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
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
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Clybourne Park at Steppenwolf
Sunday, March 20, 2011
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."
"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
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Mark Morris at Harris
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
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Mark Morris at Mandel Hall
Sunday, February 20, 2011
As You Like It at Chicago Shakes
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
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.
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."
"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
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
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."
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."
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