Chicago

MONKEY BUSINESS Barrel of Monkeys has spent more than 10 years teaching writing workshops at Chicago schools, but they are best known for turning the creative writing from elementary school kids into songs, sketches, and dance numbers which are performed at their weekly show, That’s Weird, Grandma. Now they’re letting an impressive list of local…

THE MADNESS OF SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER Back in 2010, First Folio presented David Rice’s site-specific theater piece, The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe: A Love Story. If any show should be heaped with awards for concept of a production – this is it. But in this year’s restaging, director Michael Goldberg proves he knows how to…

KINETIC COOL IN MILLENNIUM PARK As evidenced at last night’s opening, Giordano Dance Chicago’s Fall Engagement’”a two-night gig at the Harris Theater’”is a major installment in the company’s very welcome 50th anniversary season. The most exciting part of the program is the world premiere of company member Autumn Eckman’s G-Force. Almost living up to its…

A RUSH TO DOOM As the breathless title suggests, there’s nothing placid or contained about Liz Duffy Adams’ hyper-poetic hybrid of interior monologues and frantic dialogue. The metaphorical/microcosmic setting is a speeding American train whose eight highly driven passengers represent Western culture literally hurtling to some unsought doom. A Midwest premiere, Adams’ “comi-threnody” gives Will…

A FELLOWSHIP IN THE RING The Opponent is a play about the gritty world of small time boxing. Brett Neveu’s world premiere two-hander at A Red Orchid Theatre explores the relationship between Tremont (aka Tre), a white, middle-aged, ex-boxer who operates a  gym in Lafayette, Louisiana,  and Donell, a young black fighter who works out in the…

I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE TITLE MEANS Every once in a while, a theater company falls in love with a script and simply must stage it. I can’t imagine any other reason that Seanachaí­ decided to present In Pigeon House, a surreal Vaudeville by Honor Molloy which, even with Brian Shaw’s vibrant staging, Patrick…

WHEN POLITICS GO FOWL All aboard!   Duck is hitting the campaign circuit so be kind to your web-footed friends by taking the family out to see Duck for President; meanwhile, don’t forget to vote. Based on the popular 2004 bestseller by Doreen Cronin and Besty Lewin, Lifeline brings the farm to life in this quirky…

A DEATH OF FRESH AIR During the height of WWII in Germany, a recently orphaned adolescent girl named Liesel is taken in by a poor couple in The Book Thief, now receiving its  world premiere production at Steppenwolf. Liesel finds solace in books, and, as a survival mechanism, has taken to stealing them, whether from the…

THE DANGERS OF TECHNOLOGY – ON STAGE AND OFF Playwright Jennifer Haley is definitely onto something in her play Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, now receiving its Chicago premiere at Strawdog. In a suburban neighborhood in Anytown, USA, the local teens have become addicted to an Xbox video game in which the dissociative kids can…

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,…