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Theater Review: ‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE (Cirque du Soleil in Chicago and New York)
CHRISTMAS AS A CIRCUS There’s a beloved poem behind these multiple circus acts in one act: Clement Moore was never that fond of his famous 1837 poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas (better known as ’Twas the Night Before Christmas). Written in a jog-trotting anapestic tetrameter, the now-treasured verse was for its author a mere…
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Theater Review: KEY LARGO (Geffen Playhouse)
NOT AS KEYED UP AS IT SHOULD BE The Geffen Playhouse has really been on a roll under the newest Artistic Director Matt Shakman. There are many more interesting scripts, and many more chances are being taken. And as always, both of Geffen’s playhouses are given Broadway-caliber production values. Shakman is also to be thanked…
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Theater Review: UNCLE VANYA (The New American Theatre in Hollywood)
CYNICS UNITE These days when directors revive a classic, they have to decide whether their approach will be either to modernize the play or mount it as a period piece, true to the spirit of the times in which it was created. Sometimes, as in the case of The New American Theatre’s Uncle Vanya, director…
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Theater Review: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Goodman)
REAPPRAISING A CASH COW Consider this a kind of conditional mea culpa: In past reviews of Goodman Theatre’s A Christmas Carol, I’ve faulted the production’s trivialization of Charles Dickens’ 1847 ghost story, a tale intended to scare Victorian readers into avoiding the ugly life and dire fate of Ebenezer Scrooge. Rather than deal with a contemptible,…
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Theater Review: LINDIWE (Steppenwolf)
THE PLOT THIN-ENS Can lightning strike thrice? Over two decades later, it’s happened again — a third collaboration between author/director Eric Simonson and the world-famous, nine-member Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Like The Song of Jacob Zulu in 1992 and Nomathemba in 1996, Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s world premiere Lindiwe, co-directed with Jonathan Berry, is imbued with the ensemble’s seamless a…
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Theater Review: WAITING FOR GODOT (Dennis ZaÄek Productions at Victory Gardens in Chicago)
DÉJí€ VU MEETS GROUNDHOG DAY “Birth was the death of him”: Terse to the point of cruelty, Samuel Beckett devours the human experience in six words, repeatedly juxtaposing graves with cradles. Waiting for Godot, his minimalist masterpiece, takes nearly three hours for the same result. But Beckett succeeds in his life-long task — to “find the…
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Opera Review: DON GIOVANNI (Lyric Opera)
A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR THE #METOO ERA When this production first premiered at Lyric Opera in 2014, opening the company’s sixtieth anniversary season, I noted how much Chicago loves Don Giovanni. Its popularity seems to have formed the foundation of the company, which made the Mozart opera its first production back in 1954 and has…
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Theater Review: RUTHERFORD AND SON (TimeLine)
AN EDWARDIAN WAKE-UP CALL You can’t keep a good play down. Produced under the pseudonym of K.G. Sowerby, the Edwardian drama Rutherford and Son was a huge hit in 1912 — until the playwright was later revealed as a woman, Githa Sowerby. Perhaps due to male resentment of the play’s depiction of a brutish dad, it disappeared…
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Theater Review: THE THANKSGIVING PLAY (Geffen)
THANKS BUT NO THANKS I can’t imagine a riper subject for satire than the chokehold that far-left liberal political correctness has on America. Playwright Larissa Fasthorse offers her 2015 comedy at The Geffen that is chock-full of the ridiculing we need, but satire without a story gets old fast. Instead of farce, which is grounded…
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Theater Review: THE GOODBYE GIRL (Musical Theatre Guild at the Alex Theatre in Glendale)
HELLO TO GOODBYE The Musical Theatre Guild should be proud of this fine, coherent, splendidly cast reading of The Goodbye Girl, with principals Wendy Rosoff and Will Collyer charismatically suited to their characters, in great voice, and as a couple, exuding all the essential romantic chemistry. After a mere twenty-five hours rehearsal, and with only…
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Theater Review: EIGHT NIGHTS (Antaeus Theatre Company in Glendale)
OY VEY A barrage of human suffering — anti-Semitism, racism, anti-Muslim hostility, misogyny, LGBT closets, slavery, Japanese-American internment camps, miscarriages, PTSD, death, and a literal onstage kitchen sink — are given the holiday treatment in Jennifer Maisel’s Hanukkah-inspired Eight Nights. Highlighting eight not-so-festive nights over eight decades in the life of Holocaust survivor Rebecca Blum,…
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Theater Review: PACKING (About Face Theatre at Theater Wit in Chicago)
PICKED, PECKED, AND PACKED Some solo shows can be valued simply for their superb simulations of someone else’s story. Others succeed because we pay extra special attention when the chronicler actually experienced what they’re sharing. Packing, an About Face Theatre world premiere by and from Chicago theater artist Scott Bradley, has the best of both…
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Theater Review: MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET: A LIVE MUSICAL RADIO PLAY (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)
MIRACLE ON NORTH GOWER STREET If you’re in need of a miracle, look no further than the Los Angeles premiere of Lance Arthur Smith‘s new adaptation of Miracle on 34th Street: A Live Musical Radio Play presented by Actors Co-op at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. Based on the Lux Radio Theatre broadcast and…
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Theater Review: BIG RIVER: THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN (Rubicon Theatre in Ventura)
THE MIGHTY MISSISSIPPI JUST GOT MIGHTIER Do whatever you can. Take a raft, pretend you’re a duke, toss pig blood around your lean-to so everyone thinks you’re dead, but get to Rubicon Theatre in Ventura for what is easily the most satisfying and uplifting musical experience in recent memory. In Big River, adapted from the…
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Theater Review: HOODOO LOVE (Raven Theatre in Chicago)
A SHOW THAT CASTS A SPELL Whether it really works or it’s just self-fulfilling wishful thinking, magic can misfire. Detailing a downhome tragedy set in Memphis during the Depression, Hoodoo Love, Katori Hall’s 2007 musical drama tells a sad and simple story of thwarted and twisted passion so strong it needs the blues to chronicle…
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Theater Review: THE LAST FIVE YEARS (Cygnet Theatre Company in San Diego)
TWO WAY STREET INTERSECTS AT TOUCHING PERSONAL DRAMA The Last Five Years shares the joys, trials, and failures of two people, Jamie (Michael Louis Cusimano) and Cathy (Racquel Williams), in their deeply-loving relationship. At first, it might seem like they are in two different relationships, almost schizophrenically so, because the songs they sing (and virtually…
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Theater Review: THE OTHER CINDERELLA (Black Ensemble Theater in Chicago)
IT WOULD BE A CIN TO MISS THIS Forty-three years ago, the Black Ensemble Theater produced their first and most definitive musical, a promissory note that’s been richly redeemed over five decades. Just as The Wiz opened up a childhood classic to even more make-believe, in 1976 –and now–The Other Cinderella represented playful revisionism in action. Created, composed…
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Theater Review: THE MYSTERY OF IRMA VEP (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)
A PENNY DREADFUL SAVED ISN’T ALWAYS EARNED Back in the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing in merry ole England. The working class was becoming more educated and printing was becoming more affordable. To quench the thirst of the masses for every day diversions, “penny dreadfuls” hit the scene. These serialized fictional publications,…
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Theater Review: LA VIE EN ROSE (Julia Migenes at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles)
A LIVING ROSE If you have even a modest love of French songs, or just the art of performance, of hearing and seeing a singer bring a lyric to vibrant life, do yourself a favor and go see this consummate artist in a sweet, masterful evening of Chanson. Julia Migenes is one of those rare…
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Theater Review: IN TROUSERS (Lounge Theatre)
GETTING IN TROUSERS William Finn’s musical masterpiece Falsettos is a melding of two one-acts: March of the Falsettos ’” debatably one of the best scores of the 1980s ’” which opened Off-Broadway in 1981, and Falsettoland, which opened in 1990 at the Lucille Lortel, where unprepared audience members like myself needed boxes of tissues to survive the…
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