Mr. M in for a visit

Mr. M. was in for a visit before he went downtown for a work conference.

Mr. J in town

Ms. S's father came to town for a visit. We had dinner at Chilam Balam, went to the AIC, went to hear jazz (the big Hammond B3) at the Green Mill, went to Hyde Park and had Korean, at Indian and...whew...went to the Jazz Showcase.

More photos here.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Great casting, great acting. Timothy Edward Kane, always a favorite, well paired with Sean Fortunato. Clever stage design.













From the Time Out review:

"Stoppard’s 1967 breakout play, a backdoor inversion of Hamlet by way of Waiting for Godot, remains an ingenious enterprise. Rosencrantz (Fortunato) and Guildenstern (Kane)—or is it the other way around?—are mere pawns on the fringes of Elsinore, used and abused by Claudius and Hamlet (not to mention Big Willie) as means to an end to which the poor schmucks are never privy.

Halberstam’s handsome production nicely emphasizes Stoppard’s conceptual trickery. Collette Pollard’s smart scenic design suggests a metaphysical backstage; the play’s Hamlet cast cleverly plays its scenes upstage, to a backdrop of a sprawling auditorium several times the size of Writers’ intimate space, while Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ruminate in the foreground. The cast is pitch-perfect: Longtime associates Kane and Fortunato have the kind of easy comic rapport that’s earned, not faked, on top of a remarkable facility with Stoppard’s quicksilver wordplay and intellectual rhythms. Gilmore radiates energy as the grandiose and mildly sinister leader of the tragedians. The only questionable step is Halberstam and sound designer Andrew Hansen’s use of new wave rock songs like “Burning Down the House” and “Once in a Lifetime” as act bumpers. After all, Stoppard’s play seems to illustrate that even the least among us are more than talking heads.

Thanksgiving: It's a Football Party

We hosted a bunch of Ms. S's workmates for Thanksgiving. We thought it was going to be low key and spread out because we were watching football, but there is that critical moment when the turkey comes out of the oven. It all worked. Fun.

Photo album here.

Richard III

A strong production at Chicago Shakes. Some reviews said there was a disconnect in acting styles between Richard (old school high theatrics) and the rest of the cast (Chicago naturalism) but things had tempered by the time we saw it. A great show for women actors. And an amazing, amazing fight scene at the end.

All the Fame of Lofty Deeds

From Chris Jones's Tribune review: "But I think House Theatre has the best show here since "The Sparrow." No question. The House has got its groove back."














It was a fun benefit evening, with Jon Langford, cult music star on whose music the show is based, played a nice preshow set. Nate strapped on a guitar and a cowboy hat and was Nate.

A good time was had by all.

Boulder

A trip to Boulder to continue to clean out the house. Did a lot of archiving of posters and old theatre stuff.

Dax, RIP 2009

Book Club: The Golden Gate

Maureen's off to Tokyo
So we won't be heading north.
It's now at Nina's, should we bring gnocchi?
Unless, she reneges, and sends us forth
In search of some suitable coffee shop
Where John and Liz might stop.
I'm ok, where ever, and I'll try not to be crabby
If not everyone has finished it, sadly.
But I really hope you will give it a try
And not just because it's my recommendation.
We need everyone talking and not one person's domination
of this group. The ending will make you weep, no lie.
See you on Sunday, please try a verse.
What's that line? The unread are cursed?

Fake at Steppenwolf

Really, really great performances in this production at Steppenwolf. The script didn't quite work, but great performances.

From the Time Out review:

"Amateur paleontologist Charles Dawson caused a sensation in Edwardian England with his 1912 discovery of Piltdown Man. It took 40 years for the fossil find to be decisively labeled a fraud, a modern human skull with an orangutan’s jaw. To this day, the perpetrator’s identity remains uncertain. But Steppenwolf ensemble member Simonson has a theory, elaborated in his new play.

Toggling Arcadia-style between 1914 and 1953, Fake, like the fossil, tries to combine two uncomfortably matched pieces. The chronologically earlier scenes detail an investigation into Piltdown by fictional journalist Rebecca Eastman (Arrington) at the behest of Arthur Conan Doyle (Guinan). This plot has the giddy charm of an Agatha Christie drawing-room mystery; in the initial scene, which gathers notables including Dawson (Yando) and the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin (Goss), Doyle all but announces, “I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve called you here.” Yando invests Dawson with a deliciously villainous formality, while Guinan’s bluff, jovial Doyle conceals a steely mind, Holmes and Watson in one.

If that were the whole of Fake, we’d have a briskly paced intellectual puzzle play, occasionally interrupted by Simonson’s fondness for dumping his research into fact-filled speeches. But the play flags in its modern half, in which three scientists form an uninspired love triangle. Still, the doubled roles offer the remarkable cast a chance to show off; Guinan, in particular, shifts brilliantly between Doyle and the more cerebral Jonathan, uncovering hidden layers in each."

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety

We went to this, based totally on an over the top review by Chris Jones from the Trib. Payoff!!! Ms. S was dubious. A pro wrestling play? Wonderful, moving, personal, visually spectacular. Total winner, winner, chicken dinner. And perfect for Halloween!

From Chris Jones's review in the Chicago Tribune:

"The juicy, knockout new play at Victory Gardens is at once a visceral take-down of the way American marketers manipulate our jingoistic tendencies, a hilariously savvy exploration of racial and class-based stereotyping, and a full-on, body-slamming theatrical wrestling match—replete with ring, klieg lights, and big, sweaty men body-slamming each other into the canvas.

It is the only play I’ve ever seen that could simultaneously appeal to fans of the World Wide Wrestling Federation and intellectual progressives (not that those groups are mutually exclusive). Heck, this killer show whipped the opening-night audience into a frenzy not seen at the Biograph since John Dillinger left the building. It will appeal to anyone who thinks that theatrical food for thought is always best dispensed with a good, swift kick to the head.

This must-see show is narrated by one Macedonio Guerra, a middle-rank, always-the-bad-guy wrestler who understands that his clout comes from his ability to make the hero wrestlers look good. Macedonio (aka The Mace), played with great emotional honesty by Desmin Borges, shrewdly notes that, in the simulated sport of wrestling, kicking somebody in the head always requires the close cooperation of the dude being kicked. In fact, it is far harder to be the kickee than the kicker.

Those who control wrestling know this. They may seem to put all their energies into creating action-hero characters like Diaz’s fictional Chad Deity (played with guileless guts by Kamal Angelo Bolden), but those easy-to-find guys are just ring dressing. The crux lies with the villains, who may seem to lose but actually control the winner. And the populace at large. A similarly sophisticated understanding of the nuances of human behavior surely informs the executive offices at, say, the Fox News Channel.

But here’s the thing: This isn’t a liberal polemic. These wrestlers are smart cookies and practical men. You sense Diaz’s admiration for the sport, and his understanding of how we all compromise to please our bosses. He pokes fun at wrestling’s history of reliance on ethnic stereotypes, sure, but he also makes the point that wrestlers know they’re playing with fiction — unlike the humorless, pointy-headed intellectuals who run the world but still don’t get our need for someone or something to hate, if only to help us understand what we love. That’s a lesson of human nature the current Obama administration perhaps needs to learn.

The play spins on the moment when Mace (whom Borges makes smart and lovable) finds Vigneshwar Paduar (the dry and droll Usman Ally), an Indian kid in the Bronx who speaks numerous languages and, metaphorically, represents the new globalism that’s so threatening to the old order. Can THE Wrestling, as the owning conglomerate is named, turn V.P. into a detestable Islamic terrorist, a sleeper-cell with a Kabbalah-kick? Or has the world become too complex?

Visiting Committee in town

The annual gathering of our Visiting Committee for the Social Sciences was today. We had a lovely Thursday night dinner at MK.

Fedra: Queen of Haiti at Lookingglass

A really enjoyable production at Lookingglass.














From the Time Out Review:

"A split-level pastel-colored set with an inlaid pool, a goddess whose wrath erupts in echoing booms: From its opening, Fedra reflects Lookingglass’s commitment to sumptuous production values. But the passions on display in this updated version of Racine don’t always reach the operatic heights of the decor. In transforming Phaedra to Fedra, ensemble member Brooks has moved the setting from mythic Greece to a vaguely specified future, in which Haiti has become a world power, birds have apparently disappeared and the truest badge of hip is owning a collection of “ancient” Star Wars DVDs. None of this filigree has much impact on the tragic plot, which remains, “Queen falls for stepson, queen’s husband returns, trouble ensues.”

Othello at the Joffrey

A really great performance. And our next door neighbor Jon was in the pit.















From the Chicago Tribune Review:

There are many things to like about Lar Lubovitch's "Othello," and a few to mourn, but none of that matters by the end, after the exceptional, climactic pas de deux. Most duets in the full-length ballet canon celebrate love in a fairy-tale mode. Even ghostly Giselle, though dead partly thanks to her lover, dances with him in an act of forgiveness. But however fresh your Shakespeare, you're not quite prepared for how shattering and creepy the final pas de deux of "Othello" must be -- this is a dance between a husband and the wife he's about to kill.

Lubovitch's 1997 work, now getting its Chicago premiere from the Joffrey Ballet, is never finer than in this trickiest-of-tricky conceits. This isn't just doomed love; it's homicide in action. Echoing the sometimes haunting, sometimes strange but often interesting mixture of ballet and modern moves, Lubovitch makes this one a killer stylistically, pardon the pun. It's equal parts lyricism, conflict and horror. At one stretch, Othello holds a hanging, motionless Desdemona by his hands, grasping her on either side of her temple -- as if he's going to crush her skull. To Elliott B. Goldenthal's alternately soaring and discomforting score, he and she enact a hypnotic duet that's anguished and surreal.

Besides a chance to see the Chicago-born Lubovitch work impressively on a large canvas, "Othello" has many virtues. They include his focus less on plot and more on key images and moods that make the tragedy so rich. The handkerchief image gives rise to emotional fantasias on jealousy, betrayal, joy and hints of death, an object first delivered by a mechanistic moving quintet right out of "Coppelia." Iago and Emilia end Act 1 with a dance that's tug-of-warlike, a tad sadomasochistic but sexy -- not something this couple usually calls to mind. George Tsypin's crystalline, geometric set gives it a postmodern gloss.

Frankenstein at MCA and Dr. C

The pastor (well, not really) of our wedding ceremony was in town. He recently, finally received his PhD. "How many years must a man walk down..." Clearly longer than Joan or Dylan thought. Nice dinner, and then off to a ummm...OK, mixed, performance of Frankenstein at the MCA. Sean Graney, director, didn't quite ring the bell here, but I like what he's up to. Audience wandering around with the actors. Something going on. Stacy Stoltz was, as always, absolutely riveting.