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.