Performing Arts Search – Recommended
80 Foots per Minute
Thu., May 23, 7:30 p.m.Theater & Performance
A little literary playfulness goes a long way for vocalist-musicians Emmy Bean, T-Roy Martin, and Chris Schoen, who, in their rapid-fire program of folksy musical arrangements, take on roles ranging from the pathetic oysters in Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" to Carl Sandburg reading his poem "Loam." Some songs indulge kitsch—like one that sets to music a Thomas Campion poem in which a single word ("love") has been replaced each time it appears by another ("Batman"). And though I'm generally inclined to dismiss offhand anything based on writings of the great poet Craigslist, "Past Saturday Night, Northerly Island," which adapts a missed connection into rondo form, struck me as weirdly hypnotic and catchy. The afternoon's shining ditty was "Riled Geese," inspired by Mary Oliver's poem of the same name, in which Bean does an absolutely bewitching scat-singing impression of a goose (a style susceptible to the very amusing coinage "goose scat"). —Jena Cutie
comfortstationprojects@gmail.comBig Love
Through 5/25: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 4 PMTheater & Performance
This young couple walked by me as I headed up the street after seeing Charles Mee's Big Love at Strawdog Theatre. They were probably in their late teens, early 20s. The boy put the girl in a headlock and kissed the part in her hair. She laughed, but in a fakey, uncertain way, like she hadn't quite decided whether she should be pissed or pleased. Still, when he let go, she stuck with him. And there you have it: the paradoxical, not to say creepy, glory of love. A headlock and a kiss. Big Love draws wisdom from that paradox. An oddball yet deadly serious update on Aeschylus's The Suppliants, it tells the tale of 50 (yes, 50) Greek sisters whose father has promised them in marriage to their 50 male cousins. Rather than go through with the wedding, the sisters commandeer a yacht and head for Italy, where—still in their bridal gowns—they ask asylum of wealthy Piero. Soon enough, the 50 cousins show up at Piero's estate as well. What follows is a comic, tragic, utterly terrific battle that makes The Taming of the Shrew look like the kid's stuff it essentially is. Matt Hawkins's staging is also terrific. The precisely choreographed cast of 30 (yes, 30) play for keeps—especially those in featured roles, such as the fierce Michaela Petro, the convincingly dangerous Shane Kenyon, the girly-girlish Sarah Goeden, and Stacy Stoltz and John Ferrick as gender warriors who find themselves caught behind enemy lines. Paul Fagen and Cheryl Roy float through in delightful character roles, and Mike Mroch's apparently simple set discloses its value as the show goes along. All in all, this Big Love is a marvel of big ensemble work in a tiny space. —Tony Adler $28
Next Fall
Through 5/25: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PMTheater & Performance
Adam loves Luke. Luke loves Adam. Luke also loves Jesus. Adam worries about which of them Luke loves more. Luke worries about Adam's immortal soul. Next Fall, making its Chicago premiere at AstonRep, looks back on their sometimes prickly five-year relationship. At times, like when the subjects of prayer, sin, and the Rapture come up, it risks becoming a play of ideas, with more speechifying than conversation. Fortunately, Geoffrey Nauffts's script leaves room for ambiguity and gives the characters personalities as well as points of view. The cast give them life and humor—particularly Ryan Hamlin and Mark Jacob Chaitin, who play Adam and Luke, and Lona Livingston and Jim Morley, who play Luke's parents. The result is charming, funny, and, ultimately, moving. —Aimee Levitt $15-20
The Brig
Through 5/26: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PMTheater & Performance
Kenneth H. Brown's meticulous depiction of a day in a Marine prison camp caused a sensation when it premiered at New York's Living Theater in 1963. The guards' unrelenting, systematic dehumanization of their fellow Marine prisoners is appalling, especially since the abuse seems intended to instill loyalty to the Corps. And Brown's near-total eschewal of plot—the maltreatment goes on until it simply stops—removes any comforting fictive filter between audience and action. Wisely, director Jennifer Markowitz does nothing to make her Mary-Arrchie production enjoyable. Her actors endure an hour of exhausting physical drills while we watch from various uncomfortable locations. As movement theater, it's grotesquely beautiful; as a glimpse into the darkest recesses of male psychology, it's sickening. —Justin Hayford $25
Mascot
Through 5/26: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PMTheater & Performance
The tale Chris Bower tells in this one-hander, about an unhinged father determined to make his son into a high school football star, could stand on its own as a fascinating short story. But brought to the stage by director Kevlyn Hayes and actor Matt Test, the piece is powerful, darkly funny—and ultimately sad. Test plays a computer repair guy who's allowed his inner demons to rule, and ruin, his life. Estranged from his son and forbidden by court order to be near his wife—who goes to all the football games—he's drawn inexorably to repeated self-destructive encounters with them, and with the authorities. Hayes's clever, graceful staging finds myriad onstage metaphors for the protagonist's disintegrating mental state. —Jack Helbig $15
Roadkill
Through 5/22: Wed-Fri 6:45 PM, Sat 1:45 and 6:45 PM, Sun 1:45 PMTheater & Performance
This immersive, site-specific drama, directed by Cora Bissett and written by Stef Smith (it debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in 2010), is staged on a bus and in a nondescript Bucktown apartment that soon starts to feel like a lower circle of hell. We arrive there with Mary, a teenage Nigerian girl, and her countrywoman Martha, who has promised Mary a prosperous life in America. Before long, the girl has been relieved of her passport, raped, held against her will, and forced into a prostitution ring run by a merciless Russian. The apartment's bland seediness and close quarters reinforce the feeling of entrapment and moral squalor, and bring us into almost unbearable proximity to Mercy Ojelade's heartrending Mary and Adura Onashile's tormented Martha. —Zac Thompson $45
Moth Story Slam
Tue., May 28, 8 p.m.Spoken Word/Poetry Slams/Open Mikes
Everyone's got a story to tell. But the folks behind the Moth Story Slam believe some people tell their stories better than others. Ten storytellers, chosen at random, will get a chance to spin their yarns for five minutes. A panel of judges, also chosen at random, will decide which one is the best. $8
Sexomedy
Wed., May 29, 7:30 p.m.Theater & Performance
Melissa DuPrey understands what few of us are willing to admit: sex is fucking hilarious. In her comic monologue Sexomedy, DuPrey shares her most embarrassing—and hairy—sexual experiences. Reader contributor Justin Hayford writes that "DuPrey's clear-eyed comedy is as necessary as it is transgressive."
$15
Sexomedy
Through 5/29: Wed 7:30 PMTheater & Performance
Forty-one years after the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves, a publicity-seeking moron can still get serious attention by equating contraception with sexual deviance. So God knows what sort of uproar Melissa DuPrey may create with this candid, hilarious, hypersexual monologue. DuPrey spends 60 shame-free minutes chronicling every action, fantasy, and object that gets her off—including the office copier. She details her glorious bodily imperfections (e.g., hairy B-cup breasts that are "80 percent nipple") and laments the men who make her "pussy frown" (such as the one who approached her hairy asshole as though hacking through underbrush). In a culture that perpetually cloaks the specifics of sexual pleasure under euphemism and moralism, DuPrey's clear-eyed comedy is as necessary as it is transgressive. —Justin Hayford $15
The TomKat Project
Through 5/29: Wed 8 PMTheater & Performance
If any anecdote sounds too incredible to be true in this ambitious and thoroughly entertaining examination of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes marital saga, writer Brandon Ogborn is here to clarify: a sign reading "This is VERBATIM dialogue" is held up during some particularly implausible scenes, which in addition to the titular pair may involve Scientology honcho David Miscavige, Holmes's family, Oprah, or any of about 50 others. Director Elly Green's keen and restrained troupe—Walt Delaney, in particular, nails Cruise's enigmatic, aloof energy—uses both specificity and irreverence to sift meaning from tabloid fragments and express them as pop-culture writers already know they should be: high theater of the absurd. —Dan Jakes $15
Dada Gert
Through 5/31: Thu-Fri 7:30 PMDance
Annie Arnoult Beserra, head of Striding Lion Performance Group, fell in love with Valeska Gert in 2005, when, as a grad school student, she saw recently released archival footage of Gert's dance solos. "She was so raw and riddled and vibrant," Beserra says. "There was such life in her embodiment of horrors." Born in 1892 in Berlin, dancer-writer-composer-singer-actress. Gert was blacklisted by the early 1930s, for the crime of being a Jew making avant-garde art. That was far from the end of her colorful career, but Beserra chose the Weimar era as the setting of her new, promenade-style, hour-long Dada Gert. Captivated by Gert's "100 percent blend of dance and theater," Beserra created a piece that isn't always easy to watch—the seven performers make faces, scream, and strike grotesque poses. But Dada Gert vividly portrays both the artist and the forces that worked against her. Projections of archival photos and videos set the scene, as does the music, featuring Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, and Gert herself. Repeated movements—a bounding Charleston, or hips thrust forward with hands splayed near the crotch—knit the piece together. Thirty-five years after this self-declared witch died, Beserra brings her vibrantly to life. —Laura Molzahn $10-$20
Falling Man
Through 5/31: Fri 9 PMTheater & Performance
In five monologues by Big Love creator Will Scheffer, gay men recount falling in love, and in each case the love is remarkable for its flammability; fire analogies pervade this production. In "Alien Boy," Glenn Abel portrays a hyperintelligent 13-year-old Jewish boy who hopes the "devastatingly attractive Nazis in the movies" will save him from his sexuality. Eric Frederickson, as a veteran hustler ruminating on the night Tennessee Williams's soul leaped into his body, gave a positively ticklish rendition of the playwright's southern cackle and drawl in "Tennessee and Me." Andrew Hodson, as "Jeffrey Dahmer," could just as well have been "punk Hamlet channeling Christ." Nonetheless, the rest of the cast have enormous success kindling the spark of a queer personality into memorable characters. —Jena Cutie $20
The Improvised Sondheim Project
Through 5/31: Fri 10:30 PMImprov/Sketch
Last spring, five Second City faculty members inaugurated a troupe devoted to Stephen Sondheim. The mission? To dream up Sondheimesque musicals on the spot. One year later, the gambit has paid off. Their tribute trades a stable plot for riffs on characters and themes; their lyrics testify to their knack for internal rhyming. "Birthday" was the audience suggestion on the night I attended. The opening fanfare rapidly devolved into a cacophony of voices. After the prologue wrapped, the players introduced the show's central cog, Geraldine, a fresh-eyed high school dropout from Ohio who's trying her luck on Broadway. In Sondheim style, there's an absurd conceit: she intends to make it on the street, not onstage, handing out flyers—a job with more potential for rejection than a Broadway career. —Jena Cutie $15
Incident on Run #1217
Through 6/1: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PMTheater & Performance
Joseph Lark-Riley's life-size re-creation of a subway car dominates the tiny Factory Theater space, pushing the audience into two cramped rows around the edges. It also sets a perfect mood for Manny Tamayo's claustrophobic drama about a group of passengers trapped on a stopped train and terrorized by a pair of sadistic hoods. To tell the truth, though, Tamayo's storytelling is so finely wrought we would have been drawn into it even if the play had been performed, Second City style, on an empty stage with cane chairs. Matt Engle's casting and direction are pitch-perfect, and his ensemble ably brings Tamayo's characters to life; Mandy Walsh is particularly fine as a fed-up wife with a spineless husband. —Jack Helbig $20
Core of the Pudel
Through 6/2: Thu-Sat 8 PM; also Sun 5/26 and 6/2, 7 PMTheater & Performance
It's no mean feat to distill the Faust legend into a jointly created, mostly wordless (words in English, at least) movement-theater piece that clocks in at just an hour. Yet in Trap Door Theatre's compassionate Core of the Pudel, director Thom Pasculli does no mean job. Creating a wounded, splintered Faust played by six performers—an Everyman and Everywoman—he suggests that we damn ourselves every day with small decisions driven by arrogance and a wish for transcendence. As the Devil, the charismatic Pasculli convincingly seduces Faust; Cortney McKenna, subtle yet affecting, is persuasive as Faust's victim. For me, all the tortured faces and acrobatic movement, more symbolic than dramatic, wore thin. But delicious homemade touches—puppetry, an onstage violinist, simple but evocative props, the performers' musical contributions—won me over. –Laura Molzahn $20-$25
