Theatre
Anyone familiar with Rebecca Gilman's work knows to suspect that a play titled "Boy Gets Girl" will be a far cry from the cutesy romantic comedy the wording would suggest. In true form, Gilman starts from the well-worn premise of an awkward blind date and quickly turns expectations on their side, delivering a disturbing meditation on obsession, objectification and the darker underbelly of communication between men and women...
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Originally published November 9, 2006, Centerstage Chicago
In an Ohio basement in 1985, young Dean Evans watched "Purple Rain" with his family and heard the word homosexual for the first time. Enchanted by the word, the meaning of which he did not yet know, he performed a sensual dance for his family that involved a pillow and much breathy repetition, the dance ending abruptly when his brother called him a fag and his stepfather left the room in appalled silence. "And I never got to finish my motherfucking dance," a grown Dean Evans said to the audience of "Drag," the latest mainstage production by the Neo-Futurists...
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Originally published November 7, 2006, Centerstage Chicago
While waiting for "Vigils" to begin at the Goodman Theatre, it is almost impossible not to note the unusual scenery. A ho-hum bedroom (bed, dresser, leather chair) is nestled into a concave box that angles sharply up, so that one can see the back wall and the entire ceiling at the same time. The structure bears patchwork cracks, as if a child on her way to school had dropped the diorama against the sidewalk...
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Originally published October 30, 2006, Centerstage Chicago
When shy egghead Andrew meets a dreamboat who might actually be the son of Satan in About Face Theatre's "Say You Love Satan," his new paramour might be Mr. Right...aside from the whole devil-as-dad thing. Andrew's lameness is legendary, according to best gal pal, Bernadette, and the play opens on a Friday night spent at the laundromat. But it's at the 'mat that Andrew stumbles upon Jack. Jack is sweet; he's sexy; he's able to bypass even the longest lines at clubs; and he's read Dostoyevsky in the original Russian...
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Originally published October 24, 2006, Centerstage Chicago
If there is one thing 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove is sure of, it's that she is ugly. Born to ugly parents in an ugly marriage and living in an ugly house in Ohio in the 1940s, Pecola has been ignored and neglected her entire life. Wanting nothing so much as to be loved by her friends and schoolmates, Pecola blames her mistreatment on her dark skin, which she feels is the locus of her ugliness...
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Originally published October 17, 2006, Centerstage Chicago
If cabaret is only a musical's title in your mind, it's time to expand your definition of this awesome art form, which can include everything from stand-up comedy to maudlin piano tunes to va-va-voom dancing...
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Originally published October 2, 2006, Centerstage Chicago
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Dov Weinstein makes his decision to perform Shakespeare using tiny figurines from quarter vending machines seem perfectly logical. “I saw them on the streets of New York, and they’re such great little guys and I thought, Nobody’s really using these to do classical theater; something needs to be done about that,” says Weinstein, who has studied puppetry and Shakespeare...
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Originally published October 5, 2006, Time Out Chicago
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Loss plays a larger role than love in the marriage of the Delaneys. Forced to marry as teenagers because of an unplanned pregnancy, the couple now finds itself approaching 40 and haunted by the lost love, lost dreams and lost years of their loveless marriage. But when a vivacious college student, Marie, boards with the Delaneys, they are shaken out of their numb existence, in a dazzling and heart-wrenching display of violence and compromise...
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Originally published September 25, 2006, Centerstage Chicago
A group of grad students living in Iowa poses a question: If you were having dinner with a young, angry painter by the name of Adolf Hitler in 1921, would you do the world a favor and kill him? It's an intriguing question, taken to satirical extremes with uneven results in "The Last Supper," InFusion Theatre's inaugural production...
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Originally published September 14, 2006, Centerstage Chicago
It seems fitting that the Chicago Shakespeare Company kicks off its 20th season with "Hamlet," arguably one of the best-known and most-quoted of all Shakespeare's plays. But as icing on its celebratory cake, the play is directed by Terry Hands, the award-winning British stage director who spent 25 years at the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, here in his Chicago debut...
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Originally published September 11, 2006, Centerstage Chicago
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