Matt Hawkins featured in Time Out

Gotta love this. We're not the only ones in the Matt Hawkins fan club!

Arabian Nights at Lookingglass

From Chris Jones's review from the Tribune:

"At the start of “The Arabian Nights,” Mary Zimmerman’s thrilling Chinese box of nested Middle Eastern stories, we encounter the embittered, brutal, merciless King Shahryar. He has a knife at a young woman’s throat.

To quieten the king’s restless soul and save her life, this young woman frantically starts spewing forth stories—1,001 nights of sad, funny, moral, smart, silly, satirical, repeatable and ultimately redemptive yarns of Baghdad, its quirky denizens and colorful environs. These interlocking yarns dance in their visually gorgeous frames—intruding, delighting, imposing and, by the end of a couple of hugely engrossing hours, universalizing.

And all the time, that knife is that young woman’s throat, threatening to topple the fountainhead of this landscape of the imagination.

The memory of this extraordinary piece of Chicago theater has stayed with me since its seminal first production in a then-scruffy section of Belmont Avenue in 1992—long before Zimmerman got gigs at the Metropolitan Opera, David Schwimmer snagged a sitcom named “Friends” and Lookingglass got its spiffy, city-sponsored digs on the Magnificent Mile. It was the time of the first Gulf War, when Iraq’s cultural identity, thanks to both its merciless dictator and the needs of his Western antagonists, had been rendered in the media and the halls of goverment as a hostile, homogenous antithasis of light, art and freedom. By reminding everyone of our shared cultural roots—and by demonstrating the Arabian heritage of humor and wisdom—Zimmerman and her young, just-graduated cohorts seemed—almost alone—to be pulling back a black veil and letting in the humanity.

Well, you can’t go back. “Arabian Nights” is not what it was on that heart-stopping night in 1992. It is better.

The multi-ethnic actors—some from that same cast, some new—are more mature and thus probe deeper. The text, honed and published in the intervening years, is richer. The new production, which has already been acclaimed at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and deserves to end up on Broadway—is sharper, faster, more polished, more exciting. It’s also more present and spontaneous—the great Andy White tells his stories with delicious improvisational applomb—as if everyone intuitively understands that great storytellers constantly adjust their narratives, based on how they land with an audience.

I think the brilliance of this piece, which is Zimmerman’s most theatrically complete and perfect creation, can be seen in that first moment, when Louise Lamson’s bright-eyed Scheherezade starts spinning her life-preserving stories for Shahryar, now played by Ryan Artzburger, an actor who somehow simultaneously capures a brutal core, a sad heart and a vulnerable soul. Scheherezade’s scared little sister, movingly played by Heidi Stillman, looks on, willing the stories to overcome violence.

This is a wholly accessible, earthy, whimsical, sensual show with none of the narative pretensions or precious stagings that often afflicts work of this type. Full-blooded actors like the macho Usman Ally and the emotionally resonant Allen Gilmore convey some deep truths, but not at the expense of fun.

But this is high-stakes fun. It always feels like both life and freedom are at stake. Nothing involving Arabian nights has ever been simple.

Fiddle's Memorial

Went to Kansas for Fiddle's memorial service.

NYC, Exit the King

In NYC for work, and saw the amazing Exit the King with the amazing Geoffrey Rush. Wow!

















For New York Times review click here.

Alumni Weekend

It's alumni weekend, and once again, my job is to carry the banner of the Social Sciences Division!

Bruce Mau at Art Club

Ms. S and Mr. P both went to the Arts Club to hear Bruce Mau. He's ready to take on the world. His current project is the Denver Biennial of the Americas, which "will be a citywide, international cultural event. We will celebrate the work of the worlds greatest innovators and empower a new global citizenship rooted in the promise of the Americas."




















http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTgamm8cGiY

Tempest at Steppenwolf

Steppenwolf's takes on Shakespeare for the first time. Visually zippy, solidly Steppenwolf in acting, no great revelations, but a good show. Jon Michael Hill was terrific as Ariel.

From Time Out Chicago's review:

"Landau’s production is visually ambitious, if not terribly cohesive. Scenic designer Takeshi Kata strips the stage to bare walls; in this blank space, he deploys an ever-moving array of sheets and masts that suggest the nautical world while serving as canvases for Stephan Mazurek’s bizarrely inconsistent projections. His choices range from subtle and gorgeous, as with the simulated rush of water that accompanies Miranda’s first encounter with Ferdinand, to a jarring sequence illustrating Ariel’s recounting of the shipwreck that unaccountably recalls the video-art aesthetic of the 1980s.

Mazurek’s projections are part of Landau’s kitchen-sink visual approach. The spirit Ariel (Jon Michael Hill) races down zip lines for no particular reason; he’s shadowed by a trio of lesser spirits who, similarly, perform aerial rope tricks in the background just for the heck of it. The director’s tendency for excess is certainly indulged.

But there’s enough cleverness in Landau’s bulging bag of tricks—from James Schuette’s playful costumes to an entrancing original score by Josh Schmidt—to cut through the chaos. And her smartest choice is making astoundingly good use of the company’s ensemble. Terrific supporting performances by the likes of K. Todd Freeman as the slave Caliban, Yasen Peyankov as doltish drunk Stephano and, most inspired, Lois Smith as wizened royal adviser Gonzalo enliven the far-strewn subplots.

As Prospero, Frank Galati is a presence less raging than calming, the eye at the center of the storm. The force of nature here is athletic, electric Hill, whose Ariel confidently guides the action. The uniformly exceptional cast elevates Landau’s sometimes-messy extravagance above insubstantial pageant."

Owen Wingrave at Chicago Opera Theatre

From Time Out Chicago's review:

"Based on the gothic novella by Henry James and composed to a libretto by Myfanwy Piper in 1970, Benjamin Britten’s Owen Wingrave was originally commissioned as a BBC television production, although Britten always intended for it to be performed onstage.

Rejecting the soldier’s life he has been primed for since birth and casting aside the fate determined by his ancestors, Owen Wingrave enters one of the most ferocious battlefields of all—the family argument. Matthew Worth, in the title role, portrays the young pacifist with all the necessary fortitude and stoic courage one expects from such a character, and his fine, bright baritone expresses the most poetic lines in what is otherwise a fairly dry and serious opera.

It’s a timely choice for COT to produce an opera about liberation from oppression, and it certainly got the audience talking. During the intermission I overheard the crowd discuss everything from Britten’s pacifist views in a contemporary context to the opera’s various possible readings: “It’s a metaphor for coming out of the closet!”

There’s very little action in Owen Wingrave, but Britten’s hostility toward war provides the backbone for much of his art. As Wingrave declares in Act 1: “Courage in peace, the kind that poets know, wins everything.” Tonight was no exception."

Bike the Drive

We did Bike the Drive with Ms. S's workmate Ms. S and her husband Mr. B. It was cold and a bit windy, but a really good day!

Book Club: Midnight's Children

We went for Indian food near Ms. B-H's house for this meeting of the book club.

Piano Lesson at Court

An excellent cast and a solid production of August's Wilson's play set in 1936 about siblings arguing over whether to sell the piano for which their enslaved grandmother was once traded.

Twelfth Night

Wow. First, great set. And line readings I'd never imagined. Great fun.

Planting Day

Got my garden started the earliest ever. But not too early. And tomatoes and roses for the first time in Chicago.

Art at Steppenwolf

How much would you pay for a white on white painting? The play was a bit dated, but as always, really great acting.

Carmen at Chicago Opera Theatre

I was revved up to see this Peter Brook version of Carmen: stripped down, spare, one act. But sadly, it fell a little flat.