Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago gets shout-outs as ‘Kinky Boots,’ Steppenwolf vie for Tonys

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:53:11 -0500

With abundant nominations for two productions first seen here — the Cyndi Lauper musical and the revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” — the city’s theater scene again proves it can take N.Y. by storm.

Joffrey Ballet’s ‘Othello’ positively stunning

Wed, 01 May 2013 02:26:18 -0500

HEDY WEISS: Revival of Lar Lubovitch’s masterpiece at the Auditorium Theatre suggests Shakespeare’s tragedy may best be told with dance.

Stage almost empty but full of emotion in ‘Yellow Moon’

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:02:26 -0500

HEDY WEISS: Scottish playwright David Grieg’s way with words is apparent in the Writers’ Theatre production of his play about a rebellious Glasgow teen on the run with a shy girl from a refugee family.

ACT II: A second look at area stages — Dancing Shakespeare

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:20:05 -0500

Choreographers of both classical ballet and modern dance have long found inspiration in Shakespeare. His plays have inspired many versions of “Romeo and Juliet,” as well as memorable takes on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “Hamlet” and “The Tempest.” It was the modern dance master Jose Limon who first tackled “Othello” in the form of a lean, elegant quartet that has long been a classic, “The Moor’s Pavane.” But in 1997, in a co-commission by American Ballet Theatre and the San Francisco Ballet, Chicago-bred choreographer Lar Lubovitch gave this tale of love, jealousy and betrayal, with …

‘Anything Goes’ sails with sensational touring company

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:48:13 -0500

HEDY WEISS: The gloriously goofy Cole Porter musical arrives with powerhouse Broadway star Rachel York and one terrific song after another.

Psychological warfare runs deeps in blistering ‘Creditors’

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 02:27:38 -0500

August Strindberg’s play, “The Creditors” — now in a tightly turned Remy Bummpo Theatre production — has little to do with money. Rather, it is about the always shifting currency of sexual power, particularly as it plays itself out in classic triangular form. Adapted by David Greig (the Scottish playwright also responsible for “The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart,” the inspired production recently seen at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, as well as “Yellow Moon,” the story of a modern day Bonnie and Clyde, now at Glencoe’s Writers’ Theatre), “The Creditors” is an intriguing 90-minute talkathon that has been neatly directed …

Rarely staged ‘Pal Joey’ a zippy affair at Porchlight

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 02:34:05 -0500

For much of “Pal Joey,” the edgy, funny, infrequently revived Rodgers and Hart musical now in a zesty Porchlight Music Theatre production, two women — Vera Simpson (Susie McMonagle), a winningly jaded middle-aged socialite, and Linda English (lovely Laura Savage), a pretty, smarter-than-she-seems young shop girl — vie for the attention of Joey Evans (Adrian Aguilar), a handsome, frustrated, second-rate nightclub performer whose attempts at self invention invariably backfire. But the joke is that these two women, who start out singing together in “What Is a Man?,” again join forces late in the second act for a song titled “Take …

16th Street Theater nabs emerging theater award

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:31:44 -0500

The 16th Street Theater, which has developed into an important cultural outpost in the Berwyn community in recent seasons, has been selected as the recipient of the 2013 Broadway In Chicago Emerging Theater Award. The award, overseen by the League of Chicago Theatres, comes with a $5,000 prize, as well as consultation with Broadway In Chicago staff members and a marketing package that includes advertising support. Created in 2007, the award was devised “to encourage, support and promote emerging theaters in Chicago that have demonstrated great ability and promise, artistic excellence and fiscal responsibility in business practices.” The 16th Street …

‘Still Alice’ at Lookingglass delivers powerful ‘long good-bye’

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:32:15 -0500

At once devastating and enthralling, “Still Alice” is not an easy show to watch, but it is riveting from first second to last. And for anyone who wishes to be reminded of the power of theater — and its ability to explore the most complex, emotionally crushing aspects of life — this altogether masterful Lookingglass Theatre world premiere is not to be missed. It would be far too simple and far too clinical to say that this play is about the unraveling of a mind as a result of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. More to the point, it is about …

‘Happiest Song’ spins a tiresome, apologetic tale

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:29:19 -0500

HEDY WEISS: The homefront half of Quiara Alegria Hudes’s new play works, but the premise behind another storyline in the aftermath of war is hard to stomach.

‘Big Fish’ catches wave of America’s ‘Greatest Generation’

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:16:27 -0500

HEDY WEISS: In its world premiere, the Broadway-bound musical boasts impressive visuals but doesn’t really grab the heart until it gets real in Act 2. You can’t help but root for star Norbert Lee Butz, whose energy is both enormous and easeful.

ACT II: A closer look at area stages — “Happiest Song Plays Last”

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 03:00:10 -0500

Talk about being an over-achiever. True, this might be the very last term playwright Quiara Alegria Hudes would use to describe herself, yet the evidence suggests it could not be more accurate. Consider this: Hudes wrote the book for the Broadway musical “In the Heights,” which received the 2008 Tony Award for best musical, earned her a Tony nomination for best book of a musical, and was a 2009 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Meanwhile, she was already at work on what would develop into “The Elliot Trilogy,” three plays about war and the quandaries of family, including: “Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue,” …

‘The Whale’ is a hunt for human connection

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 18:09:15 -0500

It’s a good bet you will not find five more lonely, alienated, often angry, sometimes inadvertently funny characters on a single stage than those who gather in Samuel D. Hunter’s “The Whale,” now in its Chicago premiere at Victory Gardens Theatre.

‘Elephant’ collaboration captivates all ages

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 02:24:21 -0500

HEDY WEISS: Chicago Children’s Theatre and Redmoon have a reputation for devising imaginative projects that take the most sophisticated approach to entertaining kids — and “The Elephant and the Whale” is artful and sophisticated enough to fully enchant the adults who carry these “future audience members” into the theater.

Matriarch has much to overcome in McCraney’s fervent new play

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:41:23 -0500

HEDY WEISS: Reality rules in “Head of Passes,” making its world premiere at Steppenwolf.

River North Dance Chicago and the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic in “Havana Blue” at the Auditorium Theatre

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:18:00 -0500

In bringing together Orbert Davis’ Chicago Jazz Philharmonic (CJP) and Frank Chaves’ River North Dance Chicago (RNDC) for “Havana Blue” — the multifaceted, one-night-only centerpiece of the new Music + Movement project, the Auditorium Theatre has engaged in an ideal exercise in cultural cross-pollination and audience-building. And it is an exercise wholly organic rather than artifically engineered. Saturday night’s collaboration made it possible for an audience that loves its jazz somewhere between big band style and classical to make the acquaintance of a dazzling dance company that can move to anything, but all too often lacks live accompaniment. At the …

‘Oliver!’ dazzles in marvelous Drury Lane staging

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:18:21 -0500

As I headed off to the Drury Lane Oakbrook Theatre to see “Oliver!” a friend laughingly told me about a couple she knew who had named their kids Oliver and Annie, after two of the best-known orphans in both literature and musical theater. Rachel Rockwell, the Chicago director and choreographer who may well be this generation’s counterpart to Jerome Robbins, and who is an acknowledged master at putting kids on stage, has now shown us the real inner workings of the stories that spin around both these “orphans.” Her reinvention of “Annie” last year at Aurora’s Paramount Theatre was a …

Tarell McCraney, like his plays, ever moving

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 02:42:25 -0500

HEDY WEISS: The playwright’s “Head of Passes,” about to receive its world premiere at Steppenwolf, is a modern-day take on the Book of Job.