Theater Reviews

You don’t need a Gatesian bankroll to make exceptional theater as Eclipse Theatre Company is proving with its current production of Breath Boom at the Athenaeum.

Playwright Kia Corthron’s look behind the veil at how the young cope in the very violent world of our inner cities feels like an indictment of all of the factors that frustrate their success.  In Breath, Boom, the message does not sound didactic.  By letting the story unfurl from the minds and voices of the characters, there is a much more personal connection made between cause and effect.

 

Using the female voice deepens the impact of the play.  Conditioned to think of gang affiliation as the sole province of men, we forget that similar allegiances can be made among women with the same devastating results.

 

Opening with a savage beating as three girls attack a fourth, the brutality of the assault is deepened when we learn all of them share membership in the same group.  The attack is meant to teach a lesson.  The leader, Prix (BrittneyLove Smith), is only sixteen and is about as cold and dispassionate as a corpse.  The scowl she wears is the face of someone whose light has been extinguished.  When she says don’t be late for a drive by, you know she means it.

 

Only when she can create does Prix express joy.  That’s when she lets her imagination fly and think about a future.  Those moments are rare and her creative obsession of designing fireworks is as unorthodox as it is improbable.

 

Even at 16 she knows she can’t stay in the game much longer.  In two years, she’d be charged as an adult for anything she’d be arrested for.

 

It’s a common plight.  The laws of the street overrule the remoteness of dreams and she eventually finds herself behind bars.  It’s there we see most clearly that the connective bond that ties these stilted lives together is intractable poverty.  It can make the sale your body for a Big Mac or being a mule to pay for your kid’s school shoes completely plausible.

Breath, Boom boasts a wonderfully strong supporting cast. Some of the most impressive were found in lockup.  Destiny Strothers’ portrayal of Cat, a 14-year-old arrested for prostitution hit like a lightning strike.  Giddy, bold and oblivious to boundaries, she seemed as tough as she talked until the cracks started to appear.  The acceptance of one’s death as something to be accepted soon rather than as a remote eventuality seemed as ludicrous as it was real.   Picking out the dress you’d wear in your casket and choosing a play list for your funeral as a teenager put an unexpected face on nihilism.

 

Breath, Boom’s overriding strength is the distinct ring of its truth.  Watching Prix go from an angry “gangsta” to a 28-year-old has been with enough inner integrity to regret made you wonder just how many thousands of her are out there.  Children whose aspirational ceilings at birth is no higher than mere survival and would remain only that.

 

Eleanor Kahn’s set design was spare and on point.   The cast was marvelous doing double duty as adroit stage hands between scenes.

 

Director Mignon McPherson Stewart wrung every ounce of goodness from this essential story of people the larger world pretend are invisible.

 

Without such a capable supporting cast, the impact of Breath, Boom could not have achieved its power.

 

Jalyn Green as Prix’s friend Angel, who after those twelve years continued to nurture their relationship, wowed everyone with her take on a no-nonsense mother on an outing with the kids.  Megan Storti as Prix’s cell mate Denise was a great reminder at how complex and incongruous the ways of the streets can be.

 

 

Breath, Boom

November 12 – December 17

Eclipse Theatre Company

Athenaeum Theatre

2936 N. Southport Ave.

Chicago, IL  60657

 

Tickets:  www.eclipsetheatre.com

Curious minds love the unexpected. Visiting a new story is chance to be surprised. If you’re lucky you’ll even be moved. If you’re exceptionally lucky, you’ll also laugh. All those things and more sloshed through Raven Theater’s production of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy. Fresh as a sunrise, the hour and a half play made you feel as if they were drinking from a bottomless trough of Dom Perignon.  Even when it was over, you wanted more.

 

We’ve seen stories of strong black men. But Pharus Jones (Christopher W. Jones) fits no standard profile of a hero. An outsider among outsiders, his battles only ends when he sleeps.

 

We meet him at the end of his sophomore year at Drew Prepatory School, a high school created to mold young black men into exemplars. Thinkers, doers and triumphants. Pharus is all of those things but the aspect of himself that makes him different, the thing he doesn’t hide or suppress or apologize for sets him far apart. We can call him an alpha other. Respected, yes.  But also reviled or simply shunned because of his refusal to pretend. Pharus’s sole ambition at Drew, thanks to his impressive musical gifts and indomitable ambition, is to lead the school’s all male chorus. His nemesis, ardent homophobe and fellow choir boy Bobby (Patrick Agada), can’t touch his arsenal of intellect and resolve. Their rivalry is ceaseless and vitriolic.

 

McCraney knows what he’s dealing with; a powerful writhing Anaconda of a story. You could get lost in the tension. His brilliance was to modulate conflict with the most sublime form of love. Black spirituals. It’s a wonder that it all melded together so beautifully. The music, all acapella and all exquisitely performed, acted as a balm; giving the audience a chance to breathe and the story a chance to transition from plateau to plateau.

 

Early on David (Darrin Patin) stood out. He looked different. He spoke differently. And there was stillness in him that drew cautionary attention. A go along to get along guy, he aspired to the ministry and declared he “walked with the Lord” with all the sincerity of a earnest 17-year- old. Radar picked him up for a reason.

 

Treading through vistas of the male psyche, pushing back tall grasses revealing the underpinnings of male sexuality; all within a black context, had the effect of watching the Northern lights.  A brilliantly complex display of natural wonder that, in this case, also asked what it takes to accept ourselves as well as others.

 

High school is treacherous regardless of where you live or what you look like. I can’t imagine even the adored really enjoying it. All of the surreptious and blatant clawing and judging.  To enter that battle with a scarlet letter hanging from your belt buckle will make you or break you. That’s what makes Pharus so refreshing.  Finally a character who doesn’t attempt to disappear into the woodwork.  One who fully recognizes what they have to offer the world and is his own unflagging champion.  What the world forgets is that for every person like him, there are more who share his differentness but not his courage.

 

McCraney gives them all their own dignity.  The supportive cast is amply supplied with lines that make their characters’ blood pulse red.  Pharus’s jock roommate A.J. (Tamarus Harvell) is as even keeled as Solomon and has the good sense to judge a person by what they do for others rather than who they want to sleep with.

 

Even Junior (Julian Otis), sidekick to the heavy, knows where to draw the line between loyalty and ethical integrity.

You’d think a killer story, great performances and astute directorial skills would have been enough to seal the deal on the play’s exceptionalism.  And they did.  But the lily was extensively gilded with the richest language plucked directly from the streets.  Two ladies sitting one row back gasped with recognition listening to it making the joy in their muted laughter exuberant nonetheless. They connected with it and they loved it.  I don’t think a playwright could ask for a better accolade to his work.

 

The MacArthur genius award is no wannabe. It’s an award given to visionaries and intended for people who toil in a place where intelligence and creativity merge in the stratosphere. What they give the world are gifts. Choir Boy is one of those gifts.

 

 

Choir Boy

September 27 – November 12, 2017

Raven Theater

6127 N. Clark St

Chicago, IL

773-338-2177

 

The Goodman’s production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge fits a lot of bills.  Typical of Miller, the writing is exceptional.  Then you notice its deceptively intricate plot.  And as the minutes click by, the play’s characters take on the density of a juicy porter house steak.   All perfect ingredients for tragedy at its most exquisite. 

You look at and listen to Eddie (Ian Bedford) and you think, OK, he’s got good sense and a clue.  1950’s blue collar. Straight shooter.  Pragmatic.  Virtually incapable of naïveté.   Somebody who’d say, “Most people ain’t people” with all the sagacity and truth of Sophocles.   Miller proceeds to gently peel away the layers of Eddie psyche to the point where we begin to see what can drive a sane man to make a catastrophic decision.  In Eddie’s case; it’s a forbidden woman child.

Director Ivo Van Hove makes sure to hint at low simmering tensions from the jump.  There’s something not quite right in the way Eddie relates to his wife, Beatrice (Andrus Nichols).  And there’s something not quite right about the way he relates to her orphaned niece Katie (Catherine Combs), now 18 and not so unwittingly ripe.

His wife has asked and he’s agreed, resignedly, to also provide sanctuary to two of her cousins from Italy.  In today’s parlance, they’d be undocumented economic refugees, escaping the privation brought from a lack of gainful work in their home country after the war.  With his wife and niece, Eddie’s flat is already small.  The only sleeping space is the living room floor.

Marco’s (Brandon Espinoza) and Rodolpho’s (Daniel Abeles) arrival acts as an accelerant; exposing passions and revealing primal instincts of revenge and jealously.  At this, both the playwright and the director excel.  Gratefully wrapped in her uncle’s bottomless love and attention, Katie wants to please as a child wishes to please a hero.  She wants to lock in acceptance and approval. Marco, the more determined of the cousins, has been forced to emigrate so that he can send money back to his wife and children.  It will keep them from starving. Rodolpho simply wants to a chance at building a life in a country where a man can find work and sustain himself.   For Eddie, the deal did not include the sting of cupid’s arrow.

Miller’s most beautiful irony is that there is nothing out of kilter when Katie and Rodolpho slip into love.  At first, they’re just two young people enjoying being young together.   But they’re both charming and everyday lovely.  The closer they grew; the more enraged stalwart Eddie becomes.  By saying “She’s too young”, he was really saying, she’s mine.

Rage, once it becomes entrenched, is particularly dangerous because it knows no limits.  Destruction becomes the only objective; even though it may consume you as well as your foe.   That was the road Eddie chose.  Rather than opt for the expected outcome, Miller takes the finale to a place you would not have assumed and makes his morality tale all the more impactful for doing so.

Van Hove reimagines classics and takes them out of the confines of their cultural context.  Written in the 50’s with Red Hook Brooklyn as its geographical base, Van Hove strips away time and place and leaves only that brusque Brooklyn accent as an identifying marker.  The stage is industrial bare.  Costumes neutral and irrelevant.  Focus is exclusively on action and dialog which is perhaps why Van Hove also decided to take the play back to its original format.  One act.  There is no escape from the coming storm, no diversions to blunt its blow.

 

 

 

A View from the Bridge

Sept 9 – Oct 22, 2017

Goodman Theater

170 N. Dearborn St.

Chicago, IL   60601

Teaming up at Public House Theater to raise dollars for ACLU Illinois, ThirdCoastReview (3CR) and Kill Your Darlings (KYD) Live Lit hosted a kinetic benefit celebrating the first amendment by reading from formerly censored books.  Dry and boring it was not.  Orchestrated to coincide with an annual revel sponsored by the American Library Association to support “the freedom to seek and express ideas”, the October 2^nd event also marked the start of the Supreme Court’s new term.                  

 

With the theater’s relaxed vintage décor and an air of the provocative pervading the space, the evening took on a pleasantly subversive air as ten local authors read from some of the best literature this and a few other countries have produced.  All of it, once banned.

 

The range of selected books included the expected and the unexpected; from the Tropic of Cancer to Shel Silverstein’s Dreadful.  And despite the varying levels of reading proficiency, the power of the words retained the heat of potency and power.

 

To sweeten the pot, even formerly banned songs made it into the show and sagely included the timeless and timely Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday’s masterwork exposing the savagery of lynching written by poet, Abel Meeropol.

 

The benefit’s high-energy smack talking emcee, writer and actress Karin McKie, kept the flow moving at a slick clip with her pithy intros and irreverent commentary; always reminding the audience that democracy abhors complacency.

 

Nancy Bishop, 3CR’s editor led off with her reading from a book written in 1934 and rebuked for its “notoriously candid sexuality”, The Tropic of Cancer.  With its thoroughly unbridled language and explicit depictions, the book was also one of the first to test the mettle of this country’s right to free expression.

Storyteller and performing artist, Ada Cheng, has a quietly magnetic stage presence that telegraphs simmering depth.  Selecting a book banned for its depiction of bullying, alcohol abuse, violence and homosexuality, The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is the story of a 14-year-old reservation kid who’s encouraged and agrees to attend an all-white school.  Her excerpts from the book, written in 2007, reflect the realities of our blossoming millennium with all of its hard edges and abrasive expressions.  Things get rough.  Cheng ended her reading with a question.  “Why do we ban people’s lives”.

 

Northwestern professor Bill Savage still reacts viscerally to his selection even after 30 years of teaching it to college students.  As he noted in his introduction, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been controversial since Twain wrote it in the late 1800’s.  Back then it was just considered tawdry and common, not worth reading by anyone respectable.  Now its pilloried because the language it uses rings as profoundly racist to modern ears.  The passage he read however drilled down to the essence of human character and the capacity to do what’s right despite the expectations of convention.

 

Books get banned for lots of reasons but there seems to be recurrent themes that invite intense scrutiny and eventual censorship in the United States.  Sex that does not conform to established norms, matters of race that challenge the status quo and coming of age stories that question or examine too intently the established order; as does Lolita in the first case, To Kill a Mockingbird in the second and Persepolis in the third.

 

All of the benefit’s readings packed a wallop and made one wonder what price one would pay to keep the freedoms we enjoy vibrant and pliant.   And they reminded all those in attendance that such a question is not simply an intellectual one.

 

 

We Read Banned Books:  An ACLU Benefit

October 2, 2017

7:00 PM

Public House Theater

3914 N. Clark

The world of performance is precarious, unpredictable and erratic.  And it encompasses many more people than just those you see on the stage.  If you work in that world as an actor, dancer, stagehand, or director; your next gig is never guaranteed and your livelihood rarely secure.

 

Spurred by the 2015 death of local actress Molly Glynn who passed away from injuries incurred while biking with her husband, the Third Annual Chicago Theater Bike Ride: Love Hard will kick off with a ceremony at 11am on Saturday, September 9^th  at Foster Beach, 5200 Lake Shore Drive.  Bikers roll out at noon and a community potluck BBQ begins at 1:30pm.

 

Funds raised by the Love Hard bike ride will help the theater community pay for funeral expenses and other costly unforeseen emergencies like apartment fires.  To date, the ride has raised and distributed more than $23,000 in support of The Actors Fund of America and The Emergency Aid Fund.

Recent losses have been particularly painful for the theater community following the brutal killing of actress Andrea Urban in May and the unexpected death of Steppenwolf’s incomparable Martha Lavey who positively impacted scores in the city’s theater community.  The event’s website, http://www.lovehardbikeride.org, provides images and bios of all of those lost from the community since 2015.

Organizer Carmen Roman states this year’s goal is 200 riders and $15,000 in proceeds.  She also reiterates that the ceremony and bike ride on the 9^th are as much about celebrating and supporting each other as it is about remembering.

 

Minimum ride donations are $25.  All other donations, now and ongoing, can be made to http://www.lovehardbikeride.org/donate.html.

You’d think the monsters of junior high school couldn’t be as horrible as the ones in senior high, but of course they are.  In the wistfully charming production of Trevor the Musical now playing at the Writers Theater in Glencoe, they steadfastly do what monsters do and try to destroy a kid because he’s “weird”.

Trevor, beautifully played by Eli Tokash, handles the onslaught valiantly with chest out and pride high like a little Superman deflecting verbal scatter.   But, as the saying goes, even steel melts, and he eventually succumbs to the wrathful torment of public shaming.  Don’t worry.  This is not a sad story.  It’s one of hope, defiance, and the magic of youth.

 

A lot of Trevor’s hutzpah is driven by his dream of being a performer.  One that can do it all; act, dance and sing exquisitely enough to make the rafters tremble with delight.  Just like his idol; Diana Ross.  Her pictures plaster his bedroom wall and like a true fan, he not only knows her songs, he knows her musings.  When Ross sings “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, he knows she’s talking to him.  In this production, the great Ross herself is wisely a main force in the musical which uses a fistful of her stunning hits as the play’s bedrock.  Salisha Thomas slathers the role with charisma and luminous voice.

 

So how old are you in junior high; thirteen, fourteen?  You’re discovering another dimension of self that can be a little terrifying.  You’re looking at the people around you with eyes that are more pruriently curious than innocent.  And all of this happens when the world begins to demand more conformity to the universal norm.  What do you do when you don’t, or can’t, fit the norm?                                          

 

Trevor isn’t really there yet.  He’s nudged to sexual awakening by his best friend, Walter (Matthew Uzarraga), who’s convinced his sperm is stronger than Trevor’s and wants to prove it under a microscope.  Moving with the energy of a purposeful cyclone, Uzarraga’s Walter was a shining light of acting splendor.  He had plenty of company.  Equipped with a girlie magazine and a mission to get Trevor as revved up about it as he was, Walter’s consternation at Trevor being more interested in the guys in the back of the book shutters with adolescent outrage.  But he doesn’t reject.  Naively, he thinks he can help redeem his friend.

 

The problem is that Trevor can never be what he’s not.  When a girl likes him, he can’t like her back in the same way; as we see when Cathy (Tori Whaples) makes her move.  A socially precocious young lady with pigtails, glasses and braces, none of that stops her from going after her man to predictably unsatisfactory results.

But the real danger lies in more treacherous waters.  Boy on boy crushes are very nearly as taboo in 2017 as they were 1917.  If one was to not only be discovered; but have his passions broadcast throughout the entire school, the results can be fatal.  Hence the true intent of this romp of music and dance and Broadway on the north shore spectacle.  To scream, words can kill.

 

Trevor the Musical makes its point.  To some it may not have made it dire enough, poignant enough or real enough.  New awareness at any level is still thought provoking.  LGBT kids and young people do attempt suicide at rates markedly higher than other youth.  They inflict pain on themselves and suffer emotionally at equally dismal rates.  Trevor the Musical, mainly through song, hints at that agony.  If that hint is enough to engender empathy, then it is enough.

 

 

 

Trevor the Musical

Aug 9 – Sept 17, 2017

Writers Theatre

325 Tudor Ct.

Glencoe, IL

https://www.writerstheatre.org/trevor-the-musical

 

 

 

The question underlying Monticello, a play about Thomas Jefferson and his views on the Declaration of Independence fifty years after its signing, is a fascinating one.  What did Jefferson actually think about the value and legacy of this keystone document now that it was embedded in the national fabric?  Playwright Thomas Geoghegan’s ambitious work now at the St. Bonaventure Oratory attempts to answer that query with limited success.

All of the dramatic components were there to make the Monticello a riveting production.  Perennially tottering with debt, could the famed Monticello estate be saved from creditors?  Did Jefferson really believe all men are created equal?   Could greater insights be shed on the Jefferson/Hemings controversy?  What were Jefferson’s true convictions regarding the institution of slavery?  Could substantive correlations be drawn between the political divisions of 1826 and those of 2017?

 

Although intelligently written, there exists too many hurdles of imagination to clear if  , in its current form, is to be considered credible.  Could Edgar Allan Poe, a 17-year-old student at Virginia University during the last year of Jefferson’s life, have played such a central role in helping reflect Jefferson’s views on race?   So thinly written, the role of Sally Hemings was vacuous and wasted the talents of the actress portraying her, Taron Patton.

 

Without doing one’s own research, it’s difficult to tell where fact stops and fantasy begins in this production.  Although it is possible Jefferson and Poe may have met, there’s no evidence substantiating it.  Jefferson’s financial difficulties in sustaining Monticello are legendary.  But is it true that he considered selling the plantation to his depraved racist nephew to save it?  Or that the condition of that sale entailed Jefferson recanting on his declaration that all men are created equal?

The injection of comedy proved the most unsettling aspect about the production.  None of the plot points possess a kernel of humor at their core.  Perhaps the addition of levity was intended to lighten the gravity of the project.  Instead, the tactic had the effect of wearing clown shoes with a tuxedo at a black-tie gala.  At best, it was confusing.   The employment of glib delivery, sight gags and mildly amusing tropes failed to raise the comedic conceits to the level of true wit.

In Monticello, individual performances provided the brightest pleasures.  Anji White as Abby, the slave woman privileged to have been personally educated by Jefferson and now consigned to the wanton whims of Jefferson’s nephew through sale, lent the production the type of energy and momentum needed to keep the play engaging.  Jeff Kurysz’s Poe would have been refreshing and palatable were it not for the extended slide into slapstick.  Marty Lodge as Jefferson proved the value of seasoned heft and what it adds to any endeavor.  It also speaks to directorial insight.

 

Political theatre is dangerous terrain.  Negotiating the fine line between screed and enlightenment requires balance and subtlety.  Monticello would have benefited from both.

Humankind has never lost the wish to understand and explore the unknown.  Seared into our genetic code, curiosity has been the motivating force that stimulated the birth of civilizations.

 

Strangely that curiosity does not always include a desire to understand and appreciate each other.  Here we continue to see differences in ourselves as threats and reasons to exclude. Those left on the outside or on the periphery can and do find themselves in either conscious or insidious peril because of who or what they are.

 

After Profiles Theater closed their doors last year, a group of theatrical artists recognized that a void needed to be filled where people who didn’t fit conventional norms of color or sexuality or size or physical completeness could express themselves.  They wanted to create a haven where those voices could be unleashed.  And they wanted to present those expressions in a space that would not only keep the story tellers free from harm, but would welcome their contributions to the artistic community.

 

The result is the Chicago Theater Marathon.  Ambitiously spanning 26.2 hours of new works that ran from a Friday night (July 21^st) to a Sunday afternoon (July 23^rd), this festival of creativity proved moving, hilarious, at times refreshingly bawdy, and fascinating.  What it did most well is display the astonishing level of inventive talent lurking in this colossus by the lake.

 

According to Artistic Director, Cassandra Rose, the collaborative telegraphed (via word of mouth and email) that they were looking for new works that coupled creativity to inclusion.  Working from a stance of self-empowerment, applicants were asked what makes them indomitable; the marathon’s theme. Some answers were direct and others much more oblique.  Virtually all of the applicants selected however were themselves or wrote stories about someone who has something about them that sets them apart.

 

One story might plunge into the emotional angst of being an immigrant; leaving the audience speechless from its intensity.  Another would mount a bizarre and wildly entertaining performance about long distance relationships and quirky YouTube obsessions.  You could be transported into fantasy through a story that takes place on a spaceship where all of the crew members are trans or gender non-conforming, doing shrooms and falling into “friendship”.  And then again, you might find out what happens to a famous black author who’s questioned by the FBI when his novel on terrorism becomes reality.

 

Netting over 100 applications, marathon organizers selected twenty-six to produce.  When it came to the work’s content, Rose and the rest of her curatorial crew remained as hands off as possible and simply focused on making sure the artists achieved their individual ideals for their work.

 

Set up so that the audience could easily flow from one show to another, often when one piece ended another began in either the main performance space, the Black Box, or in the lobby.  Logistically, it was all extremely relaxed and well-organized.

 

 

So fresh that much of the material remained unapologetically in its formative stage while being performed, a good deal of what the marathon mounted will hopefully see another life as a web series, a fully staged production or riding some other vehicle profiling a polished finished product.

 

Chicago would do well to look forward to their development.  No city can be considered vibrant without a thriving creative community and no artistic culture can thrive without a rich, complex tapestry of voices.

 

 

Chicago Theatre Marathon

July 21 – 23, 2017

1802 W. Berenice Ave.

www.chicagotheatremarathon.com

Using plays as platforms to broadcast social manifestos is not new.  The technique often serves to add clarity to the basis of the playwright’s arguments.  Such a truth applies to Megastasis; a story about the crushing odds facing young black men now playing at the Athenaeum.

Playwright Kia Corthon has certainly done her homework and amassed enough facts supporting her position to fill an ocean.  Many of those facts are joltingly horrific.  She shares this information to prove that the legal system in the United States is pathologically rigged to suppress and contain the poor and the powerless.

 

The storyline is so familiar it could have been scooped from one of many newspaper human interest pieces focusing on the pathos of black existence on the south and west sides.  In Megastasis, Corthon uses New York City as her geographical touchstone.

 

19-year-old Tray (Anthony Conway) exemplifies a spirit of hope and possibility when the audiences meets him.  A new father, he’s passionate about remaining involved in his infant daughter’s life.  Living with his recently widowed grandfather, he’s intent on forging a life that affirmatively embraces them all.  He’s the quintessential good decent kid.

 

The twist comes in the form of one small mistake.  Just a common misstep of youth that happens a second and then a third time.  In today’s climate of mandatory minimums and at the mercy of a legal system that is all too often a draconian quagmire, accumulated errors in judgment, regardless of their insignificance, can have catastrophic consequences.

 

Tray begins to slip through the cracks when his lawyer convinces him to plead guilty to possession when cops nab him with a couple of joints in his pocket at a party.  The plea should have garnered him 18 months.  He instead gets three years.  Accusations against him while he’s incarcerated end up costing his grandfather his home when the police initiate a civil forfeiture.

 

Thanks to his cousin Dubby (Gregory Fenner), Tray somehow fights back to a place of hope and aspiration throughout his Job like travails.  His cousin doesn’t abandon him when new obstacles keep rising to stymie his progress.  Played convincingly by Fenner, the genuineness of his character’s  sincerity  enlivened the play as well as the actor’s performance.

 

Darren Jones as Tray’s grandfather made huge contributions to the play’s palatability.  He folded into his character with absolute comfort; projecting wisdom, compassion and resolve.

 

Christian Castro as Reiger, Tray’s lawyer, added theatrical gravitas to the production as well.

 

The not so enviable task of playing the Cassandra who chronicles doom and despair fell to Ashley Hicks as Gina.  As a precocious pre-law student who wants to use her degree to right the world, she was like a volcano spewing moral outrage after moral outrage and heaping them all at the feet of our failed political and legal systems. Hicks nevertheless acquitted herself well in the role and may have even excelled had she maintained a stronger grasp of her lines.

Intractable problems are as much a part of the human condition as birth and death.  They exist and it is our collective duty to solve them.  If the playwright sees it as his or her obligation to sound the clarion horn about forces that are decimating communities, then it is also incumbent on them to outline specific and realistic options for redress.  Otherwise, they are simply lecturing their audience.

 

Eclipse Theatre Company

Athenaeum Theatre

2936 N. Southport Ave.

July 13 – August 20, 2017

773-935-6875  (Athenaeum Box Office)

www.eclipsetheatre.com

 

In a city of millions, you know there’s gotta be a good laugh to be found somewhere. And you’ll find plenty of them at that burgeoning institution of mirth on Broadway at Belmont.  The Laugh Factory’s Wednesday night Supply and Demand show may have had a smallish crowd but the laughs bordered on the obese.

 

Comedy comes in just two flavors:  stand-up and improv.  Thanks to Second City’s outsized success, Chicago is known as an improv town.   Laugh Factory is out to change all that and return stand-up to dominance here in the city.  There’s some evidence they’re having an impact given the number of bars featuring its brand of comedy.  And the fact that the Reader has named them best comedy club three years running has got to mean something.

 

On this particular muggy summer night, the show’s opening segments teetered like a new born wildebeest on brand new legs.  The host was trying too hard and the first comic seemed bent on self-destruction.  He succeeded.  Then, as if by merciful magic, Adam Burke claimed the mic and the rest of the evening did a one eighty.  Hailed as the best comedian in Chicago in 2015, he hit the stage like a Tasmanian devil spouting all kinds of delicious madness.

 

For some reason, the best comedians tend to be those who sneer at safety nets. They just floor it and let things take their course.  When you’re as smart and adroit as most of Wednesday night’s featured performers turned out to be; its win-win for both comic and audience.  Daring is rewarded with howls of approval.

 

A proud green card holder from Ireland, Burke popped jokes like he was cracking a whip.  They stung your brain just as much as they wreaked havoc on your funny bone.  Comics have an insight into the world that could almost be read as a curse.  That they can retool that understanding into something humorous makes them heroes.

 

Burke was followed by five other comedians who matched or exceeded his bristling comedic romp.  Ronnie Ray, a stalwart on the city’s comedy stages and whose roots extend south, went the self-effacing route.  Just when you’d started feeling sorry for him, he’d drop the façade and slam you with a solid punch line.

 

Kellye Howard, another local circuit veteran, was a beast.  Prowling the stage like a praying mantis as she mocked the perfect physique of one of teenage daughters, she also took on the rich ironies of trading in the hood for a middle-class existence in the suburbs. Howard’s piercing intelligence and fearless wit meshed to turn her routine into a raucous thrill ride.

 

The Laugh Factory takes pride in the fact that 95% of the comedians they work with are local.  And their stable of comics is huge.  With that kind of army, they just might achieve their goal of becoming the #1 comedy club in the country.  Who has that title today?  Madison’s Comedy Club on State.  Not too far to go to check out the competition.