REVIEW: IT'S EXTRAORDINARY! - "Pippin" at the American Repertory Theater

Photos by Michael J. Lutch

Since closing on Broadway in 1977, Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson's musical "Pippin" seemed to have settled into a quiet infinity among academic and community theaters. Sure, professional productions of the coming-of-age fable pop up here and there, but they're typically either spare, hokey retreads or imposing conceptual takes that do little but apply uninformed anachronism to wring out some relevance. "Pippin: The Legend of Zelda!" or something equally as pointless. Audiences leave feeling Prince Pippin's own emptiness and vacancy; they want to love it, but know that something is missing. 

However, Pippin and his slithering band of players still have some theatrical magic left to do. The American Repertory Theater's hotly anticipated new revival, which opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Thursday night under the direction of Diane Paulus, is among the finest productions of any musical I have ever seen. This is a revival that doesn't simply rely on fans' nostalgia for a cast album, but actually resurrects its material to thrilling, awe-inspiring effect.

It was announced on Thursday that this will be the first Broadway revival of "Pippin," set to open at the Music Box Theatre in April. And just in time too. This show will inject some much needed energy and innovation onto drab old Broadway, a veritable musical theater wasteland with only the occasional life-giving oasis. On opening night, the production was met by the wide smiles of lifelong faithfuls as well as a sprinkling of novices whose familiarity with composer Stephen Schwartz begins and ends at "Wicked." But by the end of the performance, an incandescent amalgam of circus, Fosse, and the pleasure-pain throes of youth, a new generation of fans was born. Though as deferential to its cherished legacy as can be, it truly feels like an entirely new show. "Pippin" is the most wholly unique musical theatre experience in years.

REVIEW: 'BLOODY' FRUSTRATING - 'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson' by Bailiwick Chicago

Photo: Michael Brosilow

During my four years in college, I witnessed two different street mobs: one on the night of Barack Obama’s election victory and another in the immediate aftermath of Osama Bin Laden’s assassination. Oddly enough, from a bird’s eye view, the quality of euphoria was unchanged from mob to mob. Each had the same happy-irate cheers, the same sorts of signage, the same shapeless crowd with blurred purpose, and even many of the same participants – but the context was exactly opposite. Though respectively celebrating a win and a death, the justification for both energized demonstrations was that the people had reigned victorious.

Months later, news channels rolled footage of some other mobs – Occupy Wall Street protests and Tea Party rallies. Two gatherings, demographically opposed, both railed against the overreaching powers of the elite minority. Each group viewed themselves as the defacto representative of we the people in an era of smoky back room deals between the wealthy, the detached and entitled. “This is the age of Jackson,” all right.

"Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson," a work that brilliantly chronicles the rise of American populism and effortlessly captures that enduring mob mentality, is my favorite musical of the past decade. I first saw it at the Public Theater in 2010, and, shocked into submission by its originality and intellect, payed a return visit to its Broadway run in 2011. A fusion of sophomoric comedy (more Judd Apatow than Neil Simon), killer tunes (more Weezer and Brecht than Rodgers and Hammerstein), and the most astute political commentary onstage in years, in my mind, no other musical approaches its grungy stylistic rebellion. And with a bold injection of crass humor, the play stays humbly down to earth and converses with pop culture’s comedy in a manner previously unheard of. The Will Ferrell-esque embrace of vicious stereotype, coarse language, and vaudevillian sight gag will be a turn off to many, but that’s another important development of “Bloody Bloody” – a proud rejection of musical theatre’s typically desired broad appeal.

Bailiwick Chicago's new production of the musical, which opened on Monday night at the National Pastime Theater, is unfortunately not a riotous success like its Off Broadway and Broadway predecessors, both which radiated intelligence and off-the-charts rambunctiousness – especially on stuffy old Broadway. The Chicago premiere, directed by Scott Ferguson, fails to fully grasp the work’s prescient satire, choosing instead to replace Alex Timbers’ impeccably crafted book’s humor, which blends 1830's and modern day America, with much broader style than the script necessitates. Though adequately enjoyable, Ferguson's winking production comments more so on the play itself than the present state of our political affairs.

REVIEW: A SWEET BUT LAZY "SUNDAY" - 'Sunday In The Park With George' at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Photo: Liz Lauren

No matter how many monkeys you've got furiously typing away, I doubt "Sunday In The Park With George" could have been conceived and brought to life by anyone other than composer-lyricist, Stephen Sondheim. One might rightly say the same of any of Sondheim’s treasure trove of masterpieces, but “Sunday” nurses a uniquely soulful, highly personal wound – for your’s truly, anyhow – that “Sweeney Todd” and “A Little Night Music,” do not. “Sunday” is clarifying therapy for both the creator and his audience rather than a dramatized page-turner to energize the masses. Truly there's very little plot to speak of. And although many a naysayer will call it Sondheim’s coldest work, don’t be fooled by the absence of simplistic melodies and reiterated choruses. It is, in fact, his warmest.

The astoundingly intrusive 1984 musical, still as innovative and groundbreaking as ever, premiered half-finished at Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons during a stormy period of the celebrated composer's life – three years after the crushing flop that was "Merrily We Roll Along." "Merrily," another musical about artists and the folly of intent, ran a measly sixteen performances on Broadway.  I've grown to appreciate it very much since watching a grainy old video at the Lincoln Center archives. Like “Sunday,” it's a piece whose virtues reside in the flaws. "Sunday"'s most major flaw and virtue being its uneven, contemporary second half. 

Sondheim, at that point in his career, had certainly experienced his fair share of failure – “Pacific Overtures” didn’t go over so well at the box office either – but the demise of “Merrily,” also the end of his long-time collaboration with director Harold Prince, was a bigger setback. And Georges/George, the fictional and period-bending embodiment of nineteenth century French painter Georges Seurat, feels the same failure, self-consciousness, and paralyzing pressure that must have been plaguing the composer during “Merrily”’s immediate aftermath. Sondheim's lyrics, rhythmically ingenious as usual, are tellingly personal – “I’ve nothing to say… But nothing that’s not been said… I do not know where to go... I want to make things that count... Things that will be new... What am I to do?” – hearkening back to the companionship-challenged Bobby in "Company," but somehow with even littler discretion.

REVIEW: TWO MILLENNIA OF TEARS - 'Metamorphoses' at Lookingglass Theatre

Photo: Liz Lauren

Setting a full-length play in a pool of water is risky business. Many will cry out "Gimmick!" disturbed by the uncomfortable lack of a living room couch, kitchen table or, in the case of this particular play, an overabundance of white stone columns. And others will never quite get past the pool's novelty as they cling to their digital cameras, eyes nervously darting to nearby ushers before they snap a blury memento. But one person’s extreme risk is a visionary director’s irrefutable logic.

Never having seen Mary Zimmerman's "Metamorphoses," a play that, in a differently-named incarnation, premiered at Northwestern University in 1996, re-premiered at the old Lookingglass in 1998, played Off-Broadway’s Second Stage Theatre in 2001, rocked Broadway’s Circle In The Square Theatre in 2002, and is a popular staple among high schools and universities, I was, for years, among the doubting. In my mind, the play’s enormously broad appeal stemmed from familiar material being obscured by an infrastructural twist. "Cinderella On Ice!" or "Orpheus In Pool!" Not so, my friends.

In this highly anticipated remount, which opened at Lookingglass Theatre on Saturday night, the director-adaptor has solidly defeated my preconceptions and biases by harnessing an ellusive theatrical rarity – balance. “Metamorphoses” is not solely about its black lagoon of a pool, nor is it necessarily about the Greek myths it so richly and satisfyingly retells. All of the elements – the story, the watery medium, the gifted actors – exist as one fluid being. And, that intangible union, an important facet of any play, is especially paramount here.

REVIEW: ITS FALSE O'ERWEIGHS ITS TRUE - 'Equivocation' at Victory Gardens Theatre

Photo: Michael Brosilow

Last season, during the supreme freshman outing of Artistic Director Chay Yew, Victory Gardens Theater was among the only sure bets in Chicago. Their parade of smoldering premieres like Jackie Sibblies Drury's "We Are Proud To Present," Luis Alfaro's "Oedipus el Rey," and the mounting of the "Ameriville" by Universes were probing plays, culturally relevant to this community, multi-generational, and stylistically innovative, to boot. They were the kind of plays that Chicago sorely needs, but rarely ever gets. However, opening the venerable theatre’s, otherwise tremendous, 2012-2013 roster with Bill Cain's overlong, masturbatory skit, "Equivocation," sweeps all of those extremely promising developments swiftly under the rug. Directed by Sean Graney, Cain’s all-knowing rumination on truth in storytelling is thwarted by Shakespearean dentist jokes, better suited to a summer festival’s dark night than the Zacek-McVay Theatre.

Cain, the founder of the Boston Shakespeare Company, has added yet another laborious work to the Bard parody genre. Shakespeare is called "Shagspeare" in this snide and contemptuous fan fiction, part "Shakespeare in Love", part "Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged", and, to a much lesser extent, part "V For Vendetta." The playwright, inspired by the September 11th Attacks' parallels to the Gun Powder Plot of 1605, writes, with divided attention, about the challenges of truthfully telling a story with a monarchy breathing down your neck – an idea far more viable than its dreadful execution would imply.

REVIEW: CROMER'S "SWEET BIRD" FINE BUT FLAWED - 'Sweet Bird of Youth' at The Goodman Theatre

Diane Lane and Finn Wittrock/ Photo: Liz Lauren

As a proud and unabashed fan of director David Cromer, my year has been a tumult of ups and downs. The native Chicagoan's reconfiguration of Jonathan Larson's "Rent" in April at American Theater Company was a dimly lit, squeaky-voiced affair that left me cold, uninvested, and frankly quite outraged. Lo and behold, several months later, "Tribes" at New York's Barrow Street Theatre proved among the most moving and generously acted family dramas I've seen anywhere in recent seasons, and Cromer's direction was just about the easiest in-the-round staging one can possibly imagine. 

Coming down from the perilous annals of domesticity and coming home to the dark and dreary alleyways of Chicago's Loop, Cromer's new revival of Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth," which opened on Monday night at the Goodman Theatre, falls somewhere in the middle of the two. Its impeccable highs are stratospheric in all around heft, while its lows, though sure-fire failings, are still comfortably airborne.

Cromer, ever lauded for his revelatory "Our Town" by The Hypocrites in Chicago and at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York City, has done well by a challenging text. Williams' "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" was recently announced for a Broadway revival, the show's fourth, to open 2013. The third in a decade. "Sweet Bird of Youth," originally on Broadway in 1959,  has been revived only once, in 1975, and has yet to be seen again on The Great White Way. The play and Goodman's comeback kid production are not unlike main character Alexandra Del Lago, tirelessly endeavoring to be renewed. Cromer nearly scored a Broadway theatre for his revival a season ago, but plans were ultimately scrapped. This is not without reason.

NEWCITY REVIEW: 'Hot 'N' Throbbing' at Interrobang Theatre Project

RECOMMENDED

The unprecedented rise of E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey” series could not have happened five years ago. The trilogy, which is essentially an overdrawn romance novel spiced up with  acceptable kink, is a hugely popular indulgence on those nifty e-readers—Kindles, Nooks and Crannies. The anonymity that a bland, plastic tablet affords was never available on those garish trade paperbacks adorned with a shirtless Fabio, hair blowing in the wind. But today, a businessman on the train, dapper and desirably careless on the outside, on the inside, might be reeling over the breakup of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey. That coverless e-reader allows for an active intersection of fantasy and reality, which are, both, in tandem, becoming darker by the minute. As these two worlds become acquainted, however, is there a chance of monstrous collision?

Paula Vogel wrote her one-act play, “Hot ‘N’ Throbbing,” in 1994, thirteen years before the advent of the Kindle and in the days before a consumer-friendly internet. But beyond a few loud-and-clear nineties expressions—for example, “Fudge!” instead of its, now milquetoast, root expletive—”Hot ‘N’ Throbbing” is prophetic in its contemporary relevance, disconcertingly warning of the dangers of our fantasies gone awry. An eighty-minute work every bit as pressing and entertaining as Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize winner, “How I Learned To Drive,” “Hot ‘N’ Throbbing,” with frank, no-holds-barred depiction, imagines a catastrophic convergence of pornography, escapism, family life and domestic violence on a single evening in a woman’s home. Interrobang Theatre Project,  guns ablaze, at the Raven Theatre, dives headfirst into the play’s challenging themes, and offers a rare production in which every element onstage is as robust and capable as every other.

REVIEW: A FRIGHTFUL HENSONIAN LABYRINTH - 'The Skriker' at Red Tape Theatre

(Photo by Austin D. Oie)

British playwright Caryl Churchill's 1994 play, "The Skriker", is often referred to by its critics as "a nightmare." Not "a nightmare" in the derogatory connotation, mind you, but nightmarish in the frightfully familiar sleep-time sensations it conjures. A marvelous concoction of magical realism and supernatural horror, "The Skriker", on the page, is a theatrical experience without peer. Having the surreal creativity of the Muppets while overflowing with the sort of brazenness and intellectual fervor characteristic of the acclaimed and always innovative Churchill. 

But still, she is a divisive playwright, to say the least. And I’ll admit that much of her work – like “Top Girls” and "Cloud 9” – gets bogged down in pretension and superciliousness, leaving audiences scratching their heads and me sprinting for supplementary scholarly articles on JSTOR. But not “The Skriker”. Though often verbosely lyrical and containing some mighty stimulating gender, relationship, and socio-economic commentary, this play is completely accessible and approachable. And in "Hit The Wall" director Eric Hoff's promenade staging at Red Tape Theatre, with essential scenes occurring six inches from your nose, quite literally so.

NEWCITY REVIEW: 'Dirty' at The Gift Theatre

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REVIEW: THE HERO'S JOURNEY, TONGUE-IN-CHEEK - 'Iron Stag King: Part One' by The House Theatre

(Photo by Michael Brosilow)

The fantasy genre is rarely explored onstage. And the few times the theatre has welcomed it dramatically–"Lord of The Rings" in Toronto and the West End, for example–the plays too often become victims of vicious critical scorn and audience mockery. Many would argue that science-fiction and fantasy have no place on the boards–probably because of competition from the cinema's costly, elaborate, and ever more realistic visual effects. A ten dollar movie ticket to a "Harry Potter" film usually gets you a more awesome two hours than a thirty dollar theatre ticket to a young adult production of "The Hobbit". My two cents.

But, now that I think on it, stage realism fights a similar battle against the camera close up. Can one get more intrusive, personal, and, dare I say, honest than a tight shot on an actor's face? But the plays of Inge, Miller, Wilder, and other realist masters prove hugely popular, regardless. I like to think that onscreen and onstage fantasy can coexist peacefully and symbiotically as well. "Iron Stag King: Part One", the first installment in a new trilogy by the House Theatre at the Chopin, is a valiant step towards that coexistence, but falls far short of its potential. Nathan Allen and Chris Matthews' play, attempting to do justice to fantasy epics, inadvertently lampoons a genre I adore and cherish.

NEWCITY REVIEW: 'Jitney' at Court Theatre

(Photo by Michael Brosilow)

RECOMMENDED

Playwright August Wilson, who sadly and prematurely passed away in 2005, was a master craftsman of both character and situation. Throughout his Pittsburgh Cycle, ten plays chronicling the black experience of the twentieth century, one encounters some of the most jovial, heart-wrenching, and frighteningly believable moments of the American theater.

Honestly, every single time I replay that gorgeous, aching scene in “Fences” in which husband Troy tells wife Rose, not only that he has been unfaithful to her, but that the woman he has been unfaithful with is pregnant, I close my eyes and exhale. It was during that same seismic scene in the Broadway revival that the enraged audience loudly and vocally condemned Denzel Washington’s Troy—an intense, binding feeling of community extending far offstage and into the balcony standing room where I was pleasantly engrossed. “Fences” is arguably the most popular and frequently performed part of the Pittsburgh Cycle, but a lesser-known and no-less-moving section is “Jitney,” which opened on Saturday evening at Court Theatre.

NEWCITY REVIEW: 'The Woman In White' at Lifeline Theatre Company

(Photo by Suzanne Plunkett)

An epistolary novel, a story told in letters—or “snail mail” for my millennials—is an especially gnarly beast to dramatize because of the unique romantic confidence a letter carries. Spoken dialogue derived from a parcel of letters is often grossly descriptive and much too deliberate to achieve any real surprise—having the editorial advantage of the writer’s retrospect. What you arrive at is a smattering of characters more concerned with an eloquent retelling of their past than alive within their murky present. And the present is the theater’s meat and potatoes. These oft-seen woes are the insurmountable flaws facing Robert Kauzlaric’s world-premiere adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ “The Woman In White” at Lifeline Theatre.

“The Woman in White” was originally published in 1859 episodically over the course of that year and, I imagine, in installments is the ideal manner for this labyrinthine mystery to be ingested. For Kauzlaric’s adaptation is three exhausting hours of non-stop exposition, affording an infinitesimal amount of time to reflect on the impact of the preceding events. And there is an encyclopedia volume’s worth of events to reflect upon.

Some are simple, easily understood incidents like shocking illnesses and deaths, but others are far more obscure parlor-scene-resembling scenes discussing legality, parentage—Victorians do love an orphan—and other past occurrences long forgotten. The result is what I imagine a seventeenth season of “Downton Abbey” to look like. Extremely well-costumed (Aly Renee Amidei) Britons reaching, with strained effort, at sensationalism, while procuring recycled aristocratic quips from a collector Dame Maggie Smith figurine.

REVIEW: O! THE POWER OF "WORDS, WORDS, WORDS" - 'Hamlet' at Writers' Theatre

Scott Parkinson and Shannon Cochran/ Photo by Michael Brosilow

A body of work as well-tread as the Shakespearean canon has seen it all. From a childish staging of "Macbeth" on a moon bounce at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to last season's Wall Street-evoking "Timon of Athens" at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, the Bard's plays have been poked and prodded as though a captive orangutan. Shakespeare's work has seen so many frills and glitter, in fact, that stripped down simplicity - a throwback to the period-be-damned, unit set productions of sixteenth century London - is now looked upon as new and experimental. A single bench? How abstract!

Artistic Director Michael Halberstam's new production of "Hamlet" at Writer's Theatre in Glencoe discovers an exciting medium between the blatantly conceptual and the barebones text-based. Collette Pollard's set is effectively streamlined, but the costumes are comfortably trendy. There is earth-shaking sound design by Mikhail Fiskel, but also the clearest, most honorable treatment of Shakespearean language I've seen and heard on a Chicago-area stage. Though removed of clutter and speaking the same words that have been spoken for centuries, Writers' "Hamlet" feels fresh and rediscovered. 

NEWCITY REVIEW: 'Iphigenia 2.0' at Next Theatre Company

The onslaught of modernized Greek tragedy Chicago has played witness to this year has consisted largely of caked-on, imposing stylistic touches, absent of purpose or urgency. To be sure, there is a strong helping of such flashy accessorizing in director David Kersnar’s overstuffed production of playwright Charles Mee’s “Iphigenia 2.0” at Next Theatre as well, but here, Mee is nothing if not purposeful. A few productions in that aforementioned group uncovered relevant drive and meaning without resorting to on-the-nose modern day parallels, as “Iphigenia 2.0” does, but still, none were screaming quite so loud as Mr. Mee. But, as evidenced by Next Theatre’s new production, the playwright’s deafening cries go unheard.

Mee’s already cluttered commentary on our modern wars—specifically those in Iraq and Afghanistan—is rendered even more base and unpalatable by Kersnar’s loudmouthed production, which chooses to overemphasize the playwright’s undue focus on Generation Y’s consumerist tastes over Agamemnon’s (a stoic, unmoved Aaron Todd Douglas) capability as a leader and as a father. Agamemnon’s decision as to whether he must sacrifice his daughter is pushed aside in favor of the playwright’s social dogma. What occurs is less of a tragedy and more of an elaborately staged anti-everything pamphlet.

NEWCITY REVIEW: "The Pirates of Penzance' at Tall Ship Windy

RECOMMENDED

Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan are rolling in their distinguished graves. And rolling more aggressively than ever before, thanks, in no small part, to the theaters of Chicago. A guidepost of Victorian theater, the duo’s “The Pirates of Penzance” has been performed in and around our fair city over and over again these past twelve months, and in any and every orientation but ye ole proscenium arch. Last spring, the Marriott Theatre, by spatial necessity, presented the work to great acclaim on their round stage. Likewise, but not-so-likewise, The Hypocrites, the last two years and coming up on a third, have performed the operetta in promenade style affront a backdrop of a hipster beach party. And now, perhaps most brazenly, the Tall Ship Windy has “Penzance” actually leaving port aboard a functional vessel.

As far as I am aware, the Tall Ship Windy’s production, their first musical stage outing, is the only time “Penzance” has ever been performed aboard a genuine sailing ship–at least on the Great Lakes. I am quite surprised it took so long. Since Wilford Leach’s 1980 New York Shakespeare Festival production, which landed the operetta a newfangled musical theater sensibility and a swashbuckling attitude, “The Pirates of Penzance” has placed a great deal more emphasis on its piracy than it did in 1879. Where once the fearsome fops “poured o poured the pirate sherry,” now they gutturally “arrrrgh!,” sword fight and guzzle down Caribbean rum. Driving the “yo ho” home, the Pirate King in Ethan McSweeny’s production at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival this summer was a dead ringer for Johnny Depp. What is lost in these imaginings, however, is the satire. After all, the scary, but dimwitted pirates are, in the end, revealed to be nothing more than hereditary peers having a bit of fun on the shores of England. Yes, “Pirates” takes place entirely in England.

NEWCITY REVIEW: '33 Variations' at TimeLine Theatre

(Photo by Lara Goetsch)

The character with the most dialogue in Moisés Kaufman’s “33 Variations” does not utter a single word—Music. Personified in TimeLine Theatre Company’s Chicago premiere production by a stationary pianist, every transition is accompanied by live piano and occasionally the gifted and stoic George Lepauw will underscore a scene. And yet, though purposely placed center stage by director Nick Bowling, the piano lends little to the play outside of informational context.

In the same manner author Dan Brown simplified and manipulated centuries of art history into thriller fodder for “The Da Vinci Code,” so too does playwright Kaufman dumb down music here to achieve his own popular entertainment. However, when the life of the play’s main character revolves around Beethoven and his compositions, forcing the music to the third chair strips away her soul. Not to mention her likability.

Sure, an exemplary, nimble-fingered pianist resides onstage for the entire performance, but the significance of music to the livelihood of Kaufman’s main character, Dr. Katherine Brandt, is never relayed to us on a level more profound than factual. But a real passion for music is the only likable facet of the character. Is there anything more joyous than listening to a passionate person speak with fire about their passion? That is where the human connection is forged. That spark of connection is the missing piece of the puzzle that takes Dr. Brandt from on-the-page character to full-fledged person, despite a mostly powerful portrayal by Janet Ulrich Brooks.

NEWCITY REVIEW: 'Skin Tight' by Cor Theatre

RECOMMENDED

The abbreviated length of New Zealand playwright Gary Henderson’s “Skin Tight,” being given a Chicago premiere by Cor Theatre, resonates long after the “quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle” is done. Those five nonsense words, both muscular and ambivalent, come from poet Denis Glover’s similarly brief rural work, “The Magpies,” on which “Skin Tight” is based. In Glover’s six four-line stanzas, those are the only words that the poet’s subjects, Tom and Elizabeth, speak. But they certainly speak volumes. They echo a relationship’s highs and lows, and understand their universal commonalities. The emotions, no matter the context, are deep and extreme.

Akin to Glover’s physically tiny work, “Skin Tight” runs a mere fifty minutes, but the subject matter is contrastingly massive. The drama, directed by Victoria Deiorio, depicts the lifetime events of a relationship, which, while a formidable task, is not a theatrical first. Comedic one-acts have long taken up similar challenges, but too often with an abundance of cheap laughs and stereotypical representations. Henderson’s play, alive with an obscure poeticism, endeavors a more honest exploration of the joys and pitfalls of coupledom.

NEWCITY REVIEW: 'Idomeneus' by Sideshow Theatre Company

 

(Photo by Jonathan L. Green)

Chicago has certainly witnessed its fair share of contemporized Greek theater in recent seasons—Mary-Arrchie’s “Electra,” Victory Gardens’ “Oedipus el Rey” and The Hypocrites’ “Sophocles: Seven Sicknesses” to name but a few. However, a couple productions stand out intellectually from the phalanx. While the aforementioned list is, in fact, made up of adaptations of ancient texts originally intended for the stage, Enda Walsh’s “Penelope” at Steppenwolf Theatre and Sideshow Theatre Company’s currently running “Idomeneus” place their focus on Homeric mythological characters outside of the realm of extant Greek drama. Therein lies the rub.

You see, the predominant simplicity of Grecian comedy and tragedy is not an accurate reflection on Homer’s dense and lengthy epic poetry. No, sir. “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad” are event-laden, detail-oriented and languid efforts. So, whereas modern productions of “Medea” can shirk the responsibility of relaying winding familial lineages and underscoring the cultural importance of Jason’s famous voyage without much consequence for an audience, strictly literary mythos is undeniably more peculiar. Those stories are foreign to a majority of playgoers, typically being reserved for study in the academic sphere–perhaps “The Iliad” is lazy Sunday reading for some, but alas, not for me–and thus, when staged, absolutely require clarity of narrative. Substance over style.

Walsh’s “Penelope,” though safely and conservatively realized by Steppenwolf was, at the very least, easy enough to track. Odysseus’ wife Penelope has four suitors who wear Speedos. Done and dusted. But I cannot say the same for Sideshow’s “Idomeneus” at the DCASE Storefront Theater which, though visually rich, relaxedly sunbathes on its sandy set as the play’s overwhelmingly demure facets forego the optical boldness of the design and staging. What results is a lagging hour whose overplayed style harshly overwhelms the story. A story essentially cobbled together from three distinctive takes: Homer, Virgil, and Maurus Servius Honoratus.

NEWCITY REVIEW: 'The Fall of The House of Usher' by The Hypocrites

RECOMMENDED

“Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher!” says the all-too-curious narrator as his eyes befall a boon friend, Roderick, in Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Reuniting with his pal, he observes, not only a change in Roderick’s demeanor, but a stunning physical transformation–a person familiar, but mysteriously altered. Perhaps “stunning” is not a strong enough word to describe the visitor’s initial impression of Mr. Usher in The Hypocrites’ new staging of the tale, however. For, in director Sean Graney’s hour-long adaptation, Usher is portrayed by a woman in top-hatted drag. Well, three women actually, in breathtaking rotation.

So, why a cast of three formidable ladies? After all, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a rather masculine read. Two of the three literary main characters are men, and the sole female character, Lady Madeline, is written to be completely silent. Past onstage efforts have been made to feminize Poe’s exercise in Romanticism. One such production occurred in 2006, when Steppenwolf for Young Adults presented a musically luscious, but meandering production of “Lady Madeline” with the horror story told from the sister’s perspective. But never have women played so integral a role as they do here.

NEWCITY REVIEW: 'Devil In The Dirt' at Redtwist Theatre

RECOMMENDED

Summertime has been christened Chicago’s favorite season, not only for muddy music festivals and boozy street fairs, but also for those elusive one-person shows. In putting up the physically modest productions in the height of July and August, perhaps companies are conserving their already scant resources for the hurly-burly of fall and winter. Or maybe the oppressive temperatures are nudging the theaters against packing their stuffy stages from wall to wall with perspiring bodies trapped under the gaze of hot lights. No matter the justification, the trend is a welcome and colorful shift away from the usual weighty ensemble fare that resumes in full force come September. I say, “Bring on these singular sensations!”

In the eye of Redtwist Theatre’s concurrent production of “The Glass Menagerie,” comes the company’s off-night, three-performance presentation of Daria Harper’s one-woman show, “The Devil In the Dirt.” The play, created and performed by Harper and directed by Mary Ann Thebus, cleverly exists as a subtle, contemporary companion piece to “Menagerie,” both united by themes of isolation, family ties and abandonment. In Williams’ play, the ominous, hovering portrait of Laura and Tom’s father hangs over the Wingfield’s living room, acting as the “fifth character” and taking a fair chunk of responsibility for his family’s silent desperation. Comparably for Harper, the titular “Devil” refers to her main character Cindy’s own father, and the tarnished legacy he left
behind above ground.