Theater Reviews

The impact of the coronavirus has unalterably reached into the lives of everyone and shown us of our common vulnerability.  We will rise from the withering blow it’s dealt to our spirits and to the way we are accustomed to living our lives.  

This crisis, like most hardships, does not encroach and disrupt our lives equally.   One’s age, calling, income, zip code and profession all determine how deeply the ramifications of the epidemic affect you. 

City Pleasures covers the arts community.  Actors, dancers, musicians and the venues that showcase their talent are being devastated by their inability to either practice their craft or feature artistic talent.  Because they need our help, City Pleasures is sharing ways that allow anyone financially capable to provide support to do so.  Some of those channels extend beyond the arts and entertainment community by design and list opportunities to also contribute needed relief to Chicago neighborhoods and the most vulnerable.

There are several ways to support the theater community.  Individual theater companies as well as all non-profit arts organization accept support through direct donations, the purchase of a ticket, gift cards or subscriptions.  The homepage of your favorite theater or theaters will direct you on how to do so.

If you would like your contributions to be broad based, the City of Chicago and the United Way of Metro Chicago have launched the Chicago Community Covid-19 Response Fund “to unite the funds raised by Chicago’s philanthropies, corporations and individuals to be disbursed to nonprofit organizations across the region”, including those in the arts. 

Click here to donate:  https://www.chicagocovid19responsefund.org/

One Chicago entertainment institution’s Training Center is taking comedy to the clouds by offering classes online. To find out more about or enroll in Second City’s comedy at home lessons, visit:   https://www.secondcity.com/comedyfromyourcouch.   Areas of focus include “Creating and Pitching Your TV Series”, “Teen Standup” and “Voiceover 101”.

When Douglas Turner Ward wrote his pioneering one act play, Day of Absence, in 1965; he had a very clear intent.  He wanted to write a play exclusively for a black audience.  An audience that did not then exist. He was also working with a highly specific set of objectives.  Expectedly, he wanted to write a play that spoke to the lives black people lived, but he also aimed to create a work that was implicit and allowed his audience to fill in the blanks.  One that was subtle and edged with fine threads of sophistication.  And just as importantly, he wanted to write something that did not put his audience to sleep.

He came up with two plays, both in one acts, Happy Ending and Day of Absence that played simultaneously at the St. Mark’s Playhouse in New York.  Both plays grew legs and are regularly reprised on the contemporary stage. 

When they were originally created 55 years ago, Ward also had to track down and recruit an audience by going anywhere the black public gathered; social clubs, union halls, beauty shops to rustle them up.  His tactic worked and the productions played over 500 shows at the St. Mark’s. 

Congo Square is only presenting Day of Absence on Victory Garden’s Christiansen stage right now.  And as wonderful as it is, the current production won’t be running as long as it did when the play debuted back in ‘65.   Making it even more of a must see. Even today it’s startling to see what Ward did with this jewel.  A spare play with very few props, Day of Absence, like any top-tier theatrical creation intended for live performance, thrives on a gleaming story and fantastic characters.  And it achieves everything Ward originally hoped to accomplish plus. 

Taking an approach that says, “We know how you see us, now let us show you how we see you”, Day of Absence is all about reversals and looking at the world through different eyes.  Normally, the cast is all Black.  But this updated adaptation broadens what “black” is by making it anyone not white; resulting in cast made up of both brown and black performers.

The overriding constant is that the play is still performed in white face, (and lots of wigs) with minorities portraying whites in a small southern town.

Opening quietly, a couple of regular guys working in a mall are just getting their day started. Luke (Ronald L. Conner) and Clem (Kelvin Roster, Jr.) share small talk southern style and toss shout outs to regulars as they peruse the routine landscape of their work lives.  Clem’s older and Teddy Bear homey, Luke’s younger, gruffer and lost in his cell phone.  It takes a minute or two, more like several, but Clem finally picks up on something.  Something that’s not quite right or out of kilter.  Suddenly stricken, he realizes he hasn’t seen a black person all day.  Half the population.  Luke’s slower to accept something that ridiculous.  Until he can’t do otherwise. 

Performed as satire, Day of Absence chronicles what happens when a constant of life disappears.  One that you may take for granted, resignedly tolerate or even benignly dismiss depending on your mood.  More interestingly, it’s a story about how people react.  What do they say and do in what quickly escalates into crisis and chaos. 

Anthony Irons directed the production and achieved a master stroke by having his characters, or more precisely his characterizations, vie with the plot for overall strength.  The way Ronald Conner portrays nonchalant insouciance is about as winning as it gets.  Later we find him equally transfixing playing a completely different role.  Roston, with his delicious phrasing and the pitch perfect softness of his drawl, is just as effective as Clem.

The action streams briskly through three backdrops.  The mall, John and Mary’s bedroom and the mayor’s office.  John (Jordan Arredondo) and Mary (Meagan Dilworth) make their discovery of the vanishing rudely when their new born wails plaintively through the night and there’s no one to tend to it.  There’s no Kiki, no Black three-in-one, nursemaid housemaid cook, to intervene and relieve the stress of parenthood.    Dilworth’s Mary is so preciously inept at doing anything useful you’re tempted to feel sorry for her.  But that sympathy would be horribly misplaced.  Dilworth still makes a splendid Mary whose only skill is to function as a household “decoration”.  Arredondo as her husband fills his role to the brim with manly character and pragmatism.  When he valiantly volunteers to go the hood to look for Kiki and finds nothing short of a ghost town where “not even a little black dog” could be sighted, he’s all business and entitled indignation.

Ward created the consummate repository for the town’s angst and ire in the mayor.  And director Irons knew exactly how to shape the character as an unforgettable foil. Unflappable and supremely confident, the mayor’s sense of privilege and the power she insinuates take on regal dimensions.  In the right hands and under the right direction, it’s a fantastic role and one that Ann Joseph fills beautifully.  Ordinarily a male actor plays the part and Jackson is the last name of his female personal assistant/secretary/gopher.   Here Jackson is the second role Mr. Conner inhabits so vividly and with so much virtuosity.  Always on point and a bit self-consciously effete, he’s deferential to a fault and ever vigilant about watching his own back.

Ward shrewdly built a lot of humor into the play.  And this effort takes advantage of every morsel.  It even adds more zest causing the whole affair to frequently tip over into the hilarious.   The perfume skit alone deserves its own baby Tony award.  Despite the outright comedy, the underlying subtext couldn’t be more biting.  Bryant Hayes as Clan and Kelvin Roston, Jr. in his dual role as Rev. Pious represent the true demons Ward is battling in his lasting contribution to the American stage.

This adaptation, cleverly updated with the playwright’s permission, makes it shine like new money.  

Day of Absence

Through March 27, 2020

Victory Gardens Theater

2433 N. Lincoln Ave.

773-871-3000

www.congosquaretheatre.com

Time and a change of perspective can allow you to appreciate things you once abhorred. That maxim can be true of many things.  Music, art, food.  People.  It was true of Boys in the Band.  When Mart Crowley’s 1968 bombshell of a play rolled out on celluloid in 1970, it rightfully caused the world to shutter.  Never had anyone so boldly pulled back the curtain to reveal the inner-life of the dispossessed as vividly or as candidly as Mr. Crowley had done.  Now celebrating its 50^th anniversary, people are still wondering how accurate his painful picture of gay life is.    

Having recently experienced the very fine Windy City Playhouse immersive take on the play, there’s no doubt many will be wondering the same thing 50 years from now.

Listening to Mr. Crowley talk about how he came to write his landmark; how he was broke, out of work, without prospects and angry, the cathartic aura surrounding the play was finally given a cause.  Still, because you don’t expect friendship to take on such ruthlessly hurtful dimensions, those explanations don’t satisfy the question of intensity or the depths of some the play’s caustic plunges.

William Boles scenic design played a key role in helping to provide the audience a tactile understanding of the times, place and people at this dark birthday party Michael (Jackson Evans) was throwing for his newly 32-year-old best friend Harold.  Ushered six at a time through a tastefully appointed residential lobby and taken up the pretend elevator to the 5^th floor, the audience enters Michael’s resplendent apartment as if they themselves were guests.  The party hadn’t started.  Michael wasn’t there.  You could walk around and admire his beautiful spirit decanters.  The lovely artistic touches.  The drama of the sunken conversation pit.  70s chic at its highest.   All in deep red with accents in gold and in blue. The room radiated not only success, but power.

After everyone’s settled, Michael sweeps in doing last minute party preparation things.  Putting the food out and the music on.  You notice that even when the first guest, Donald (Jordan Dell Harris) arrives, things aren’t particularly warm.  Nor are you immediately clear on Michael and Donald’s relationship.  They’re more than just friends but not exactly lovers either?  And even though Donald’s sparring skills are impressive, Michael seems to take pleasure in baiting him with petty criticism.  Everyone else flows in shortly after Donald goes up to change.  Emory (William Marquez) and Bernard (Denzel Tsopnang) arrive together.  Lovers Larry (James Lee) and Hank (Ryan Reilly) are carrying the vestiges of a something bitter between them into the party.  It’s a spat that will continue to swell throughout the play.  Then Harold’s birthday present gets there much too early.  A prostitute, Cowboy is as dull witted as he is beautiful.  Even though he’s taunted by nearly everyone for his lack of intelligence, he’s also silently envied for his physical exceptionalism.  And there’s a straight outlier in the mix.  Michael’s close friend from college, back in a time when he was still in the closet, was in town and needed to see him.  So much so that he wept with desperation when talking to Michael on the phone.  Not being able to dissuade him, Michael invited Alan (Christian Edwin Cook) to the party as well, hoping to somehow camouflage the party’s gay complexion.

The dynamics of the party are already roiling by the time he shows up.  Emory is being quintessential Emory.  So gay.  Not defiantly; more in a liberation of self sort of way.  His racial digs at Bernard, the only Black member of the party, were unsurprisingly catty but very curious.  Were these swipes supposed to be expressions of the times are something else?   Marquez made a splendid Emory.  Later, when he apologized to Bernard for his callousness, promising not to cause such conscious hurt in the future, he was contrite enough and sincere enough to be ingratiatingly convincing.  Which highlights one of key joys of the play; it’s exceptional casting.  The spat that would not die between Hank and Larry centered on Larry’s inability, in fact his refusal, to be faithful to Hank; who had left his wife and children to be with him.  Both James Lee as Larry and Ryan Reilly as Hank deliver a lot of honesty in their portrayals of what two people, who genuinely love one another, are willing to sacrifice to conquer an imposing barrier together. 

Christian Edwin Cook’s characterization of Alan, Michael’s straight friend, proved the most surprising because of the voice director Carl Menninger chose for him to use.  He spoke with the diction and phrasing characteristic of blue bloods in the era when the Carnegies and Vanderbilts were flying high.  His speech alone set him apart from everyone else at the party.  Emory’s effeminacy however brought out his bile and even pushed him to violence.  His punishment:  he must remain at the party. 

Unfortunately, Tsopnang’s Bernard was the least developed of the eight central characters.  When Michael comes up with his insidious parlor game of calling the person you’ve always in your heart-of-hearts truly loved, and telling them your feelings for them, Bernard’s the first to gamely take up the challenge.  It was only then did we catch a tiny glimpse of his inner core.   By this time, everybody had had enough liquid courage to consider doing something so exposing and so ripe for humiliation.  Who Bernard chose to call was also marked by the kind of class and race disparities that shout futility. 

Harold (Sam Bell-Gurvitz) had grandly made his infamous “32-year-old, ugly, pock marked Jew fairy” entrance by the time the game was in full swing.  Despite it ushering in the possibility of something positive for Larry and Hank, as it continues, the game seems to dredge up nothing but pain.  Michael’s adamancy about playing it turns pathological when you realize he’s the only one not drunk.  He’s been on the wagon for five weeks and therefore without an excuse for insisting that everyone take this wanton drive off a cliff.  When it back fires, sorrow for him does not exist.  And when he makes his plea like statement, “If we could just not hate ourselves so much”, you wonder why he doesn’t just direct that question to himself. 

Stonewall happened just one year after The Boys in the Band premiered off Broadway.  Led by a fistful of outraged fed-up drag queens, another landmark, gay pride, was born.  It’s fascinating to look at these two milestones side by side.  Whether you consider them a “before and after” or a continuum, they both are about community; with all the complexity the word embodies. 

Under Mr. Menninger’s enlightened direction, and mounted on Mr. Boles sensational set, Windy City’s staging of The Boys in the Band has proven a highpoint in the theater season.  It’s also an ideal example of how well an immersive approach to theater aids in fully absorbing a captivating story.

The Boys in the Band

Through April 19^th, 2020

Windy City Playhouse

3014 Irving Park Rd.

Chicago, IL   60618

windycityplayhouse.com

Some productions rejuvenate your appreciation for theater by stripping it down and letting you focus on its two essential parts, the story and the characters.  Double Vision, a wild and smart musical now playing at the Edge on Broadway, is the kind of wacky joy ride that generate lots of grins, and an occasional groan, as it follows a group of millennial strivers trying to steer themselves to fulfillment and success.

Building the play on an unconventional framework, where comedy driven science fiction gets overlaid onto a musical, meant the audience had to pay close attention if it wanted to extract the story’s maximum goodness.  That challenge seemed to add to the play’s entertainment quotient.

Nerds abound.  But you would be hard pressed to find any more capable of sneaking up and stealing your affections as effectively as this crowd.   Pivoting around Luke Sheridan (Ryan Frenk), an astrophysics doctoral student struggling with his thesis project, Double Vision opens in tension. He’s sparring with his advisor, River (Ethan Carlson) about the slowness of his progress. Vacillating because he doesn’t trust his own abilities and fears the ramifications of failure, Luke’s crisis of confidence has him stymied.  Success would mean recognition and research funding for his wormhole, a portal that allows you to travel through both time and space.  His device isn’t as sophisticated as the alchemist’s in Ted Chiang’s lean and wonderful, The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, but it looked and sounded impressive. And advanced enough to have fellow student and clandestine rival, Marty (Brian Pember) practically quaking in jealous alarm.  In the same doctoral program for nine years, Marty may be slow in achieving his goals but he’s still willing to take drastic measures to insure he’s not overshadowed by his frenemy. 

How these characters are portrayed and filling the action with comedy contribute immensely to Double Vision’s enjoyment.  Most of them are ordinary in the sense they’re going through the growing pains typical of ambitious students.  A few are quite extraordinary because they seem so blissfully unperturbed by their sexuality or in Marty’s case, his sexual ambiguity.  When Luke tells Sierra (Gina Martin) that he thinks Marty is attractive, it’s merely a statement that she doesn’t necessarily agree with and portents nothing about how Luke and Marty interact on a personal plane. 

A corresponding story about another person struggling to succeed is happening on the other side of the stage. Obsessing over a script she hopes will make her literary name, Sam (Stephanie Fongheiser) teeters uncomfortably close to an ugly implosion.  It has her sister Vanessa (Nina Jayashankar) worried; but Vanessa has her own problems.   Distracted by convulsions in her romantic life, her attentions are decidedly divided.  It’s both incidental and inconsequential that the lover’s she’s fretting over is another woman.

Frequently spoofing popular culture and iconic references to it like Star Wars and the indelibly ingrained “Luke, I am your, father”, the wit’s often wry and sometimes tinged with the sweeter side of sarcasm.   Much of the music and lyrics is engaging and appealing.  Luke’s Another You and the Sierra and Vanessa’s duet, Shot in the Dark, are two pieces that stand out.  But it was River’s Literal Space Opera solo that constitutes a wee tour de force.  Uproarious, absurd and delightful, and sung with sonorous clarity; Carlson seemed to revel in his rendition as much as the audience. 

Gina Martin’s role as the level-headed Sierra made the tale of self-discovery and traversing multiverses more grounded and helped to lend balancing gravity to the lightness of the comedy. In many ways, a faultless performance.  Frenk’s portrayal of Luke was an impressive and refreshing take on the notion of the steadfast protagonist.

Following their purpose to bring new musicals to the Chicago stage, this production of Double Vision is presented by Underscore Theatre Company.  The company also sponsors the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival; a venue where young playwright’s like Olivia Popp, who created and wrote the script, music and lyrics for this entertaining romp, can present their work.

Double Vision

Closes February 22, 2020

The Edge Theatre

5451 N. Broadway

Chicago, IL   60640

www.edgetheater.com

Sometimes dance is better understood when you try to see it through the eyes of someone who designs it.  In an interview several years ago, Christopher Wheeldon Obe, the choreographer for Commedia, the first dance opening The Joffrey Ballet’s winter season at the Auditorium this past Wednesday, talked about the beauty of having you own dance company.  He was probably aware he was also divulging some of the properties that make dance so entrancing.  Having your own company allows you “to have dancers who know just how you like them to move, the way you want them to cut shapes in space, the way you ask them to respond to music.”  These are also the key components that define what we in the audience see and how we see them.

Thinking of each of these points while recalling opening night’s performance of The Times Are Racing adds to the appreciation of the program and all that the Joffrey Ballet does.  The program covered a broad arch of dance; from classic ballet, to Mono Lisa, a dance that defies the limitations of time and the capabilities of the human form.  Mono Lisa’s choreographer, Itzik Galili, can also take credit for creating another jewel of the evening, The Sofa.  This three-person piece proves that exceptional imagination can create a story built from music and movement that’s humorous, conceptually beautiful and completely unconventional.   The closing piece, The Times Are Racing, created by the Joffrey’s Resident Choreographer, Justin Peck, is an exuberant polyglot of a dance; contemporary at its core with sweeps of jazz and tap to accentuate the dance’s exultant celebration of youth.

Both Wheeldon Obe’s Commedia and Stephanie Martinez’s Bliss underscore Joffrey’s artistic dominance in ballet. Although Commedia isn’t at all narrative, it’s still broken into different episodes that follow the mood of the Stravinsky’s music.   Dancers parody medieval harlequins, sleek jesters who mimic both the beauty and the excitement of the music; dazzling the audience with their perfection of form.  Because it’s not as structured as the opening ballet, the male dominated Bliss ebbs and flows with a slightly different energy.  One that keeps the door open to surprise and uses dramatic throws and other devices to show how strength can be grafted onto grace to produce something thrilling. 

But it was in Galili’s Mono Lisa where the tone truly turned.  Discipline, training and individual talent commanded the stage as two dancers pushed themselves and challenged each other to reach the outer limits of skill.  This dance for two was not about the delicacy we associate with a traditional pas de deux.  In this pairing, the under layer of intensity had a much stronger presence and rode the rhythmic staccato sounds of a typewriter that formed the foundation of the musical score.  Lighting resembling inverted typewriter keys blanketed the stage’s sky.  The soul rumbling sound of drums arrived later to accompany the tapping insistency of typewriter keys.   Stefan Goncalvez led with a display of dance prowess intended to impress and intimidate. It did.  Every jump, landing and rotation happened with a precision that, as they continued, seemed unfathomable.  His virtuosity was matched by that of Victoria Jaiani as they would alternate; dancing as a pair and individually, with unparalleled exactness and athleticism. Even though it’s not usually customary to go to the ballet for a visceral experience, Mono Lisa, with its demand for stamina and expertise, certainly provided it. 

From a completely different point of view, The Sofa did too.  This was a clear story anyone who’s been on the outs with their main squeeze could relate to immediately.  With some Tom Waits rusty blues setting the tone, a couple sat in vengeful silence on a comically large yellow sofa.  They scowled, they fought, they kind of made up, and fought again until they knock the sofa back; disappear, and one of them is replaced by another person when the sofa is righted again. Who that new person is, is important.  And then they go through the whole re-enactment again; only in reverse.     It all happens with the quickness of an animated movie short; the brilliance lying in the language of the dance.

Blessed with many exceptional dance companies, Joffrey Ballet still holds a unique place in the city’s dance galaxy as this year’s winter program so clearly illustrates.  It keeps improving and its talent pool keeps getting richer and deeper.  Chicago has plenty of reason to look forward to the way this company “moves, cuts shapes in space, and responds to music” for another 25 years.

Joffrey Ballet Chicago

The Times Are Racing

February 12 – 23, 2020

The Auditorium Theater

50 East Ida B. Wells Drive

Chicago, IL   60605

http://joffrey.org/performances/tickets

Culturally, the distance between 1951 and 2020 is vast.  It’s the distance between a new born entering a world transformed from what it was nearly seventy years ago and her grandparents or great-grandparents who’ve watched a Cold War dissolve and the overwhelming digitization of the planet. A span of time that could easily induce nostalgia.

Keeping that tendency in check is just one of the things that makes Drury Lane’s current production of An American in Paris so gratifying and so surprising.   Like a copy that keeps all the key elements of the original, the Drury Lane’s version of this richly pleasing classic has been contoured and shaped to make it better reflect the realities of post-war Europe and injects the story’s characters with greater complexity.  

Neither of those things stop it from being a lovely production.   If anything, in this staging, they help to more finely gild the lily.   Opting for subtle elegance, Kevin Depinet’s set breathes with a baroque refinement that manages to be both polished and cultivated without being excessive.  As the frame for a story about stumbling into love in a city defined by romance and haggard from war, the set quietly transforms throughout the performance to softly, and often beautifully, complement both the music and story’s contemporized progression.

Gershwin’s lush score, under Chris Sargent’s sure orchestral lead, may remain as resplendent as always; but the resilient people it wraps around display a little more of the grit and effort needed to fight yourself out of the residue of war and into a brighter future.  Having lived through the sacrifices and losses that come with occupation, Lise’s  (Leigh-Ann Esty)  focus is on the responsibilities needed to survive.  And, as a committed and talented artist, to follow her pointe shoe dreams.  She has little time for the attentions of an American GI, no matter how persistent and self-effacingly ebullient he is.

A not so subtle emphasis on the arts is another of the surprises of this American in Paris.  Like a discreet embellishment or a pleasing recurring sensation, it kept surfacing to highlight the importance of creative expression is to each of the main characters.   It’s an essential part of all of them.  Jerry Mulligan, the affable GI played so disarmingly by Josh Drake, is a gifted visual artist hoping to make his mark in Paris, the soul of western art.  As does his pal, Adam (Skyler Adams) whose muse is music and whose output is prodigious and exceptional; especially when it’s fueled by an unrequited love for a woman two other men are vying to win.  The third man out to conquer Lise’s heart poses the biggest challenge to the others.  With money, name and position in his cupid’s arsenal, his edge seems insurmountable. 

Taking the love story in three different directions opened the plot to tantalizing possibilities.  If played for genuine dramatic intensity rather than clever plot expansion, it could be considered operatic because the conditions for tragedy are so fertile.  Here the seriousness is handled with a deft lightness.  Henri, with Will Skrip unforgettable in the role, torments himself hiding two things that make him who he is.   He’s an artist too, and just as driven to see how high his talent can propel him as a singer. But, as the only heir of a fabric dynasty, his parents have a different destiny in their sights for him; causing him to hilariously chase his dreams in secret.     

Henri’s much harder to read when it comes to his other secret.  That’s partly because it’s so clear to everyone else.  As Skrip embodies him under Lynne Kurdziel-Formato direction, you’re never sure whether Henri’s acknowledged or even recognized his sexual self.   Or is he in some kind of unconscious denial?  His feelings for Lise seem to possess all the right markers of love; absent the passion.  A crippling omission.  But Skrip fills the character with so much sincerity and so much humor that it’s impossible not to cheer for him.  The same could just as easily be said of Skyler Adams.

These shifts of dramatic approach add a fresh vibrancy to the meaning behind many of the musical’s most treasured songs.  I Got Rhythm and ‘S Wonderful in the first act keep their timeless brilliance but in the second act, Who Cares, But Not For Me and They Can’t Take That Away From Me make you listen to them with a new set of ears because the point of view of the characters have taken on a different cast.   In 1951, some considered An American in Paris’s plot “slender”.   Craig Lucas, in this effort, has given it satisfying sinew and muscle.

Erica Evans turn as Milo Davenport, a wealthy American patron of the arts who Henri’s chic mother (Caron Buinis) considers a mere “dilettante”, alternates between ruthless and vulnerable before settling into realistic in her chances of making Jerry fall in love with her.  Given her character’s social standing and privilege, she also had the opportunity to wear some of Karl Green’s most sublimely elegant costumes.

Handling the play’s choreography as well its direction, Ms. Kurdziel-Formato took full advantage of a delightful cast and ensemble that could do any and everything enviably. Of the many winning dance numbers running through the show, and depending on who you’re talking to, Fidgety Feet still induces the biggest smiles. 

An American in Paris

January 31 – March 29^th,  2020

Drury Lane Theatre

100 Drury Lane

Oakbrook Terrace, IL 60181

630-530-0111

Sometimes when the lights go down and a theater stage stirs to life, you’re carried away and dropped into lives and experiences that uniquely sharpen your understanding of what it takes to either survive or thrive. 

The low boiling excitement filling the air opening night for Victory Garden’s How to Defend Yourself let you know there was something singular about this play.  The story about a handful of young college women taking a self-defense class began making its exceptionalism apparent right out of the gate.

Depending on where you sit on the age spectrum, you may feel the play is as much about youth and the language of youth as it about the larger concepts and concerns playwright Lilliana Padilla generally grapples with; “sex, intersectional communities and what it means to heal in a violent world”. How to Defend Yourself has all of those things and seeing them lived from the vantage point of the young crystalizes the power of their impact on individual lives.

Youth rules the play’s stage, and on the show’s opening night, filled a great many of the theater’s seats.  Two students in workout drag roll into a gym.  They’re there to take a self-defense class for women and talk while they wait for their trainers to show up.  Friends from way back and now sorority sisters, they have that comfort with each other that erases boundaries and speak with the candor of the guileless.  Especially Diana (Isa Arciniegas), who’s so open, honest and scabrous with her humor that she fuses herself to your favor almost instantly.  Unfiltered and brazen during her unchecked chat with her homie, it wasn’t that surprising when she breezily confides she has a real thing for guns.

Simply for the development of its characters, How to Defend Yourself could be considered a masterwork.  Offsetting one another to show how intricately different each is from the other highlights the shared and personal challenges they all face as they navigate a psychologically complex landscape.  All seven of them are drawn with the same skill and care of Diana.  And there’s also Suzanna, a character you never see but who sits squarely in the middle of the plot.   A sorority sister who sustained a horrific sexual assault, it’s the sobering reality of the attack that drives the play and makes all of them question themselves and each other about how to live in a society that makes violence as brutal as rape normal.  Ponderous?  Could be.  But Padilla’s far too extraordinary to let you feel the weight directly.   Working with Marti Lyons, another outsized talent in the director’s chair, How I Defend Myself subversively wraps it’s tale in the stuff of everyday life, making it real, giving it a humanity you naturally absorb and filling it with people who can be as maddeningly funny as they are bright and aware. 

Getting used to contradictions and things that don’t quite mesh are something you get used to in this story about finding your balance and place in the middle of so much that’s confusing.  Opening benignly enough, where the rhythmic rawness of the dialogue is the thing that romances your attention, we learn many of the people we meet view some sex acts as casual and easy as a high five.  “Regular” sex remains special; generally.  But then there are exceptions to that too.

Acting as surrogate aggressors, two male students come into the gym to help with the class shortly after trainers Brandi (Anna Crivelli) and Tara (Netta Walker) arrive.  Suzanna’s frequently referenced and, for the most part, everybody’s making the right sounds about consent and boundaries and ownership of one’s body.  Tara, as Walker so marvelously plays her, begins to push back before asking in open defiance what if she doesn’t like her sex so tame.  What if her mindset is much more tied to that embodied in Helen Hume’s 1946 recording, Drive Me Daddy?

The guys are hardly silent on matters of sex and are given the chance to vent their confusions and frustrations as well as voice their personal tenets about how they view sex.  Eggo (Jayson Lee) walks away with the disarmingly endearing trophy when he works himself into a seethe talking about his girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend.  She wanted him and sex one way but really wanted something very different.  Something he was too nice and too “skinny” to deliver.  His buddy, Andy (Ryan McBride) has his heart in the right place as he goes overboard endorsing the right of women to be free to choose their limits. In confidence however, he confesses to fantasies and behavior that belie some of his conviction.  His silence on something’s he’s seen is even more damning and offers just one of several glimpses of what complicity can look like in this tight, wonderfully memorable production.

How to Defend Yourself

Jan 24 – Feb 23, 2020

Victory Gardens Theater

2433 N. Lincoln Ave.

Chicago, IL    60614

773-871-3000

Nancy Pelosi might be a fascination you never knew you had.  A production premiering over the weekend at Victory Gardens Theater for an abbreviated run could dispel any doubt. On the surface, an examination of one of the most enigmatic and pivotal political figures in the country would appear tempting, but prohibitively daunting.  Access and a requisite mandate for iron clad accuracy could easily dissuade many from taking on the challenge.   The Adult in the Room, a work written by Bill McMahon and directed by Heather Arnson and Conor Bagley, nonetheless does a stunning job of revealing the influences that helped shape a diminutive giant.  One who didn’t enter politics until she had finished raising five kids in her mid-40’s and, soon to celebrate her 80^th birthday, now stands second in line to the Presidency.

Given the subject, The Adult in the Room, will necessarily be viewed through a political lens.  That’s unfortunate because it could easily distract from the gravity of this woman’s achievements.  Regardless of one’s position or thoughts on the culture storms raging in the country, ascents like those of the current Speaker of the House of Representatives merit pause and respectful recognition.  Meticulously constructed in language and flow, the one woman play cannily reflects on the progression of people and events that helped propel and sustain her on her historic journey.  By employing an in-the-moment social media tool, a live Instagram chat, the play captures her preparing for and conducting a “live” conversation with scores of women considering a run for public office.

In her role as Pelosi, Orlagh Cassidy admirably projects the anchored resolve of seasoned leadership.  Her ability to convey willed unflappability, in this case one that only occasionally falters to succumb to a chocolate craving, stands out as another of the more salient strengths of Cassidy’s performance. 

Quietly radiating our subliminal notions of what ponderous political power looks like, Ann Beyerdorfer’s uncluttered open set telegraphs the same steadiness of purpose and unshakeable balance that define gravitas.  So much so that it’s almost haunting in its memorability and seems to echo how Pelosi describes herself in the play, “an iron fist in a velvet glove”. 

The Instagram callers have lots of questions about the Speaker’s background, accomplishments and objectives.  Projected on two narrow screens running from the stage’s ceiling down to its floor, one on either side of the stage, the screens become pillars of data in the form of questions cascading in from the outside world.  They prove an effective technological triumph in the production.   It’s through the questions streaming through them and Pelosi’s responses that we get the insights needed to shape a vision of the person behind the fanfare. 

From her answers, we sense how proud she is to be her mother’s daughter, displaying the same inner strength that engenders intimidating indomitability.  We learn that other phenomenally strong women mentored her and encouraged her; including the woman who asked Pelosi, from her sick bed, to run for the California seat death was about to rob from her.  We see how deeply the attraction to public service and politics flows through her DNA.  Both her father and her brother have been mayors of Baltimore.  Her mother, always a vital strategy resource. And perhaps just as tellingly, how for her, “Catholic = Care”.  As a chief architect of the Affordable Care Act, the legislation can simply be read as a politician walking her talk.  Following conviction with action.  “Not agonizing.  Organizing.”  Since all of this activity happens in the perilously volatile world of politics, positions and actions that impact millions will necessarily draw the fire of those with differing views.  A cost of being in the game. 

What we’re left with is a compelling outline of a person playing for dizzingly high stakes with both the country and a good part of the world watching to see what happens. 

As the directors and producers of The Adult in the Room might agree, it would be delightful to find out what Pelosi herself would think of the production. For the play to attempt real depth would lead to conjecture and be unwise.  The sketch we’re provided is enough to positively stimulate lasting curiosity in some and validate admiration in others.   

As captivating as The Adult in the Room proved to be, there’s still no crime in wanting more.

The Adult in the Room

January 22 – February 15, 2020

Victory Garden Theater

2433 N. Lincoln Ave.

Chicago, IL  60614

tickets@victorygardens.org

Probably one of the most enduring and compelling attributes common to the arts is their lack of complacency.  Creativity has a need to push and explore and change and innovate and, in the end, excite.  That may be why in its 15^th year, Chicago’s Too Hot to Handel:  The Jazz – Gospel Messiah felt like a ride on lightning Saturday night in the Auditorium’s concert hall. 

It’s always been a terrific show.  Although the Auditorium’s been presenting it since 2006, Too Hot’s roots go back to its original performance in 1993; the realized concept and vision of conductor Marin Alsop.

Handel’s original Messiah has long been tremendously popular, but Alsop felt it not only could and should be “hippified”; but that it was also uniquely amenable to adaptation.  The first conductor ever to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, she collaborated with two brilliant and very different arrangers and orchestrators, Bob Christianson and Gary Anderson, to “keep the original’s bones”; but turn the rest of this iconic work into a musical avatar.   Since Marin’s Too Hot to Handel premiered at Lincoln Center 27 years ago; and because of its incredible uplift, power and excellence, orchestras now perform her interpretation of the oratorio to ecstatic audiences all over the world.

Chicago can credit Bill Fraher, the music director of Old St. Patrick’s Church, for bringing it to the Windy City. Fraher had seen the show in New York and like most people who experience it, left “impressed with the power and emotion” Alsop’s adaptation radiates.  He later performed slices of Too Hot at Old St. Pat’s before helping grow it to the showpiece it is today. As director of its very large, extremely impressive and heedlessly passionate choir, Fraher remains a key component of the production. 

200 hundred strong, and with a treacherously fine six-man jazz band burrowed into its core, Chicago’s Too Hot orchestra blazed like the crown jewels of England throughout Saturday night’s show.  Three vocalists fronted the orchestra and massive choir.  One of the soloists, tenor Rodrick Dixon, performed in the New York production Fraher attended in ’98.  Dixon’s wife, Alfreda Burke, sang soprano in this year’s Chicago performance.   Rounding out the trio, Karen Marie Richardson’s shimmering and lush alto was particularly moving in He Shall Feed His Flock.

A flexible operatic structure was one part of the “bones” Alsop and her gifted collaborators shrewdly kept from Handel’s original creation.  The grandeur and majesty of opera pays homage to the work’s foundation and melds beautifully with the jazz and gospel buttresses she and her musical magicians so beautifully devised for their update.

Mark Kelly, Chicago’s Cultural Affairs and Special Events Commissioner, in his opening remarks stoked the audience’s listening appetite by predicting that the storied concert hall was about to have its roof blown off by what they were about to witness.  He wasn’t kidding. And it happened almost immediately.  The opening, fueled by the strength of Dixon’s color rich tenor and an on-fire orchestra conducted by Suzanne Mallare Acton; prompted a jubilant standing ovation 15 minutes into the program. 

Always scheduled to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., Too Hot’s spiritual message of renewal becomes subliminally linked to notions of struggle, hope, persistence and triumph.  Perhaps it was all those things combined that explains the allusive fervor powering the show and the many remarkable solo turns that filled the performance.

Greg Ward, the orchestra’s principal saxophonist, had heads shaking in awe and wonder every time his virtuosity was featured.  And the jazz band’s pre-eminent pianist, Alvin Waddles, kept proving the singular excellence of his handling of the keys as he segued seamlessly between the exquisite and the torrid. 

Even technology stepped in to make Too Hot to Handel’s musical largesse personal and engaging.  A projection screen suspended at the rear of the stage, well above the choir but low enough to be comfortably viewed by the audience, took you inside the orchestra to give the production an unexpected intimacy.  Cameras roamed the stage from above and from the sides as well straight on and behind to add a refreshing and surprising vitality to the concert. 

Temperatures outside might have been painfully frigid, but Saturday night saw the Auditorium stage smokin’.

Too Hot to Handel:  The Jazz – Gospel Messiah

January 18, 2020    7:30pm

January 19, 2020     3:00pm

The Auditorium Theater

50 East Ida B. Wells Drive

Chicago, IL  60605

As Ronnie Marmo so skillfully reminds us in his ravishing one-man show, you can pay a very high price for telling uncompromising truths.  Just entering its second extension at the Royal George, I’m Not a Comedian…I’m Lenny Bruce takes us back to the 60s and reintroduces us to a man known more for his penchant for profanity than for his ferocious belief in that precious little freedom tucked into the first amendment; the freedom of speech. 

Marmo, who not only plays Bruce but also wrote the script for the performance, beautifully inhabits the spirit of a man who is as much a cultural touchstone as he is an icon. The show’s title, I’m Not a Comedian…I’m Lenny Bruce is a direct quote from Mr. Bruce and likely explains precisely how he viewed himself.  Comedy was simply a vehicle for speaking truth. 

Madly ambitious, this production doesn’t hurry as it chronicles the contributions and heroism of a singular individual in its 90-minute format.  Super-sized talent helps it succeed impressively. Marmo’s performance stealthily overwhelms with its honesty and candor; giving the audience a three-dimensional perspective of who this man was when not under the hot lights of a nightclub.  It just as clearly gave us a feel for Lenny Bruce’s bracing talent; essentially canonizing Leonard Alfred Schneider’s exceptionalism.

Adding dynamism to a show that features a single individual is probably as daunting as it sounds.  Comics of course do it all the time through unexpected insights and surprise.  Productions like I’m Not a Comedian, I’m Lenny Bruce have a higher hill to climb.  They drill down to the essence of a person to highlight their uniqueness.  Enlisting the services of a savvy director insures the story moves with compelling energy and sustains curiosity.  Here, Joe Mantegna more than ably insured this look back on Bruce’s life and legacy purred with the power of a Lamborghini and flowed with immaculate ease.  By stitching together delivery, timing and structure to create something as intellectually brawny as it is relaxed and funny, his input helped make I’m Not a Comedian a flat out hit off – Broadway last year and a reason why Chicago audiences can’t seem to get enough of it. 

In addition to the excellence of the project, a lot of that admiration stems from who Lenny Bruce was.  As much as we learn about him through Marmo’s encompassing portrayal, you can’t help but want to know much much more about this complicated, intriguingly intelligent man.  Because of his mother, he grew up around show business.  So It’s not surprising he’d gravitate to it.  Entertainment attracts colorful personalities.  And in many ways, it’s proven to be a haven where conventions are relaxed. Discovering or expressing self can include experimentation.  With drugs.  With sex and sexuality.  The weight of withering judgement doesn’t exist in that world the way it does for most people.  Maybe living in such a universe creates an intolerance for hypocrisy and a heightened appreciation for the inviolability of truth. 

A passion for truth certainly fueled Lenny Bruce.  And the cosmos outside of show business gave him a wealth of material to work with.  Many of the flashpoints he referenced 50 years ago are the same ones that define the culture wars today.  Race, religion, sexuality, immigration. Judicial inequity.  Marmo would often slip into a skit to dramatize how these concepts might go down as comedy during a live Lenny Bruce routine.  Invariably the audience’s effusive laughter at the Royal George would be pouring from faces gleaming with delight.  Sharp, incisive, penetrating truth; in the right hands, can be hilarious.  Bruce did this, ferociously, in a period renowned for its buttoned-down complacency.  It made him dangerous; at least to authority, and landed him in jail multiple times on obscenity charges. As it did here in Chicago.  Two of the guilty verdicts ended up at the Supreme Court.  He proved the truth could be red hot and that nudging the envelope far enough to expose imbalance, contradictions and hypocrisies in our “happy ending culture” can sap one’s spirit as well as bankrupt you through legal fees.  By the time of his tragic death at 41 in 1966 of an unintended drug overdose, San Francisco was the only town he could get a booking. 

The frustration and exhaustion Marmo displayed recounting those years floated in melancholy poignancy because, as history, we knew what was coming.   Ironically, a rare video recording of Bruce’s next to last live concert gave few clues to the toll his one man stand to exercise his first amendment rights exacted.  He looked tired, but the potency of his intellect remained dazzling. As did his humor.

I’m Not a Comedian…I’m Lenny Bruce celebrates this unorthodox sage, this Godfather of socially conscious comics who use their platform to do many of the things Mr. Bruce tried to do. 

More than a few people after the show vocally lamented the loss of a Lenny-Bruce-like voice in today’s maelstrom of words.  It’s as if they forgot you don’t need to be a comedian to tell the unvarnished truth.  Lenny Bruce wasn’t. 

I’m Not a Comedian…I’m Lenny Bruce

Extended through 2/16/2020

Royal George Theatre

1641 N. Halsted Street

Chicago, IL  60614

312-988-9000

www.theroyalgeorgetheatre.com