shadow of genocide’”the 1915 slaughter by Turks of 1.5 million Armenians, a precursor, as the Nazis admitted, to their concept of a “final solution.” It haunts the matriarch of an extended family of Armenian expatriates, even after they’ve…

OPERA WITH A TASTE FOR BLOOD The word “opera” normally elicits memories of sound’”an orchestra roiling, an aria peaking’”but in an effort to innovate the public’s preconceived notions of the art form, Lyric presents both a musically entrancing and visually stunning production of Richard Strauss’s Elektra. Images of blood, destruction — and androgyny — will…

NOT AS BLOODY AS THE TITLE IMPLIES Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson is an audacious rock musical tracing the life and times of Andrew Jackson, the 7th president of the United States. The show is receiving its local premiere by the Bailiwick Chicago Theater, and at its best moments the production is a stimulating, challenging, theatrical,…

THE LANDSCAPE OF THE SOUL Those who were lucky enough to witness the Joffrey Ballet’s Spring Desire program this year were treated to what  may well  have been the greatest dance program in years.   The Joffrey has reached a pinnacle of form, beauty, and transplendent theatricality that  other dance companies’”indeed, most theater events’”should strive for. Now, with their…

ONE TIME ONLY FOR ONE NAME ONLY WAS ONE TOO MANY TIMES Yes, America’s got talent. And the performers on stage at Black Ensemble Theater’s beautiful new digs are packed to the gills with charm, powerful voices, and boundless stage presence. But I can’t remember being this shell-shocked and mortified at the stupendous waste of…