Home at Court

Chris Jones, Tribune: "Cephus Miles (in many ways a cipher, but one that bleeds and cries) finds himself buffeted — mostly by social forces he can't control, from rural Crossroads, N.C., to a Vietnam-era prison to the mean streets of 1970s New York — you also see an encapsulation of most of the nation's fault lines during a tumultuous American century. You also see a full-throated celebration of the American farmer, tied, albeit extricably, to the land."

Romeo and Juliet at Chicago Shakes

Chris Jones, Tribune: "At the end of “Romeo and Juliet,” as the two most famous lovers in dramatic literature lie bloodied on Navy Pier, a strange notion pops into your head. It's probably just as well they're both dead, you think. It would never have lasted anyway. Heck, we never even see it get started. That is all one strange takeaway from a performance of the greatest love story ever told, but then Gale Edwards' Chicago Shakespeare Theater production is about the most cynical “Romeo and Juliet” you're ever likely to see. Love conquers nothing here. Love is nowhere near the theater."

Billy Elliot

Went with a crew of people to see this at Broadway in Chicago. Always love ballet on stage, but wasn't wild about this. The flying harness was fun.

Peter Pan at Lookingglass

Kind of lost the dramatic thread of the story, but yea, fight choreography by Matt Hawkins, and yea, Molly Brennan rollicking all over the place.

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.

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."

Chorus Line

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

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

Joffrey All Stars

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

Suicide Incorporated

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

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'?”"

Theives Like Us

Chris Jones, Tribune: "If you were wondering what the gifted Chicago director Kimberly Senior can really do with a moving stage picture, then the bravura results are on display here. “Thieves Like Us” is perhaps the slickest and most polished show I've ever seen at the House Theatre, where such qualities have rarely been the strongest suit. It is a fine caper, a great yarn, staged with relish, imagination, oomph and élan. On opening night, most people were having a great time. But I've also seen House shows with more heart, more yearning, and more vulnerability."

Theatre on the Lake: Ruby Sunrise

From the Time Out review: "In 1927, a young Indiana farm girl named Ruby is moments away from inventing television and, hopefully, a new way of life when Philo T. Farnsworth beats her to it, crushing her dreams of making the world better. Fast-forward to 1952 New York, where Ruby’s daughter is a script supervisor coming face-to-face with the compromises of artistic vision and commercial viability."




















Theatre on the Lake, always fun, and a nice solid production. Ms. S knew one of the performers. And we had an unofficial (but very tasty) beginning to Ms. S's birthday weekend with some fabulous Japanese at Ponzu Sushi.

Cherrywood

Short story, we liked it. 47 cast members, maybe 50 people in the house. Cromer magic. You can read the reviews. The script couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be, but...really glad we experienced this.

Neverwhere at Lifeline Theatre

Ms. S knew this story and author, and off we went. Pretty impressive for a small theatre.

Time Out: "London Below, the subterranean domain created by popular author Gaiman first for a 1996 BBC miniseries, then a 1998 novel, is a mash-up of the medieval and the modern that lurks in the peripheral vision of everyday Londoners waiting in Tube stations or browsing at Harrods. It’s a cutthroat place where Shepherd’s Bush is patrolled by shepherds you don’t want to meet, and “mind the gap” is a grave warning indeed."

Taming of the Shrew at Chicago Shakespeare

A little to complex, this story within a story:

Chris Jones, Tribune: "This “Shrew” begins with a group of Chicago Shakespeare actors in final rehearsals for, yep, “The Taming of the Shrew” (the tiredness of the backstage metaphor is the first problem). A director character, played by a wholly-at-sea Mary Beth Fisher, is embroiled in both technical rehearsals and her tempestuous relationship with the actress playing Katharina (the very spirited Bianca Amato), who keeps going after the actress playing the sister (a character also named Bianca and played by Katherine Cunningham). "

Endgame at Steppenwolf

Francis Guinan and Martha Lavey in the trashcans? Ian Barford with a real Steppenwolf-ish interpretation of Clov? And William Peterson in a really nuanced performance of Hamm? What's not to like here? Terrific.

Book Club: Woman in White

3 Decembers: Chicago Opera Theatre

This was really fun!

THE DIVA
The legendary Frederica von Stade, described by The New York Times as "one of America's finest artists and singers," makes her last Chicago appearances before retirement in this opera written especially for her by Jake Heggie, of Dead Man Walking fame.

THE STORY
A glamorous stage actress reveals a shocking secret of their family’s past to her two adult children facing dark challenges of their own. Based on an original play by Terrence McNally with a libretto by Gene Scheer.

THE SCORE
Jake Heggie’s intimate score features just 11 musicians, and will be performed with Heggie himself at the piano. “Jake Heggie has a true gift for soaring and meaningful melody, a great ear for orchestral effects, a talent for picking good source material, and a knack for crafting affecting melodrama (in the best sense of that word) that can move an audience to tears.”—Opera Today

Frederica von Stade

Wow. This was really, really fun and really touching!




















From the Tribune review:
Unlike those singers who keep performing well past their sell-by dates, Frederica von Stade is going into retirement in good vocal shape, head held proudly. Her Chicago farewell recital Monday night in a packed Harris Theater was an occasion for the beloved American mezzo-soprano to look back fondly on a remarkable career that has spanned 40 years, through songs that hold personal significance to her.

It was evident from the good-natured rapport the singer enjoyed with her audience and with her fluent pianist, Jake Heggie, what a treasurable artist she remains, even as grandmother-hood beckons. Von Stade could have had no finer musical partner than Heggie, in whose opera "Three Decembers" she is starring this week at Chicago Opera Theater, which presented Monday's event. The composer has long been her close friend, muse and collaborator. It was only fitting that she should include two excerpts from "Paper Wings," a song cycle he wrote for her, based on her own texts.

Heggie isn't the only prominent American composer whose songs she spun into vocal gold. Ned Rorem was represented, as were Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson. Lee Hoiby's "The Serpent" and William Bolcom's "Amor" reminded one what a wonderful storyteller she can be.

"Most of my career I have spent playing naughty young boys," the singer observed before plunging into selections that portray both naughty boys (the gavotte from Thomas' "Mignon") and bad girls (Ravel's saucy "Nicolette"). Complementary mugging was thrown in at no additional charge.

Von Stade leavened her mostly lightweight program with more serious songs, including Charlotte's aria from Massenet's "Werther" (interrupted by overeager applause) and Sondheim's bittersweet "Send in the Clowns," sung so that every word mattered. Another Heggie song, "Primary Colors," brought the program to a quiet close before triggering a roaring, standing ovation.

The relatively short program could have stood a few more encores than the three the artist offered. They were Leonard Bernstein's "Greeting," "I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No" and "Ah, quel diner," her signature turn as Offenbach's tipsy Perichole. By then cameras were clicking all over the hall, in delirious defiance of house rules.

Streetcar at Writers' Theatre

Wow. Wow. Wow. David Cromer directed, our friends Matt and Stacy as Stanley and Stella. Too, too good.
















From Chris Jones's Tribune review:

You enter the theater through the door to the bathroom, where Blanche DuBois soaks and Stanley Kowalski wipes off his sweat. Inside, Stella and Stanley's meanly appointed railroad apartment overwhelms the theater, like a giant, faded streetcar derailed in a sultry swamp.

Yet nothing ever stops moving in David Cromer's restless conception of desire, Tennessee Williams-style. Fans hum. Light bulbs swing. Memories float. Cats howl. Beds creak. Punches are thrown. Fiery jazz stabs the air.

Such is the astonishingly level of intimacy here. Such is the attention to the most precise little details. Such is the feast for the senses on offer in Glencoe.

Cromer, the breakout Chicago director who has been handed three Broadway shows inside two seasons, is inarguably now the definitive current interpreter of mid-century American poetic drama. And since the likes of William Inge and Williams floated up from a heartland that could no longer contain them, there's something apt in Cromer himself replicating their journey from Chicago.

And although New York now may have Cromer trapped inside a Broadway proscenium moving celebrities around, this astonishingly talented director still best springs to life with young, raw actors in a Chicago-style space like Writers' Theatre, where you can reach out and touch Stella's vitals and Stanley's vittles.

Thanks to the all-embracing conception of designer Collette Pollard, some of the seats in this configuration are little more than inches away from the bed where those things that happen between man and women in the night make everything else all right. Assuming you're not, like poor Blanche, the third wheel.

Cromer's version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” makes some unconventional choices. Cromer stages the shadows that dance in Blanche's head — her unfortunate affair with a fellow who turned out to be a “degenerate,” the lost young man who was her melancholy love. And yet Natasha Lowe's uptight Blanche has little in the way of faded Southern gentility; she's more of a full-on talky, prissy neurotic, messing up her long-suffering sister's messy but otherwise viable marriage. When they pack her off, you don't feel so much sympathy as relief for all concerned. That, for some, will be a problem.

Yet Cromer is clearly trying both to treat the play (which features gorgeous sound from Josh Schmidt, Cromer's collaborator on “The Adding Machine”) as an overtly poetic conception (you will have never seen the nightmarish flores sequence better integrated into the whole) and also reveal its oft-hidden inner truths. You might not feel for Blanche, but you surely sense the danger of her situation and make a mental note never to be dependent yourself on the kindness of strangers.

Matt Hawkins' Stanley and Stacy Stoltz's Stella are a couple of needy kids who at least have each other's bodies. Stoltz, who is doing the best work of her career here, doesn't come off as slumming it, but as a woman who got lucky and knows it. Hawkins might not have the primal qualities traditionally associated with Stanley — he's loud and brash yet with barking tenor top-notes — but he's intermittently cocky and needy. Actually, he's a more sympathetic figure here than his nemesis, whom Cromer likes to put in a cold blue light. And that makes for a very interesting ride.

Individual scenes unspool beautifully, including a typically understated but emotionally devastating turn from Danny McCarthy in the role of Mitch. Time and again, scenes are refocused, ripped apart, put back together.

Take, for example, the crucial progression after the fight, when violent Stanley has smacked his wife and she has left him to hide out in the apartment upstairs.

You see Stanley pull himself together. Then you see Stella's foot and leg slowly descending from above, like a redemptive angel. The actors (who are married in real life) head to the bed to make young love, leaving Blanche stewing with Mitch on the porch, incredulous that her abused sister has returned home.

Lowe, her voice blocked and uptight, shows us a woman who doesn't know how to be anything but indignant. But although she is the one to whom Williams gave the lines, and thus the traditional focus of a production, Cromer ensures that you can hardly hear what she's saying for the creaks and cries of passion coming from Stanley and Stella's bed, as a man pulls his woman down and she finds life in her fall.

Alumni Weekend

It was alumni weekend. I didn't carry the SSD banner this year, but got to work the alumni medal awards breakfast with Gary Becker and Warren Winiarski!

Ryerson Lecture, Shulamit Ran: Music for a Time and Place

The Ryerson leccture is the U of C's annual lecture by a faculty member to the University community. Ran presented a great talk, but it was too bad she couldn't play the music from an upcoming composition.

Francesco Cavalli’s Giasone at Chicago Opera Theatre

From the Chicago Tribune review:

A first-rate cast of promising young singers and the city's period instrument group Baroque Band, under Scottish early music specialist Christian Curnyn, pumped new life into a baroque opera that could have proved a well-intentioned snooze. Nearly three hours in the theater flew by as if on winged feet. Everything about "Giasone" is good enough to make you wonder why the composer's stage works remained unperformed and under-appreciated until the Cavalli revival of the late 1960s and early '70s.
...
The libretto uses the legend of Jason winning the Golden Fleece as pretext for mixing a satirical cocktail of sex, lies, intrigue, low comedy and attempted murder. This Jason is not only a fearless hero but also a serial seducer who must juggle two royal paramours, Medea and Isifile, each of whom has borne him twins. Complication is heaped on complication until the pathetic playboy gets his comeuppance and everything is happily resolved at the last moment.

Brothers and Sisters Plays at Steppenwolf

We only saw one of the three short connected plays at Steppenwolf. Pretty powerful, great performances, and we rode the bus home with one of the performers.

Chicago Opera Theatre: Mosè in Egitto

Great singing, but the staging was a little static compared to other COT productions.

From the Tribune review: "When Chicago last heard Rossini's "Mose in Egitto," it was 1863, Abraham Lincoln was the nation's president and the show came to town courtesy of a touring Italian opera troupe. Nearly 147 years elapsed before Chicagoans would get to experience Rossini's biblical opera a second time. Praise be to Chicago Opera Theater, then, for giving the city a long-delayed second hearing of "Moses in Egypt."

Cabaret at Hypocrites

Dark, dark, dark. Scary. The MC was a woman. Way to go Matt. Great production. And people just couldn't keep their pants on.

Two Directors: Cabaret

Program at the Cultural Center: "Jim Corti and Matt Hawkins both directed productions of Cabaret this season with Drury Lane Theatre and The Hypocrites respectively. Each director discusses how they led the same script material with different performance venues, cast, and audience demographics in mind." (No, Matt didn't play guitar.)

Oh, Coward! at Writers' Theatre

Wow. Wow. Wow. A really, really wonderful production at the very tiny space at Writers' Theatre. Lovely. It was a marvelous party, with Nounou and Nada and Nell...

House Opening Benefit: Girls v. Boys

Oh, House, we love you, but we wanted to love this one more. Still, the group we brought thought it was fabulous, and we were up two more season tickets.

American Ballet Theatre: American Program

A pre-birthday treat. Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, and Jerome Robbins program by ABT. Lose a shoe during Company B? Not a problem if you are a stellar ABT dancer. Really great.

A Springy Party

A crowded house at our friends Ms. A and Mr. E. The theme was "spring" so we brought a slinky.

The Illusion at Court & Magic Show!

Solid Court production. Adaptation by Tony Kushner.
And, a totally great surprise of a magic show by Dennis Watkins after the show. (He'd helped with the magic in the show.)




















Timothy Kane was hilarious.

Trust at Lookingglass

Man, I'm really glad we don't have a teenager.

















Co-directed and written by David Schwimmer. Philip R. Smith was absolutely amazing in the role of the father.

Uncle Vanya at Chicago Shakespeare

It was in Russian. It ran over three hours. Still, you got to love a Godot meets Monty Python kind of vibe.

Ms. S at the Goodman: The Long Red Road

Ms. S went with a workmate to see this production at the Goodman.

Wayne McGregor at Columbia Dance

Hyper technique, hyper flexible, and a pretty fun evening.

Book Club: Things Fall Apart

Private Lives at Chicago Shakespeare

Always fun to see this Coward chestnut, and clever staging by Gary Griffin, but didn't quite...sizzle for us.

Troika Ranch at Columbia Dance

One of the better of the tech & dance ilk.

"Complex, layered, and visually striking, Troika Ranch is known for hybrid works combining dance, theater and digital media. Recognized world wide as leaders in the exploration of dance and new technology, co-founders, Mark Coniglio and Dawn Stoppiello recently completed a two-year development process to create their newest work, loopdiver. Using motion capture and Coniglio's Isadora software (a programming environment that provides interactive control and real-time manipulation of digital media), loopdiver is the result of a processes of creating movement and multimedia elements from intricately interwoven loops of prerecorded movement, text and digital materials (video, sound and light)."

Skin of Our Teeth

We went to see Skin of our Teeth for nostalgia sake (right, Mrs. Antrobus?) but this was kind of an all-over-the map production. Fortune teller had nothing on Ms. J's performance from high school.

Jump Rhythm Jazz at Columbia Dance

Kind of a mixed bag, but the husband and wife leaders of this group performed with real love of the art.

Wilson Wants it All at the House Theatre

Thought this show was a promising new direction for the House.

From Chris Jones's review: "It's 2040. America is, naturally, divided. But there are now seven political parties. Federalists. New Republicans. Greens. Libertarians. Progressives. Territorialists. The Coalition. Each obstructs the other, since political gain has trumped good policymaking, once and for all. That's hardly a stretch from current reality, but now there is also talk of the end of the union. Enter a young woman named Hope, who might be the last chance to unify a nation. The child of a late, great, JFK-esque senator killed by an assassin's bullet, 30-year-old Hope has spent a sheltered youth but is on the verge of stepping up to the political plate. But does she want it? Or would she rather just run away from Wilson, her political handler, and also her destiny?

...

All in all, this is a gutsy, risky piece that's also a fun night out. And for those who think House is trapped in the thrall of whimsy, it demonstrates a newly political bent that adds depth to this intensely creative company's work.

American Buffalo at Steppenwolf

Hey, we live in Chicago. We should be seeing some Mamet right? With Tracy Letts? Even better? And a really, really terrific turn by Housian Patrick Andrews.

From Chris Jones's review: "Trapped behind a computer, writing Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, Tracy Letts clearly has accumulated some pent-up aggression. Clad in polyester and revealing a few cheesy chest hairs, the actor-writer unleashes some of that energy as Teach , the most colorful of the three messed-up characters in the Lincoln Avenue junk store that holds David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.” ...

Morton has created a very credible world. Thanks also to Kevin Depinet’s very clever set, you feel like this place, and the people who hang out there, could really exist (I’ve always imagined Mamet was writing about somewhere near the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Byron Street in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood).

You do see in Patrick Andrews, though, a hugely promising actor who knows how to inhabit a lonely character, living on the edge. Bob is perhaps one of Mamet’s most autobiographically revealing characters. He looks for a family, a community and finds only Chicago hustlers, who seem to care but don’t know how. The more of his pain we feel, the better.

Cloud Gate at Harris Theatre

We've seen Cloud Gate before, and this piece was really wonderful.














"Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Asia ’s leading contemporary dance company, returns to Chicago blending Eastern and Western dance styles with Lin Hwai-min's internationally renowned signature work, Moon Water. Moon Water is a contemporary exploration of the Tai Chi Tao Yin movement, set to JS Bach’s exquisite Six Suites for Solo Cello. During this breathtaking performance, water sweeps across the entire stage and is reflected by a wall of mirror suspended midair, creating a stunning on-stage work of art."

Icarus at Lookingglass

Amazing physical theatre, but the heart of the story didn't quite deliver.














From Chris Jones's review "No troupe in America is more qualified than the Lookingglass Theatre Company to create a show about Icarus, the mythological kid who flew too close to the sun. For at Lookingglass, they really know how to make someone fly. In David Catlin’s new “Icarus,” the sequence in which the overreaching young adventurer with hopeful wings and fickle wax soars and falls to Earth is nothing short of stunning. Thanks to the fusion of choreography and circus skills, you feel as if you really see Icarus (Lindsey Noel Whiting) take wing. And when he crumples and melts above your head, you feel the sudden jolt of pain his loving father Daedalus (Lawrence E. DiStasi) must feel in that moment."