Theatre
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Love and Information by Caryl Churchill
Chicago's Remy Bumppo Theatre
By: - Oct 07th, 2015The 85-minute play "Love and Information" by Caryl Churchill is at times funny, sad, poignant or puzzling. The actors make use of current technology in many scenes. In "Wedding Video," for instance, three couples comment on the video while watching the event on a smartphone, a tablet or a television set.
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Laurie Anderson's Habeas Corpus
Project with Mohammed El Gharani in New York
By: - Oct 05th, 2015As globalization brings us closer together, frequent reminders of the horrors we perpetrate on each other are invaluable. A young man who was 14 when he was arrested, tortured and locked up in Guantanamo Bay reminds us that no one is exempt. Laurie Anderson offers an ineffably moving picture in collaboration with Saudi-born Mohammed El Gharani. The installation was recently on view at the Park Avenue Armory in New York.
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Veils by Tom Coash
Didactic Award Winning Play at Barrington Stage Company
By: - Oct 05th, 2015In the post 9/11 climate President Obama has been referred to as a closeted Muslim. The African American Republican candidate Ben Carson has stated that, despite the concept of freedom of religion, a Muslim should not be President. Before JFK there was a similar injunction against Catholics. For its fall collaboration with regional schools Barrington Stage Company is presenting the awarding winning play Veils by Tom Coash.
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The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
Brutalist Realism at Berkshire Theatre Group
By: - Oct 04th, 2015Kudos to Berkshire Theatre Group for the tough love of presenting a smash to the head in a stunning production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming. Eric Hill has brilliantly directed a superb cast in an always challenging Pinter play.
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In Your Arms at Old Globe
World Premiere of Musical in San Diego
By: - Oct 03rd, 2015“In Your Arms” is the brain-child of brilliant choreographer/director Christopher Gattelli and Broadway producer Jennifer Manocherian. It is having its world premiere at Old Globe in San Diego.
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The Quare Land at Irish Repertory Theatre
An Evening in a Bathtub Bubbles Up
By: - Oct 03rd, 2015Playwright John McManus restrains his leading man in a tub of bubbles throughout the play, but this in no way limits the performance of Peter Maloney or his nemesis, Rufus Collins. We are trapped in an intense negotiation of life and death matters.
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Ronnie Burkett and His Marionettes
Baryshnikov Arts Center Presents The Daisy Theatre
By: - Oct 01st, 2015The Daisy Theatre is a magical, human evening of theatre lore with incredible marionettes in the lead roles. At the Jerome Robbins Theater, the steeply raked seating enables you to watch the master marionetteer at work, sometimes lit and sometimes in juicy darkness. Yet Ronnie Burkett so enlivens these hardy, delicate creatures he has imagined into life, that everything we watch seems immediate. In fact, urgent.
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Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival
Overview of a Week in the Sun: Literally and Culturally
By: - Oct 01st, 2015The 10th Tennessee Williams Theater Festival in Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, occurred from September 24 to 27 with great success during a week of daily sunshine. The weather helped: there were outdoor performances on the beach and on a large deck of the Boat Slip. The town took part with venues including Town Hall, the former High School, a radio station and a Night Club. Of course, two major plays were smashingly performed at the Provincetown Theater. And the buzz was all about TW - Tenn at Ten!
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Tennessee Williams Cabaret
Armando Arrocha and Colette Simple
By: - Sep 30th, 2015During the recent Provinctetown Tennessee Williams Festival we attended two performances of cabaret, based on works of Williams at the Crown and Anchor. The two experiences comprised a study in contrast with the best and worst of the tenth annual festival.
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Tennessee Williams Old and New
Year Tenn and Reading of a Guare Work in Progress
By: - Sep 29th, 2015In ten years the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival has premiered eleven works by Williams as well as ones inspired by him. There was a retrospective of 15 excerpts at Town Hall during thi year's festival. The special treat of the festival was a sneak preview of "More Stars Than There Are in Heaven," based on a Williams short story, a work in progress by John Guare.
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Yin and Yang of Tennessee Williams
From Juvenalia to Theatre of the Absurd
By: - Sep 29th, 2015Over four days we attended nine performances during the tenth annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival. This planned from the juvenalia of Parade, written during his first visit in 1940, through The Remarkable Rooming House of Mme. LeMonde a violently erotic example of Grand Guignol created near the end of a long and tormented life,
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Disgraced at the Goodman Theatre
Pulitzer Prize Winning Play in Chcago
By: - Sep 29th, 2015Kimberly Senior, who has directed Disgraced since its first 2012 production in Chicago at American Theater Company, directs Goodman's new production. She directed its Lincoln Center debut in late 2012 and then its Broadway production in 2014. Since then, it has become one of the most-produced plays in the country.
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Real Women Have Curves
Pasadena Playhouse Production
By: - Sep 29th, 2015The current comedy production “Real Women Have Curves”, written by Josefina Lopez, is skillfully directed by Pasadena Playhouse associate artistic director Seema Sueko. The story set in a tiny sewing factory in East Los Angeles in 2015, celebrates Latina power and Latina women’s bodies.
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Jackson Pollock Inspired Tennessee Williams
David Kaplan Discusses The Day On Which a Man Dies
By: - Sep 26th, 2015David Kaplan directed The Day on Which a Man Dies by Tennessee Williams. It presented an over the top depiction of an ersatz deranged, stripped to his skivvies, paint spattered, drunken artist loosely based on Jackson Pollock. We have engaged in a lively exchange about the scholarly sources for the fascinating Pollock and Williams interactions. It appears that they knew each other on the beaches and in the bars of Provincetown.
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Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival
Launching the Festival with Two Plays at The Provinctown Theater
By: - Sep 25th, 2015For the first day of the Tenth Annual Provinctown Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival we attended a matinee of The Day on Which a Man Dies and The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. Both plays were presented by the returning festival favorites Abrahamese & Meyer Productions from Cape Town, South Africa. The plays and performances were truly astonishing.
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Tempest Chicago Shakespeare
Inventive Production
By: - Sep 24th, 2015A bewitching production of Shakespeare's most exotic and evocative play. The Tempest roars at Chicago Shakeapeare.
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A Little Night Music Sparkles At Huntington
Sondheim's Vintage Show Couldn't Be Any Better
By: - Sep 22nd, 2015It is the lilting story of lovers reuniting with passions reigniting while new romances flower. Set around famous actress Desiree Armfeldt along with a cadre of unforgettable characters, this is a fabulous production on every level. The action is focused during an eventful weekend in the country. This is Maestro Stephen Sondheim’s most romantic and popular work. It features a sumptuous score infused with humor, warmth flavored by a waltz. Sondheim’s best known song, “Send in the Clowns” integrates exquisitely into the narrative. Brilliantly directed by Artistic Director Peter DuBois, this extraordinary musical already may be one of the best productions of the 2015-16 season.
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Geneva by George Bernard Shaw
Staged Reading at Chicago's Ruth Page Theater
By: - Sep 21st, 2015Shaw Chicago's new production of Geneva a 1938 play is another in its concert readings, performed by 12 costumed actors who clearly revel in the richness of Shaw's dialogue and characterizations. Director Robert Scogin takes advantage of the script's humor, political passions and ethnic stereotypes to stage a production that is funny and smart, and loaded with Shaw's diatribes against every form of political organization and chicanery.
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The Christians NY Hit by Lucas Hnath
From the Humana Festival to Playwrights Horizons
By: - Sep 21st, 2015The consensus among critics attending the 38th Humana Festival in Louisville rated The Christians by Lucas Hnath as the best new play. It has now opened to strong reviews at New York's Playwrights Horizons. This is a reposting of our original review.
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Chicago Critic Visits New York
Covers Hamilton, The Flick and Desire
By: - Sep 21st, 2015Our Chicago theatre correspondent, Nancy Bishop, recently checked in at the Edison Hotel in the heart of Times Square. She reports on several hot shows: Hamilton, The Flick and Desire.
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Wrap-up of Dorset Theater Festival
By: - Sep 13th, 2015Tom Sawyer is a coming of age story that walks children into adulthood and also reminds adults what fun it was to be a child. DTF's rendition captured the magic of it all.
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Isolde by Richard Maxwell
A Legend Re-Imagined at Theatre for a New Audience
By: - Sep 10th, 2015Richard Maxwell's language is musical in the delivery of his tribe of usual suspects: Jim Fletcher, Brian Mendes, Tory Vasquez and Gary Wilmes. The actors are curiously contained and liberated at the same time, and they invite us into the flow of the story.
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Violet at San Diego Repertory Theatre
Evocative Jeanine Tesori Musical
By: - Sep 06th, 2015The ensemble cast of mainly Equity performers, make this touching 90 minute, no intermission production about the fragility of life and the quixotic-like hopes and dreams required to cope with its many difficult choices, a production not to be missed. It runs through September 13. 2015.
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Beth Henley's The Jacksonian
Chicago's Profiles Theatre Through October 11
By: - Sep 02nd, 2015Beth Henley's 2012 play, The Jacksonian, is a bit of noir, a bit of Southern Gothic decay, and set in a nondescript motel of that name on the outskirts of Jackson, Miss., in 1964.
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Flick by Annie Baker at Gloucester Stage
Losing It at the Movies
By: - Sep 01st, 2015There is a distinctly Massachusetts flavor to Amherst based, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Annie Baker's Flick at Gloucester Stage Company. In two acts and just under three hours it takes a long and slow approach to making us care about minimum wage workers at a one screen movie theater on its last legs.
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