Saturday, October 30, 2010

Yasuko Yokoshi

Tyler Tyler deconstructs The Tale of the Heike, an episodic recounting of the battles between two 12th-century Japanese clans, using speech, movement, and music to deliver shards of elliptically structured stories. The pace can be glacial, but the six performers--three American, three Japanese--switch costumes and performance styles with head-spinning speed, mixing and matching places and eras.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Detroit

Chris Jones, Tribune: "It’s high time indeed for a major new play about the soul-destroying layoffs, the collapse in real estate values and the general economic malaise that has gripped much of this land, up-ended our social hierarchies and, for many, turned the middle-class suburban dream into a greasy fireman’s pole with snapping turtles at its base. Lisa D’Amour’s “Detroit” — the aptness of the setting is obvious from the one-word title — is such a play. Steppenwolf, long the one theater in America that has paid attention to the lives of the Midwestern middle class, is on point in offering a world premiere that certainly won’t increase your sense of personal comfort."

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Chorus Line

Wow! A great production, very fresh, very...Chicago! Waaaay the heck out at the Marriott, but fun.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Sankai Juku

Mr. P was out of town for this one, but Ms. S went with Ms. V.

The internationally acclaimed Sankai Juku makes its Chicago debut on the Harris Theater stage with Amagatsu's signature work, Hibiki: Resonance from From Away. Performed in a dreamlike landscape of sand and water, the dancers, with shaved heads and bodies smeared with white powder, weave elemental movements into a delicate slow motion dance, uniting the audience in a truly hypnotic dance experience

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Joffrey All Stars

Balanchine’s Stravinsky Violin Concerto
Jerome Robbins’ The Concert
Christopher Wheeldon’s After the Rain

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Suicide Incorporated

Michael Patrick Thornton and cast were terrific in this. Tiny, tiny theatre. Intense.

Saturday, October 09, 2010

Comedy of Errors: Court

It was fun to see Stacy Stoltz in this one.

Chris Jones, Tribune: "Well, the title in the program says “The Comedy of Errors.” There isn't a great deal of the Bard's actual prose on the Court stage. The show runs only about 90 minutes, and many of the lines come from the pen of Graney, rather than the quill of Shakespeare, who didn't usual write lines like “How y'all doin'?”"