Chicago Stage Review

By J. Scott Hill

We at Chicago Stage Review are peas in a couple of pretty specific pods, bound one to another not only by our love of the performing arts, but by our acolyte-like devotion to all things Godzilla. The mere mention of a humungous fake dinosaur rampaging through a major metropolitan area can derail “theater shop talk” indefinitely. Once we learned that Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular would be coming to Allstate Arena, the occasional audible “Squee” bubbling out of one of us was enough to indicate that we had pretty high hopes.

Our wide-eyed anticipation, however, does not mean we are a bunch of pushovers.

This is Chicago – home of Kukla, Fran and Ollie, B. J. & Dirty Dragon, and Garfield Goose and Friends. From the innocent joy of Puppet Bike to the sinister machinations of Redmoon Theater, Chicago is a hardcore puppet town. While we at Chicago Stage Review love puppets and people in dinosaur costumes, we have a low tolerance for dino/puppet suckage.

Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular accomplishes many things, and suckage is not among them. Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular manages to combine elements of wildlife documentary, mockumentary, theme park show, guided natural-history museum tour, and a trip to the zoo, to create a grand spectacle chockablock full of both information and drama.

Jack Stone plays the narrator, an onstage fictional paleontologist named Huxley, with gregarious believability. As warm and familiar and authentic as Stone’s performance is, he could have be a three-headed slime monster from Rigel Seven: the production is not called Walking with Paleontologists.

The dinosaurs are the whole shebang, and they are so astoundingly wonderful that they absolutely overwhelm the audience. Creature designer/builder Sonny Tilders has gone so far beyond normal stage puppetry and effects, into the realms of blockbuster movie magic. These creatures completely look and feel alive. The seemingly cumbersome mechanisms for locomotion between the feet of the larger dinosaurs (looking like the dino accidentally stepped on a Formula One car) neither distract nor detract from these amazing feats of creature engineering. Old familiars like stegosaurus, brachiosaurus, and T. Rex are joined by some oddball dinosaurs like the heavily armored ankylosaurus and the giant-headed torosaurus. From the texture and drape of the skin, to the voluntary and involuntary movements of the eyes, to every ferocious step, the thunder lizards in Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular give no indication of being fabricated, mechanical, theatrical devices.

Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular contains no blood and very little violence and gore. I did see a few very small children get too scared to watch, but eventually even these kids warmed to the experience. My twelve-year-old daughter said, “Walking with Dinosaurs is amazing. The T. Rex is so lifelike that when it came close, I had to cover my head for protection.” So did her Dad, and everyone else in their section.

DO NOT MISS this brief opportunity to go Walking with Dinosaurs at the Allstate Arena with your whole family. This is a theatrical event that will take you a quarter of a million times farther back into the past than a trip just up the road to Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament, yet Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular generates a similar kind of immediacy, a similar thrill stems out of the high-spirited live entertainment, providing a similar massive adrenaline rush for the awestruck crowd. At Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular, there is an exuberant feeling of potential mayhem, as if the life-sized adult tyrannosaurus rex could at any moment break free of the Allstate Arena, head west a few miles along I-90, and terrorize Mitsuwa Marketplace or head downtown and trample the Loop!

4 STARS

(“Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular” runs through August 1 at the Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Rd., Rosemont. 800-745-3000.)

Buy Tickets - www.dinosaurlive.com The official Walking with Dinosaurs, Arena Spectacular website. Touring the UK, USA and Europe NOW!

Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular production photos by Joan Marcus.

* Check out an EXCLUSIVE Photo Essay here: Walking with Dinosaurs – The Arena Spectacular @ Allstate Arena - EXCLUSIVE PHOTO ESSAY - Chicago Stage Review

By J. Scott Hill

It always rains on the second weekend of July. It is as if the heavens try to tell me, “Don’t drag your family all the way to Michigan to pick blueberries; stop at a farm stand twenty miles across the Illinois-Indiana state line and buy the fruits of someone else’s labor.” So every year, full of the finest intentions, I get no further east than Hobart or Portage before the rain starts and I acquiesce to the will of heaven.

This rainy second weekend of July, I took a second journey into northwest Indiana, just a few blocks across the state line to Theatre at the Center in Munster for Jesus Christ Superstar. Wherever I may be, it always rains on Easter weekend, too, so I anticipated a double downpour.

Irrespective of the stormy skies, I had my apprehensions about this show. Theatre at the Center has recently done some outstanding productions of what I thought were terrible musicals. Jesus Christ Superstar is a profoundly great musical (opera, really), but is very easy to do poorly.

Whether by means divine or by design, this production of Jesus Christ Superstar completely redeems Theatre at the Center.

From Scenic Designer Christopher Ash’s Prairie-style warehouse set to Costume Designer Nikki Delhomme’s glorious blended anachronisms, the look of this production is at once opulent and Spartan. Walls become stained-glass windows; stained-glass windows become screens for a dumbshow. The requisite flower-child garb is worn, but so are the motleys of demented clowns and priestly garments that resemble chess pieces.

Oh, Jesus. Max Quinlan’s steady, reassuring tenor conveyed a Jesus more troubled than Vincent Van Gogh, more resolute than Captain Chesley Sullenberger.

I have always believed that Mary Magdelene, rather than Jesus, is the soul of Jesus Christ Superstar; Audrey Billings could not be more soulful as Mary Magdelene. As the whore who does not have sex, she is sexy without ever being whorish. Mary Magdelene’s sexiness fuels the rift between Judas and Jesus. Jesus never does anything untoward, of course, but for Jesus Christ Superstar to work, the audience has to understand that Judas is working from the assumption that no man could ever resist her whether she is trying to tempt him or not. Billings consoles the inconsolable Jesus as a mother would a babe. Her voice is pure and sweet and perfect for “Everything’s Alright.”

Judas is not portrayed as a bad man. He is a leader with a noble agenda, who does not truly comprehend the weight of his actions until it is too late – like Alec Guinness’s Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai. Joe Tokarz utilizes an impressive range of singing styles to carry Judas from the heights of zeal, through rage and betrayal, to the pit of despair.

Pontius Pilate’s first appearance singing “Pilate’s Dream” is clearly meant to change the tone of the show. The timbre of Larry Adams’s baritone immediately captivates the audience. He is never less than sympathetic, even when he is being awful.

Theatre at the Center’s production of Jesus Christ Superstar is far more than an eloquent exuding of pathos. There are even a few wonderful Easter eggs hidden in this production; for example, there are a couple of blatant references to Rob Zombie. I may be stretching it to point out that Caiaphas, played sonorous and sinister by Jeff Diebold, was made up to look very much like Rob Zombie (who better to represent such an embodiment of evil?). The Rob Zombie influence on the portrayal of King Herod, however, is more straightforward.

“King Herod’s Song” in Jesus Christ Superstar is like “Beauty School Dropout” in Grease: the actor appears only in that number and a wise director will bring in a ringer. Stacey Flaster is a wise director for bringing in the brilliant Stephen M. Genovese, Artistic Director of BoHo Theatre. Genovese played Herod like Captain Spaulding, not like Groucho’s Captain Spaulding in Animal Crackers, but like Sid Haig’s Captain Spaulding in the Rob Zombie-directed exploitation horror films House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. Genovese’s Herod is an appalling vision in full clown regalia. He is menace incarnate. He is frothy and demented and repulsive. He is a whipped cream pie in the face with shards of broken glass in the bottom. Backed by a chorus of near-demonic clowns and donning a cockeyed crown four sizes too large, Genovese makes me want to sleep with the lights on if I can ever sleep again. This uproarious, unsettling interpretation of “King Herod’s Song” may be the best single number I have ever seen on the musical theatre stage. Genovese very nearly stole the show.

The crucifixion trumps any scene-stealing razzmatazz, however splendid.

Back to Max Quinlan hanging off the cross, his hands balanced on brackets that cast shadows so like nails had been driven through his palms. He called out for his mother, for something to slake his thirst, for answers about why he must endure the burden alone. Audience members, of all faiths and none, wept openly at this god-man’s very human anguish.

Director/Choreographer Stacey Flaster has brought an outstanding, inventive, transformative production of Jesus Christ Superstar to light at Theatre at the Center. DO NOT MISS this show.

After the curtain call and the deservedly long standing-ovation, I scurried through the rain to my car and drove due west back to Illinois. The western skies opened up with tall, fierce forks of lightning and the Earth shook with thunder, as if the heavens were determined to continue that long ovation a while longer.

4 STARS

(“Jesus Christ Superstar” runs through August 8 at Theatre At The Center, 1040 Ridge Rd., Munster, Indiana. 219-836-3255.)

Theater at the Center

Jesus Christ Superstar production photos by Michael Brosilow.

* Visit Theatre In Chicago for more information on this show. Jesus Christ Superstar - Theatre At The Center - Play Detail - Theatre In Chicago

By J. Scott Hill

I have covered the last few Beast Women series, and my reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. One of my favorite aspects of Beast Women shows has been the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney “Hey kids, let’s put on a show” atmosphere of these productions. PROP THTR itself is such an incubator for talent that Beast Women’s Babes in Arms sensibility was a tailored fit. But the Beast Women have relocated to the Upstairs Studio of The Greenhouse Theater Center.

With the move to The Greenhouse Theater Center, something has changed: that wide-eyed desire to prove one’s self has died. In its stead has grown dynamism and polish. Beast Women 2010 Summer Series offers no trace of being a mere proving ground for Chicago’s best female variety performers, but rather stands gloriously in full bloom, talent proven. QED

From the moment co-producer and emcee Michelle Power took the stage, this new energy was apparent: a sense that Beast Women is not a jumping-off point, but a destination. While the lineup was a mix of veteran and novice Beasties, there was no way to discern who was new to the game without consulting the program.

Veteran Beast Woman singer/songwriter/pianist Jen St. Stjärna performed a couple of gorgeous songs from her debut album Horizon (release imminent). In the first of many displays of deserved confidence by the evening’s performers, St. Stjärna chose to open the show by first bypassing the album she was promoting, opting instead to deliver a languid torch song with a They Might Be Giants sensibility called “A Love Song for Abe Lincoln.”

Comedienne Amy Sumpter took the audience through her summer in Chicago. It’s only been summer for three weeks, and she has been busy avoiding carnies at local festivals, doing a faceplant onto the pavement, being set up on blind dates, going to the gynecologist, and falling in love with her cab driver. Amazingly, she also found time to be immensely funny.

Clown Claire Wedemeyer joyously played with a broom in every conceivable way a broom can be played with; at times, the broom may have been playing with her. Angie O rallied the crowd with her slam poetry about starting her day, followed by a hard-to-categorize piece (sermon, perhaps) about underemployment in the life of an artist, a piece that clearly struck a nerve within several patrons of the arts as well.

Special guest performer Shanna Shrum presented a character monologue, from her nationally touring one-woman show Skinny Dipping, in which she cunningly offered up planned obesity as a viable method to keep girls studying hard and out of trouble. Singer and guitarist Kristina Cottone gave the crowd a couple of sultry numbers, with a sound one part Taj Mahal and one part Jewel-before-she-sucked.

Beast Women co-producer and performance artist Jillian Erickson duped the audience into believing she would entertain us with a light piece about life as a perennial bridesmaid, then strapped us into an emotional roller coaster, and shot us off the end of the track over a cliff.

We were returned to equilibrium by the elegant gyrations of the belly dancer Kamani, whose shingle must have had to be packed in dry ice after the show to keep the coins from melting.

Every night of the Beast Women 2010 Summer Series has a substantially different lineup, and the opening night performance was so tight, so good that I wish I could go back for every show. Beast Women 2010 Summer Series may be Saturday nights at ten-thirty, but these players are ready for primetime. Now that they have found a new home at The Greenhouse Theater Center, it is high time that Erickson and Power move this brilliant beast to eight o’clock.

4 STARS

(“Beast Women 2010 Summer Series” runs Saturdays at 10:30 p.m. through August 28 at The Greenhouse Theatre Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave, Chicago. 773-404-7336.)

For more info go to:  www.beastwomenproductions.com

Beast Women 2010 Summer Series production photos by Hunter Matthews.

By J. Scott Hill

For thou what thinks the Bard as but a fraud,

a nom de plume of Francis Bacon’s smith,

The Strange Tree Group and The Lord Chamb’lain’s Men

provide a play that just might prove you right.

King Phycus was the first of Shakespeare’s plays,

lost to the centuries for reasons sound,

until ostensibly recovered from

a trunk in Boise, Idaho, no less.

‘Tis all but playwright Tom Willmorth’s deft ruse

to cage this campy venture to amuse.

It took several hours of burning out my retinas on the unforgiving albedo of the empty page just to write eight lines of blank verse and a couplet in iambic pentameter. Tom Willmorth has the knack; his script for Shakespeare’s King Phycus is two-and-a-half hours of great fun, five ba-DUMs to a line. Willmorth has culled together iconic characters and plot elements from some of Shakespeare’s best-loved plays, with additional dialog from classic vaudeville, popular song, and David Mamet.

The production’s commitment to the verisimilitude of the fish story about the authenticity of this lost Shakespeare begins in the lobby of The Building Stage, where museum-quality displays of the recently rediscovered manuscript of King Phycus figure prominently. Scenic Designer Jay Neander and his team manage to create an antiqued, distressed simulacrum so convincing that it might even dupe the Keno twins from Antiques Roadshow. Inside the theatre, the set is at first glance a fairly traditional Shakespearean plaza. A closer inspection reveals that some of the set is cleverly composed of modern trash: a semicircle of upturned beer bottles becomes a wall sconce, Starbucks lids become decorative molding. I hope that old property tax bills were recycled to fashion the papier-mâché Abraham Lincoln seated in one of the box seats house right.

The cast of Shakespeare’s King Phycus consists of only six actors, yet that humble cast stands in for thousands; even discounting the 20,000 Roman soldiers represented by a single performer, there are still a couple of dozen characters being performed by the sextet.

Among his several roles, Stuart Ritter discovers two completely distinct flavors of brooding as both Hamlet and Romeo. Delia Baseman shines brightest when she is Juliet, betrothed against her will to the beastly and deformed Richard (as in the Third) of Gloucester. The monstrous Gloucester is the best trick among many theatrical treats here from actor Bob Kruse. Although called upon to portray more characters than any other player, Scott Cupper’s best performance comes as the Chorus, skillfully guiding the audience to fill in the show’s shortcomings with high-end special effects out of their own imaginations.

Carolyn Klein proves herself to be a marvelous utility player in roles as varied as Lady MacBetty, the ghost of Gertrude, Juliet’s Nurse, and Hamlet’s old improviser friend Rosensteen. Her MacBetty is as vicious as her Rosensteen is goofy. She is especially good at damage control with the ill-conceived character of the Nurse, written in the style of Mammy from Gone With the Wind; Klein carefully, adeptly played just enough of that archetype to make it identifiable, without falling into the trap of playing a racist stereotype.

Michael T. Downey is new to the Chicago stage, and may have a bright future here. As Caesar, Downey is perfectly imperious and rapturously funny. As King Phycus, he displays moments of pure comic genius, particularly when Phycus is half-mad and blind.

Director Ira Amyx masterfully leads this exuberant troupe of cunning character actors through this intricately woven text. The pacing and the comic timing are impeccable.

You do not need to be a dramaturg nor a member of The Society for Creative Anachronism to enjoy this show. There are a few minor problems, such as the Nurse character and the overall length (this script could have had thirty minutes of exposition cherry-picked out of it to its benefit). Still, this is a wonderful production of a fabulous new show, a show destined to become an audience favorite at Shakespeare houses around the world.

Methinks Chicago Shakes should offer space

to Strange Tree Group and The Lord Chamb’lain’s Men

to bring King Phycus out to Navy Pier

to sanguine make but one midsummer’s night,

or two, or three, perhaps a matinee –

King Phycus let to rule another day.

3 ½ STARS

(“Shakespeare’s King Phycus” presented by The Strange Tree Group and The Lord Chamberlain’s Men runs through July 31 at The Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter Street, Chicago. (312)491-1369)

The Strange Tree Group | A Wickedly Whimsical, Delightfully Devious Chicago Theatre Company

Shakespeare’s King Phycus production images by Tyler Core.

* Visit Theatre In Chicago for more information on this show. Shakespeare’s King Phycus- Play Detail- Theatre In Chicago

CATCH IT WHILE YOU CAN: Chaste at Trap Door Theatre

CLOSING WEEKEND - DON’T MISS!

By J. Scott Hill

A major philosopher, a minor philosopher, and a psychoanalyst walk into a platonic relationship….

The premise of Chaste, Trap Door Theatre’s world premiere “awful comedy” by Ken Prestininzi, could have started as an impromptu joke among grad students after a few too many microbrews. This is a show about three intellectuals who decide to forswear sex and live together, mindfucking one another all the while. They have entered into a threesome in which each of them is determined to make sure that the other two do not get what they want out of their communal experience. The depths of their love and their hate for one another take unusual paths in their pilgrimages to inflict emotional and intellectual intensity on each other. While much of the interplay among this trio of feral psyches would drive anyone to the heights of elation or the depths of despair, the most cutting barb they can receive is that they are found “ridiculous.”

This is a delightfully vicious comedy: poignant, desperate, controlled, unhinged. Chaste does not require the audience to know anything of the lives and works of Friedrich Nietzsche, his sister/keeper Elisabeth, Paul Ree, and Lulu Salome. Regular local theatre-goers will surely find resonance between Ken Prestininzi’s Chaste and the works of Chicago’s existentialist bard Mickle Maher; Maher’s work tends toward introspection and narration, whereas Prestininzi’s work here is relationship-based and dialog-driven: an angsty, nihilistic three-way game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Prestininzi gives us a play that transcends nihilism, existentialism, farce, and absurdity; we are given a vision of the internal disconnects in some of the nineteenth century’s great minds and the social impact of such mental process, mental processes and social impact that in the here and now are no longer reserved only for mad geniuses. This is writing at its highest level.

Kate Hendrickson directs her actors to render a difficult text with smooth flow and ready accessibility. Hendrickson’s blocking for this show is really an intricate choreography of parkour and Gracie Brazilian-style Jujitsu.

Set Designer Joseph Riley has worked a wonder, creating myriad levels, performance spaces, obstacles, and furniture pieces out of a few odd-shaped platforms with trap doors. The backdrop looks like a mural blown up from a single inch of a Monet and shifted from pastels to primary colors.

Light Designer Gina Patterson elegantly defines transitions of tone or location through her deft hand on the board. Nevena Todorovic captures both period and personality through smart choices in costume design.

All four actors are beyond splendid. Antonio Brunetti plays Friedrich Nietzsche like a man continuously coming down off of a crystal meth tweak. Sarah Tolan Mee imbues Lulu Salome with the intellect, charm, cunning, and beauty necessary to be a woman who bewitched not only Ree and Nietzsche, but Rilke and Freud as well. John Kahara is subtle and bawdy and conflicted and sure as Paul Ree. Tiffany Joy Ross plays Nietzsche’s sister Elisabeth with a sternly reverential mix of governess and acolyte.

This is the show with everything: droll wit and pratfalls, ecstasy and heartbreak, romantic intrigue and emotional violence, comedy and despair. DO NOT MISS the opportunity to see one of the final performances of the sublime world premiere of Chaste at Trap Door Theatre; to do so would be ridiculous.

4 STARS

(“Chaste” runs through June 26 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland Ave. 773-384-0494.)

Trap Door Theatre | Buy Tickets

Trap Door Theatre | Chicago, IL

Chaste production images by Michal Janicki.

* Visit Theatre In Chicago for more information on this show. Chaste- Play Detail- Theatre In Chicago

By J. Scott Hill

Exclusive Images By Justin Bradley

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

Juliet was wrong.  Yes, not only about faking her own death and entrusting her love life to someone who had taken vows of celibacy and chastity, but about names as well.  There is a wealth of meaning inferred from a name.  The names Archibald Leach and Norma Jeane Baker are merely answers to trivia questions, but the stage names Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe are universally famous.  Names shape perception.

When going to see Loose Chicks, one might walk in with an expectation that the show will fall somewhere between Earth Girls Are Easy and Co-Ed Prison Sluts.  Not so.  The name Loose Chicks comes from the days when the show was performed at the now-defunct Loose Leaf Tea near Lincoln Square.

Loose Chicks is an hour of original monologues, conceived and performed monthly by two powerhouses of the form, Jillian Erickson and Roberta Miles.  Jillian Erickson is a performance artist and co-producer of the Beast Women all-female cabaret.  In addition to being a monologist, Roberta Miles is an accomplished jazz singer and artist and the co-host of Café Cabaret at Café Ballou.  Performing separately together as the Loose Chicks, Erickson and Miles have used a series of intimate performance spaces to give their audiences intimate access to their minds and experiences.

This show is fairly loose in structure; Erickson and Miles interact freely with the audience before, between, and after performing. Each of the Chicks performs a selection of short monologues.  Loose Chicks creates such a friendly sense of community between and among performers and audience members that it would not feel out of place for one of the Chicks to ask someone to get up and perform their party piece.

I have sung the praises of these two performers in other reviews.  Since their material changes with each performance, any specific pieces I would refer to might not be on the bill when you see them. For more detailed descriptions of solo performances by Jillian Erickson and Roberta Miles, please follow these links:

Beast Women 2010 Spring Series – REVIEW - Chicago Stage Review

2009: My Year in the Audience - Chicago Stage Review

Beast Women 2009 Winter Series – REVUE REVIEW - Chicago Stage Review

Roberta Miles’s material tends to come from her adventures as a singer in Chicago and as a sexual free spirit.  Juxtaposing braggadocio with self-effacement, Miles seems to lay her soul bare before a room full of strangers.

Jillian Erickson does perform some material in-character, but autobiography is the focus of Loose Chicks.  Her work here tends to deal with how she is perceived and misperceived by strange men, her mother, the world.

These two women share some rather unsafe details from their lives without casting the audience as so many flies on the wall.  The audience is their friend, with whom they have become close enough to share life’s intimate stories.  Loose Chicks is a name that has less to do with moral boundaries than with the boundaries between personal and private, between performing and sharing.  DO NOT MISS the next chance to get to know the Loose Chicks.

3 ½ STARS

(“Loose Chicks” next performance is May 14th, 7:30pm, at Winston’s Café, 5001 N Clark, Chicago)

Roberta Miles

www.beastwomenproductions.com

Loose Chicks images by Justin Bradley.

By J. Scott Hill

Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

That’s the inscription on the gates of Hell, at least according to Dante.  Many among us have already abandoned hope and are trapped in a living Hell thanks to our current or former employers’ embrace of the root of all evil, the love of money. But the recession is allegedly over.  Corporate profits are way up.  The Stock Market is way up.  The economy is getting better for those who already have money, lots of money.  The bottom ninety-eight percent of us are still feeling the pinch, if the drop of the guillotine can be called a mere pinch.  Unemployed, underemployed, multiple jobs, no benefits, no prospects on the horizon, if we aren’t experiencing it right now, we fear it could happen to us tomorrow.  Economists and other pundits may see prosperity ahead, but the rest of us are in crisis.

When will we find relief?

Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m.

The Neo-Futurists can help.  For what you spend every week on that pipe dream of winning the lotto, you can gain entry into a world of stress-relieving entertainment: comedy, live music, singing, dancing, magic, short film, and challenging games.  If you are smart, lucky, and above all honest, you have a shot at winning some serious cash.

If you would like to be a contestant in CRISIS, show up a half-hour early and take the Scantron test.  Overhead projectors shine multiple-choice questions onto the walls and ceiling just like in eighth grade.  Don’t forget to answer the essay question; it will require you to state truthfully what may be a deeply personal story.

For eight contestants each night, CRISIS is a two-hour climb up the corporate ladder.  In the fantasy world of CRISIS, honesty and intelligence (rather than booty-smooching and mediocrity) lead to promotion.  The game itself has three tiers: Ground Zero, The Panic Room, and The Breaking Point.

During Ground Zero, contestants are broken into two teams and managed through a series of Family Feud-type questions by host Meister Lovegeldt, played by John Pierson with even more than his usual undeniable charm.  Pierson flings himself at this enterprise like a trebuchet flings pumpkins at the annual Pumpkin Chunkin’ down in Morton; the energy tapped leaves the audience in awe.  Like many an entry-level manager, Pierson works magic – in this case a set of classic tricks popularized on the TV variety shows of a bygone era.  Pierson’s entire performance is a throwback to the days when entertainers were first and foremost onstage to entertain – refreshing.

The team that survives Ground Zero is promoted to The Panic Room.  Host Mark E. Valli is tricksy and frenetic.  Dan Kerr-Hobert plays The Panic Room’s host as an oily mid-level manager: contestants start with as much credit as they are going to get from Valli, and he deducts points for every wrong answer and unwon challenge.  Kerr-Hobert’s song-and-dance number is a delight.

The contestant that keeps their cool in The Panic Room earns a sit-down with the CEO.  Round three is The Breaking Point, and CEO Clifton Frei probes the remaining contestant Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?-style.  In addition to increasingly more difficult, increasingly more valuable questions, the CEO has no compunctions about asking the contestant to give public answers to questions about normally private matters.  The audience is informally polled about the verisimilitude and completeness of these answers, and money is awarded or not, accordingly.  When digging through the contestant’s tender memories, Frei is no Regis Philbin, no blurter nor brute; he shifts instantaneously and effortlessly from bombastic to therapeutic.

The action is interspersed with clever and hilarious “executive client videos” (used in game play) and live commercials for local businesses.  These scenes change from night to night.  Present and former Neo-Futurists, as well as other prominent Chicago actors, will be performing in these interstitial scenes.

CRISIS (A Musical Game Show) is wild fun to watch, and the contestants seem to be having even more fun than the audience is.  The winner can walk away with up to a third of that night’s box office, over five hundred bucks if the show is sold out. The performances are geared toward nothing more profound than making mirth for the downtrodden, which nowadays is all of us.  Pierson, Kerr-Hobert, Frei, and the rest of the cast and crew work fervently to try to re-instill a little hope in our lives, not through some heartwarming success story or platitudes that things are getting better, but by entertaining us with abandon.

3 STARS

(“CRISIS (A Musical Game Show)” runs Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays through June 12* at The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland, Chicago. 773-275-5255.)

*The June 11 and June 12 performances are Champion Rounds.

Neo-Futurists

CRISIS (A Musical Game Show) production photos by Evan Hanover.

By J. Scott Hill

Theatre begins and ends with writing.  Someone writes a play.  The play goes into production, and is likely retooled during the rehearsal process.  Actors make the script as if it were their own words first uttered in-the-moment onstage.  Finally, some critic who sees a single performance lauds or eviscerates the entire enterprise.  Thought, action, reaction.

The production of I Do! I Do! at Theatre at the Center could not be finer, but it is a production of I Do! I Do!, and I Do! I Do! is a terrible musical – a mud pie with a latticework crust.  Robert Preston won the 1967 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for his work in the original Broadway production of I Do! I Do!, but Robert Preston also breathed life into the dead-on-arrival 1984 movie The Last Starfighter.

The premise of I Do! I Do! holds such promise: scenes from a marriage played out through the bedroom conversations of one couple, from their wedding night, through their child-rearing years and midlife crises, to their empty nest denouement.  Adapted from Jan de Hartog’s 1952 Tony Award-winning play The Fourposter, I Do! I Do! reduces its source material’s universal truths about commitment and love to a pabulum of clichés.  I Do! I Do! is chockablock with songs, dopey songs with simplistic of/love rhyme schemes, songs inferior to those regularly created in improv games at iO and every other comedy sports venue in Chicagoland.  The book and lyrics are by Tom Jones and the music is by Harvey Schmidt, the duo responsible for The Fantasticks.  Schmidt rendered all of de Hartog’s touching and bittersweet insight out of the script, leaving nothing but schmaltz.

I wish that this mansion were not built upon such sand. Heidi Kettenring and Bernie Yvon are astonishing performers who work diligently to build Agnes and Michael’s marriage into a third character onstage with them, despite the ashes in their mouths.  Director Chuck Gessert skillfully guides Kettenring and Yvon through the emotion of the story, keeps the pacing as rightly uneven as the crests and hollows of a couple’s lives together, and provides purposeful blocking for a show that could have been two people sitting on a bed for two hours.  Ann N. Davis’s Scenic Design captures the essence of the well-appointed Victorian home.  Wig Designer Kevin Barthel masterfully creates a timeline for the show through the changes in Agnes’s hair.

In spite of Jones’s underwhelming script and lyrics, at least Harvey Schmidt’s music is pleasant.  The highlight of this unfortunate production is the piano accompaniment, provided from two baby grands at opposite sides of the stage, by Randy Glancy and Musical Director William A. Underwood.

In my head, I have construed a fantasy production of Jan de Hartog’s The Fourposter at Theatre at the Center with the same cast and set, and even with the twin pianos playing Harvey Schmidt’s music adapted into a score.  That could have been a four-star, must-see show; this is not.  Through no fault of anyone involved in this production, except perhaps Artistic Director William Pullinsi for allowing Theatre at the Center to mount this catastrophe of writing, I Do! I Do! is a failure.

1 STAR

(“I Do! I Do!” runs through May 23, 2010, at Theatre at the Center, 1040 Ridge Rd. Munster, IN.  219-836-3255.)

Theatre at the Center (Munster,IN)

By J. Scott Hill

I imagine Shakespeare bringing his Lord Chamberlain’s Men in front of Elizabeth I to perform The Taming of the Shrew.  Then I imagine him living out his days in the Tower of London, forced to write the bulk of his catalog to be only ever performed by Walter Raleigh and six ravens.  Since the Bard escaped the gallows for this exercise in misogyny, the Virgin Queen must have seen through the controversy surrounding The Shrew, perhaps seeing the story of poor Kate as a cautionary tale against those who would seek to woo then dominate Her Majesty.

The Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s production of The Taming of the Shrew, with new Induction scenes by Neil LaBute, replaces the old frame story of the drunken tinker with the Noises Off-like whirlwind of a glitchy contemporary tech rehearsal of The Shrew.  This technical drudgery is a backdrop for the ungentle death of the love between the overly amorous actress playing Katarina and her longtime lover, the show’s Director.

Seemingly a response to the accusations of misogyny hurled at LaBute’s own plays and films since his beginnings with In the Company of Men, the new Induction critically engages the heinous gender politics of The Shrew.  The counterpoints of fidelity and adultery, of control and submission, of mind and body, are hashed out in the dialog between Shakespeare’s play and its new frame. This is no gold-leafed frame; this is a magnificent character-study cast in 24-karat gold, soft gold that shows every mar and scratch and bump ever endured.

The Taming of the Shrew is presented here in all of its ignominy and resplendence.  Lucy Osborne’s Costume Design is opulent and lush, her codpieces delightfully vulgar, and her Scenic Design a luminous representation of the scoured stone out of which northern Italy seems to have been built. Wig Designer Melissa Veal conveys so much of each character’s personality through hair, especially Gremio’s cantilevered topiary of a blond Afro.  Philip Rosenberg’s Lighting Design shows its grandness during the tech rehearsal portion of the new Induction, while what passes for a run-through of the lighting cues increases the fragmented atmosphere enveloping an argument between the actress playing Katarina and her lover/Director.

This is among the finest ensembles I have seen — taut and giving, flawless.  I apologize to all of the actors I do not mention here: you are doing work that deserves more notice than my space here allows.

The most ingenious characterization comes from Alex Goodrich as Biondello.  Proof that there are no small parts, Goodrich takes a minor servant’s role and creates a quirky goofball who is an immense joy to watch.

Katherine Cunningham plays Bianca with such coy sweetness and sisterly menace that one easily forgets the tittering Biancas of other mountings of The Shrew.  She is a warm and alluring Bianca, whose suitors are given much more than her fair countenance with which to fall in love.

For anyone accustomed to seeing Mike Nussbaum in his string of movie and television appearances as an affable older professional (such as Rosenburg the cat-loving Jeweler in Men in Black), he is unrecognizable as the libido-driven geezer Gremio. Nussbaum leaves no entendre undoubled, no innuendo vague.  An actor who has made a career out of mild characters onscreen, Nussbaum often swings to the opposite extreme onstage, and here as Gremio he is a crude genius.

Special thanks go to Bob Mason, who handled Casting for this production, for importing one of Canada’s most treasured actors, Stephen Ouimette.  Well known to fans of Sundance Channel’s Slings and Arrows for his work as Oliver Welles, Ouimette played Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf in the Canadian premiere of Doug Wright’s epic one-person masterpiece I Am My Own Wife. Here, Ouimette crafts Petruchio’s long-suffering servant Grumio with a beguiling combination of ardor and resignation.

Fresh from her triumph as Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking at Court Theatre, Mary Beth Fisher brings her profound understanding of the psychology of loss to her role as the Director in LaBute’s new Indiction segments. The Director’s meltdown matches in intensity the meaty hand with which she controls the action and her world.  One of the many sweet morsels to be savored during this show is Fisher’s stage business at the director’s table during the early scenes.

A newcomer to Chicago Shakes, Ian Bedford is a perfect choice for Petruchio.  So often, productions of The Shrew cast a scrawny, smarmy Petruchio to handle the host of clever rejoinders; hirsute and powerfully built, Bedford has the physicality and swagger to back up those witty words.  His robust baritone makes such misogynies seem like Eternal Truths because they are uttered by such a sonorous, trustworthy voice.  Bedford’s Petruchio is a much-needed correction to how this character should be portrayed.

Of course, The Taming of the Shrew is really Kate’s show, and Bianca Amato’s Katarina shines brilliantly.  As Kate, she is unruly and virulently independent.  As the actress playing Kate, she is full of apprehension about the rampant sexism that her traditional portrayal of Kate seems to tacitly endorse.  The parallels between Petruchio and the actress’s lover, the Director, are not lost on Amato’s character.  Mores and standards have changed since Shakespeare’s day, yet Amato reveals how deeply the issues of control and manipulation in the name of love resonate through The Shrew into contemporary contexts.

Director Josie Rourke has brought about a seamless fusion of clashing elements: of outdated ideas and modern relationships, of vocation and avocation, of fidelity of the spirit and fidelity of the flesh, of who leads and who follows.

Even if you hate the new frame, and I love Neil LaBute’s Induction, the Shakespearean meat of this production of The Taming of the Shrew is a glorious rendering of this controversial play.  It serves as much more than a historically contextualized warning to Elizabeth I against the machinations of power-mad suitors; The Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s unflinchingly raw and unerringly polished production of The Taming of the Shrew is a cautionary tale to anyone who might be so blinded by love or disdain that they cannot recognize when they are being played, their heartstrings cunningly plucked by a master manipulator.  DO NOT MISS this gorgeous, lavish, resolute production.

4 STARS

(“The Taming of the Shrew” runs through June 6, 2010, at The Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, 800 East Grand Avenue (on Navy Pier).  312-595-5600.)

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The Taming of the Shrew production photos by Liz Lauren.

CLOSING WEEKEND! DON’T MISS!

By J. Scott Hill

At one time or another, every child contemplates running away to join the circus.  My own childhood circus-dream was sparked by chants of “One of us! One of us!” in Tod Browning’s Freaks, only to be dashed by the evil clown in Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist.  My circus fantasy died early, but five talented kids managed to run as far as Evanston to be a part of Science Fiction: An Experiment in Circus at the Actors Gymnasium. For Director Larry DiStasi and the cast of five pros, five kids, and the eleven young ladies of the Actors Gymnasium Teen Ensemble, the “experiment” was a grand success.

The frame around this one-ring circus is the story of five “wunderkinder” mad scientists.  Don’t be fooled if the show’s opening seems like just another school play.  These children perform.  They play in a calliope-inspired band that sounds like Tom Waits had finally found his happy place.  Julia White conducts a little circus magic with one of the pros, playing catch with an invisible ball that glows red when caught.  Griffin DiStasi and Asher White are devoured and then vomited (please let it be vomited) by a monster.  Sadie Sims and Jude Sims join the other kids in a spectacular Stomp-like “Drum Aliens” chorus, and as the passengers in “Silk Rockets” made of acrobats suspended from tissu.  These are but a few highlights: the kids rock.

The well-trained acrobats of the Actors Gymnasium Teen Ensemble were not going to sit still and get upstaged by a few talented kids.  Their Busby Berkeley-influenced unicycle act is lavish and delightful. Teen Ensemble members Meaghan Falvey, Rachel Karn, and Alison Tye rise to the level of the professionals with whom they performed.  Sarah Buoniuto, Emily Fishkin, Leah Rose Orleans, and Lander Ellis perform upon the Spanish Web (think the rope from gym class with a foot-loop at the top) with perfect form and grace. Gabrielle Aiden, Lucy Brennan, Eleanor Goerss, and Jackie Jarvis join the rest of the Teen Ensemble in the mesmerizing “Silk Rockets” act.  Again, these are but a few highlights.

As rich as this show is with developing talent, the professional performers bring a level of spectacle and skill to rival any show under the Big Top.  Jill Heyser and Nicole Pelligrino wow the audience with a double-act on a silk-entangled lyra that tip the single hoop’s axis 90°, at times transforming the usual languid spins into a Ferris wheel for two. Kacin Menendez and Will Howard perform a charming adagio as an eccentric scientist and the android she creates in the image of her secret love.  The combination of Menendez’s precise physical control and Howard’s faux-clunky mechanical strength is as funny and tender as it is elegant.  Howard further displays his raw power and perfect balance in one of the tableaux during the curtain call when he manages to maintain a jubilant smile with an acrobat standing upon his shoulders who has another acrobat standing upon her shoulders.

Matt Roben displays the greatest variety of performance skills in Science Fiction.  Roben plays the ukulele and saw, performs light magic, and clowns.  The most entertaining act in the show is Roben as a giant, child-eating Slinky monster. Roben looks like a flexible four-pointed starfish made out of extra-large dryer tubes; one can never be sure which end of him is up at any given moment.  Stupendous.

Not every act is amazing, but several are.  Sometimes things get a bit out of synch, but recovere quickly; this is more of a statement about the degree of difficulty of the various acts than an indication of lack of polish.  Never a glorified recital for the students of the Actors Gymnasium, Science Fiction stands as a showcase for some extremely talented professional circus performers who are seamlessly supported by a skilled and deep reservoir of emerging acrobats, stilt-walkers, unicyclists, and musicians.

Take your kids and run away to Evanston to see Science Fiction: An Experiment in Circus at the Actors Gymnasium.  It is a grand display by some of Chicagoland’s finest circus performers, and a vibrant insight into just how accomplished a young person can become while daring to follow that universal dream of running off to join the circus.

3 STARS

(“Science Fiction: An Experiment in Circus” runs through April 18 at the Actors Gymnasium in the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St., Evanston.  Tickets are available at www.brownpapertickets.com and 800-836-3006.)

CLOSING WEEKEND! DON’T MISS!

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