Performing Arts Search
Mexicans, Jews, and Muppets
Through 2/4: Fri-Sat 8 PM, also 2/11, 8 PMImprov/Sketch
A topical sketch show by Butch LaRue. $15
After That, Later, Then
Mon., Feb. 6, 7:30 p.m.Dance
Tif Bullard's abstract performance of a year of medical and spiritual problems. $5
Food and Performance Cabaret
Through 2/6: Mon 7 PMTheater & Performance
Artists use song, dance, and performance art to explore food. Part of Rhinofest. $12-$15 or pay what you can
RPM: Revolutions per Minute
Through 2/6: Mon 9 PMTheater & Performance
A drama by Toddsburn Productions about three young people in the sixties. Part of Rhinofest. $12-$15
6 Pleasant Avenue
Through 2/6: Mon 9 PMTheater & Performance
New York-based playwright Matt Wilson culled scenarios of tragic love from the writings of Marguerite Duras, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Then he created surrogates for those authors, threw them into a slummy one-room apartment (and possibly a love triangle), and had them play out the scenarios. They moon, snipe, muse, drink, criticize, pine, and get nowhere with one another for 70 minutes. Love, it seems, is all about ennui, insecurity, and emotional instability—except when the Hemingway figure is heading for the bush to hunt elephants in his green galoshes. Wilson's dialogue is circular and tantalizingly elusive, and Brian Ruby's cast deliver the script's pedestrian lyricism with aplomb. But since the piece lacks a sense of progression or development, it isn't particularly stageworthy. Part of Rhinofest. —Justin Hayford $12-$15 or pay what you can
Tennyson Spade
Through 2/6: Mon 7 PMTheater & Performance
In this one-act by Jessica Wright Buha, a "Tennyson spade" is a special lantern that can be used to lead the dead back to life. When a young woman gets her hands on one, she journeys to the underworld in hopes of retrieving her recently deceased sister. Along the way she encounters a cluster of female wraiths moaning scraps of mournful song and the shade of a lonesome coal miner pining for his mother. The mechanics of this afterlife don't feel fully worked out, and the abrupt, happy ending feels tacked on. But director Aileen McGroddy creates a haunting no-man's-land in her spare, dimly lit staging for the Whiskey Rebellion, at times poignantly evoking the comfortless desolation of grief. Part of Rhinofest. —Zac Thompson $12-$15 or pay what you can
The Romance of Dance
Wed 2/8, 7 PM
312-742-8497Dance
Nancy Hays performs a cabaret show on the history of dance since the late 1800s. $25
So Many Ways to Tell a Story
Wed., Feb. 8, 6 p.m.Spoken Word/Poetry Slams/Open Mikes
After the audience workshops, Oba William King and Justin Roberts tell the stories they create. $8-$10
The Color Purple
Wed., Feb. 8, 7:30 p.m.Theater & Performance
The national tour stops in at University Park. $15-$65
1 University Pkwy.
Suburbs South
708-235-2222Broads on Boards
4/9: Thu 8 PM 847-251-7424Theater & Performance
Lauren Dowden and Amanda Blake Davis star in this Annoyance Theatre production. $15
An Aspect of God and Next and Her Savior
Through 2/9: Thu 9 PMTheater & Performance
After a ten-year absence, playwright Jennifer Biddle returns to Rhinofest with a pair of quirky explorations of faith and transformation. In An Aspect of God, a grieving mother decides to confront "someone who is in charge of praying," since the numerous prayers offered at her dying daughter's bedside only added to the torment. A shaggy, sympathetic chemistry develops between Rebekka James as the mom and Sam Guinan-Nyhart as a minor deity who tries—and largely fails—to address her concerns. There's a distinct Martha-and-Mary flavor to Next and her Savior, a tale of two sisters in which action-oriented Missy (a forthright Jenn Adams) tries to coax contemplative Next (an ethereal Breahan Pautsch) out of her literal cocoon. Sensitive, nicely underplayed moments between Adams and Pautsch make this a slight but charming parable. —Kerry Reid $12-$15
Clown Car to Sicily and Weapons of Mass Seduction
Through 2/9: Thu 10:30 PMImprov/Sketch
Two improv groups perform a musical and sketches, respectively. $6-$12
Samuel Beckett, Andre the Giant, and the Crickets
Through 2/9: Thu 7 PMTheater & Performance
Now here's something I bet you didn't know: when he was a child growing up in Grenoble, France, acromegalic wrestler Andre the Giant had Samuel Beckett for a neighbor. And since young Andre was too huge to take the regular bus to school, Beckett would drive him there in a van he probably bought with royalties from Waiting for Godot. In this 35-minute piece, playwright Rory Jobst imagines one of those drives. Jobst has some interesting ideas, especially where Andre is concerned. But he doesn't seem to know what to do with Beckett, either dramatically or intellectually. The great absurdist spends most of his time sitting at the steering wheel, sounding vague. Jobst's late attempt to open things up is bold but inchoate. Still, he's got an irrepressible Andre in Christopher Marcum. Part of Rhinofest. —Tony Adler $12-$15 or pay what you can
