Saturday, November 26, 2011

Assisted Living at Profile

Great to see Stacey Stoltz in this show. And really close to our home!

Chris Jones's plot summary: At the beginning of the play, set near Boston, we meet Anne, a lower-middle-class woman in her late 30s who has put her mostly unenviable life on hold to take care of a raging mother with dementia (whom we hear but do not see). In the first scene, we do see Anne (played, with a deft mix of defiance and sadness by Stacy Stoltz) interviewing a potential home-help aide named Levi (Jordan Stacey, a young actor very adept at holding his character on the edge). Although an incessant talker skilled at leveraging self-deprecation, Levi immediately seems like trouble. By his own admission, he is an alcoholic with a thin resume and a tendency to get fired. But Anne is lonely and stressed, her mom is difficult and sometimes violent, and this guy seems to offers a solution to myriad problems

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Nutcracker at House



















The return of Nutcracker. Much the same as last year, but David Caitlin as Drosselmeyer was a nice addition.

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Celebration of Chicago Manual of Style

Mr. P, the Chicago Manual geek, went to an event to celebration the history and new edition of CMOS. It was moderated by Alison Cuddy, and included Carol Fisher Saller, Anita Samen, Ben Zimmer (A.M. ’98), and Jason Riggle. Facebooking and Tweeting, oh my.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Clybourne Park at Steppenwolf














Bruce Norris's 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about race, class and home ownership. This got rave reviews, but we thought it played a bit cartoony.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

The Cripple of Inishmaan













The Druid Theatre Company's The Cripple of Inishmaan at Chicago Shakes. Pretty unrelentingly bleak.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Hercules at Lyric Opera

Only Mr. P went to this one. Peter Sellars directs. Loved it.

"Hercules wears desert camouflage, combat boots and bulky Kevlar vest. Iole appears in a prisoner’s orange jumpsuit, her beautiful face and gleaming blonde hair hidden by a black mesh hood. Hercules’ homecoming party is a backyard barbeque complete with fancy gas grill and plenty of beer."

Friday, March 11, 2011

Same Planet, Different World











The program: "HIT,"by Minneapolis-based choreographer Carl Flink. "He employs a singular, combative image, more an act of aggression, really, as signature motif. The dancers periodically punch each other, directly and often seemingly out of nowhere, as if in challenge or even mild assault."

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Mark Morris at Harris

"Socrates" set to Erik Satie's "Socrate"

"Petrichor," Morris' endlessly intricate homage to Heitor Villa-Lobos, for eight women.

"The Muir,"to folk songs scored by Beethoven.

Friday, February 25, 2011

Robert Moses "Kin" at the Dance Center


The boundary-breaking Robert Moses’ Kin presents its remarkable new work exploring the complexities of identity, love and parentage in non-traditional families. The Cinderella Principle: try these on, see if they fit evolved from in-depth interviews with families throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in a first-time collaboration with award-winning playwright Anne Galjour, violinist/composer Todd Reynolds and DJ/ beat boxer Kid Beyond. Also on the program:Toward September, a powerful full-company work about the divine impulse behind artistic creation; and Approaching Thought

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Merry Widow at Joffrey

So we have great, great seats for our Joffrey subscription, but story ballets weren't exactly why we signed up. This was fun but didn't knock the socks off. Dinner at Mercat for restaurant week before was really fun, though.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Mark Morris at Mandel Hall

Always entertaining Mark Morris.

Choreographer Mark Morris talks with Princeton musicologist Simon Morrison.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

As You Like It at Chicago Shakes



















We were slightly mixed on this. I have a tiny little crush on Kate Fry who played Rosalind, so I thought she was terrific, but Ms. S was less enamored. Overall, the show was elegant without being fussy. And a nice twist with both Rosalind and Orlando splitting the epilogue.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Odradeck at House













Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

So, someone got sick in the middle of the performance and they had to pause the show, one of my guests didn't take well to the gore and had to step out and frankly, after the pause, the audience acted like they were at a baseball game, coming and going at will. Dark. Onward, my House friends.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Three Tall Women at Court













Totally unfamiliar with this script. Some outstanding performance, and the Court is always solid.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Steppenwolf

Wow. Thinking, really, really we can't, can't see this show again.

And then Steppenwolf blew it out of the water. Letts and Morton were extraordinary, and a really nice, surprising interpretation of Honey by Carrie Coon.















From Chris Jones's review in the Tribune:

"In most productions of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Edward Albee's infamous 1962 drama of mutual marital self-loathing in a college town, the character of Martha comes off as an inveterate, addicted game player. She's usually a natural-born boxer who, on this famous booze-soaked night, heads once again with relish into the ring with her marital sparring partner and fails only to anticipate the atypical scale of the impending mutual destruction.

"But in Pam MacKinnon's unusual but wholly fascinating new production for the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the illustrious Chicago company's first-ever foray into Albee and a much-anticipated pairing of Tracy Letts and Amy Morton, that's not the way it plays out at all. Morton's Martha — far more naturalistic, far more normative, for more quickly vulnerable than usual — is a demonstrably reluctant manipulator. She plays "Get the Guests" and brings up that famous imagined baby, mostly, it feels, because it's the only way of keeping the lid on the house neurotic, to whom she happens to be married. And who is half-cocked and might go off at any moment."

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Eight Blackbird at MCA

More my cup of tea than Ms. S's, but nice to see more performance at the MCA.














"The Grammy-winning eighth blackbird returns to MCA Stage with the fascinating and provocative series PowerFUL/LESS. These two concerts are inspired by Stravinsky's quote, "Music is essentially powerless to express anything at all." PowerFUL, confronts the audience with a program of passionate and politically charged works featuring Mr. Tambourine Man by John Corigliano with soprano Katie Calcamuggio, Coming Together by Frederic Rzewski, and John Luther Adams' The Light Within."


Friday, January 14, 2011

Betontanc and Umka.lv at MCA

This was a wonderful surprise.

Betontanc, a Slovinian dance company and and Umka.lv a Latvian puppet theater company follows the "seemingly insignificant and faceless person named Little Branko travels through the 20th century with a marvelous voice that rivets the world’s leaders."

http://mcachicago.org/performances/past/all/2011/620

Sunday, January 09, 2011

Bookclub: McTeague

Ms. B-H's choice and Ms. B was the host. A weird book, but glad to have it on our list.

Friday, January 07, 2011

Emerson String Quartet

Nice program with fragments of two unfinished works by Haydn and Mendelssohn: the Quartet in D minor, Op. 103, and, respectively, the “Andante and Scherzo,” Op. 81.











From the Sun-Times review:

"With Hyde Park looking like a snow globe on Friday night, Mandel Hall warmly showcased the 30-plus year old ensemble in top form. The program was compelling and ranged seamlessly from the sweetly propulsive music of Mendelssohn to the bleakly lunar soundscapes of Alban Berg. Yet it was a distinct Emerson specialty — Debussy’s magnificent G Minor Quartet (1893) — that left everyone hypnotized. Here was a dynamic performance where a perfectly good encore — in Friday’s case, the scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Op. 44, No. 3 — almost spoiled the palate."