Performing Arts Next 30 Days – New Review (Theater and Comedy)
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
773-327-5252What's the T?
Through 6/2: Fri-Sat 7 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Sat 6/1 3 PMTheater & Performance
Inspired by the recent uptick in racial and class tensions in Boystown's LGBT community, this About Face Youth Theatre show, written by Sara Kerastas and the ensemble, chronicles a day in the gayborhood from the perspective of the disadvantaged. We meet a homeless trans teen, a dweeby lesbian just starting to figure things out, a street poet, several voguers, and a den-mother glamazon named Ms. Ma, who's dedicated to "realness, revolution, and Rihanna." All are young and poor—and not exactly welcomed with open arms by the area's affluent residents. Director Eric Hoff and his feisty cast put it over with energy, humor, and righteous outrage. Though the script occasionally lapses into sermonizing, it pays stirring tribute to the virtues of resilience and tolerance. —Zac Thompson
$15
Craft Beer and Relationchips
Through 6/8: Sat 9:30 PMImprov/Sketch
When I last visited the Wrigleyville stage that hosts this simpleminded Butch LaRue sketch comedy, it was for a silent performance of handmade wooden puppets. Ownership has since changed hands, and the joint now sells buckets of Bud Lite and fireball shooters in the lobby, where I saw one patron toting a beer funnel. The new vibe matches the show. Tim Soszko directs his ensemble in an assault of brief sketches, which tend to stretch a single joke like taffy across an unpleasant minute or two. Broad stereotypes and blow job jokes abound in scenes that illuminate the common experiences of the young professional: time-share presentations (they suck), quarterly review meetings (suck), relationship disputes over the remote (suck). The house was packed on opening night. —Keith Griffith $15
Wizard Quest
Through 6/14: Fri 8 PMTheater & Performance
There may be something easier to mock than fantasy role-playing games, though nothing readily comes to mind. So the Annoyance Theatre has set the bar pretty low with its latest production. The premise—seven gamers retreat into a collective fantasy world in order to avoid problems in their real lives—is predictable. But for a few minutes in the second act, the disjunction between fantasy and reality turns shocking and horrifying and hilarious all at once. It's glorious. At this point, unfortunately, the Quest Masters behind the show seem stumped by the situation they've written themselves into and resort to rolling the dice of sitcom cliches—on-the-nose dialogue, overly simple solutions to complex problems, an 80s-style freeze frame—to get themselves out of it. —Aimee Levitt $20
I Will Kiss These Walls
Through 6/15: various times, see websiteTheater & Performance
Created and executed by the Albany Park Theater Project, a mostly Latino youth ensemble, this energetic, heartfelt production combines music, dance, and storytelling to explore the ongoing foreclosure crisis. The stories, culled from interviews the ensemble conducted in the community, are true—and there's great power in that. The rich, multitextured show is by turns funny, sad, whimsical, and deeply moving. The day I attended, a man next to me in the audience wept; that was his family's story onstage. But what makes this more than mere agitprop is the ensemble's infectious esprit de corps. One leaves feeling eager to help solve a crisis that's destroying lives and neighborhoods. —Jack Helbig $8-$25
Fight Girl Battle World
Through 6/16: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PMTheater & Performance
InFusion Theatre's second collaboration with playwright Qui Nguyen is a campy spectacle with little substance beneath its well-staged exterior. In its midwest premiere, this intergalactic parody follows E-V (played by Sheila O'Connor), the last known human in the galaxy—or so she thinks. There are too many characters and alien races to keep track of, and the show could use some cutting and zippier dialogue. But the visual feast onstage won't disappoint. Puppetry designed by Kimberly G. Morris and costumes from Rachel Sypniewski bring to life creatures that could be found sipping a neon beverage at the Star Wars Cantina—and yes, they have the obligatory alien bar scene here. David Blixt's fight scenes feel more Matrixesque than should be possible in a small theater. —Marissa Oberlander
$15-25
Lear
Through 6/22: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PMTheater & Performance
"Take a right and a left and knock on the door," says the usher, directing audience members to the room in which Red Tape Theatre is staging Young Jean Lee's 2010 riff on King Lear. Chances are many of us will be needing directions even after the show's started. Lee's theater piece doesn't go anywhere by regular routes. There's no real narrative build—just a fractured series of interludes, mostly involving the grown children of Shakespeare's elderly tragic figures, Lear and Gloucester. Wearing modern dress in James Palmer's smart production, Lear's daughters—Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia—and Gloucester's two boys—Edmund and Edgar—contend with their guilt ("I suck"), act out scenes using stuffed animals, and mutate into Superman or Big Bird, all while their fathers suffer through the storm outside. The kids' narcissism gets tedious before long, but the piece also affords insights into the anguished, paradoxical bond between children and their parents. —Tony Adler $25
The Timey Wimey Fantastic Brilliant Extravaganza (Geronimo!)
Through 6/23: Fri-Sat 10:30 PM, Sun 3 PMTheater & Performance
The key plot twist in this smart musical, based on the British TV show Dr. Who, arrives in the first five minutes. It's good enough to avoid spoiling, which makes the play, by brothers McKenzie and Justin Gerber, devilishly hard to describe. But here are the broad strokes: the musical numbers are giddy, the story is mind-bending, and director Emma Peterson walks the fine line between homage and satire. The concept has short legs, but this very brief Right Brain Project production doesn't try to go further than it should on them. If the TV series even remotely approximates the weird fun of this performance, I've got to hunker down with the DVDs. —Keith Griffith $10-$15
Speech and Debate
Through 6/23: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PMTheater & Performance
If high schoolers were universally quick to offer one another emotional support, spoke primarily in well-organized paragraphs, and were given to philosophizing ("The best thing about being young is being envied"), Stephen Karam's tale of three misfit, sex-addled teens conspiring to expose their pedophile teacher might possess a shred of credibility. But they don't, and it doesn't. The show was a hit for American Theater Company in 2008 despite tortured plotting, insubstantial musical numbers, and extended diddling with heavyweight issues like abortion, underage sex, and gay conversion therapy. Perhaps the play would pack a punch as a black comedy, but with an indistinct tone and two-note performances, director PJ Paparelli's remount is a hollow exercise. —Justin Hayford $38-$43
In the Company of Men
Through 6/30: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, Sun 7 PMTheater & Performance
Neil LaBute employs numerous cinematic techniques in this 1992 play—rapid crosscuts among various locations, multiple incidental characters who appear only once—so it's no wonder the 1997 film version worked so well, especially given LaBute's drum-tight direction and pitch-perfect cast. But onstage, in a newly revised version, the story of two self-absorbed advertising executives plotting to ruin a female coworker's life as vengeance against all the "bitches" who've ever done them wrong is comparatively sluggish and inefficient, dulling its keen-eyed evisceration of masculine privilege. And director Rick Snyder's Profiles Theatre production never conveys the toxic, cutthroat environment of LaBute's hyperpatriarchal world. Still, the show's climax is devastating, no matter how long it takes to get there. —Justin Hayford $35-$40
