CATCHING WISE TO THE OLD RAZZLE DAZZLE A fascinating phenomenon is occurring in the theater, one which was elucidated by many shows that I saw in Chicago over the past couple of weeks. As the art of playwriting (to wit: storytelling) becomes deconstructed, muddled, and (occasionally) wholly impenetrable, the stagecraft used to tell these tales…

THE PLAY’S NOT REALLY THE THING, THE PRODUCTION IS Further earning a proud name, Chicago Shakespeare Theater has produced Henry VIII for the first time in professional Chicago theater history. The history cycle is finally finished. Fortuitously, all this happens exactly 400 years after it premiered at the Globe Theatre when, alas, an accident with…

SECONDS WHICH SHOULD BE SKIPPED, NOT SPLIT Within the messy, overwritten and frustrating new script, If You Split A Second, is a potentially interesting premise: In an instant of unthinking and reflexive violence a man can obey his demons; yet in doing so, he can destroy not just his future but the welfare of his…

I REMEMBER THE AMUSEMENT PARK BUT FORGOT WHAT THE RIDE WAS ABOUT The more I think about the Hypocrites’ latest theater spectacle, Ivywild, the more entranced I feel about the imaginative proceedings – the way in which the story was told – and the less I care about the story itself.   In an impressionistic, non-concrete…

CORNOGRAPHY It’s been 70 years since Rodgers and Hammerstein ushered in the “golden era” of Broadway musicals with Oklahoma!  but  given the right production, the innovative musical can still soar. Old-fashioned staging, however, can  thicken  the  aging brown dust on the bright green corn;  that’s when  the innovative musical can show its age. Well, an Oklahoma!  twister blew through Lyric Opera last night,…

PLEASE, SIR, I WANT SOME MOOR Alas, this is mainly a review of record: This is the final weekend to savor the triumphant revival of the Joffrey Ballet’s Othello. Originally given its world premiere by the American Ballet Theatre in 1997, this “dance in three acts” is fueled by a suitably ferocious score by still-young…

PERFECTED STORIES Ever since Donald Margulies’ Collected Stories premiered at South Coast Rep in 1996, and especially after it hit the Broadway boards starring Linda Lavin in 2010, the one-set, two-character play — being inexpensive to produce — is   seemingly occurring at any given time somewhere in the U.S.A. There is some predictability in the  plot,…

LEAVE IT TO  CHILDREN’S THEATER TO MAKE THE BIGGEST STATEMENT OF ALL The biggest opening in Chicago last week was the behemoth pre-Broadway spectacle Big Fish,  but right across town at Lifeline Theatre is another musical with more heart, a more resonant message, better songs, funnier dialogue, and performers who are infinitely more watchable than their non-distinctive…