Performing Arts Next 30 Days – The Short List (Theater)
The Planetary Defense Force: Rise of the Dinosaurs
Mondays, 8 p.m.Theater & Performance
Easy communication and a sharp wit may be the foundations for good improv, but if you want to see what a troupe is really made of, take a look at how they handle a shaky premise. Having watched cast members sustain this Links Hall/Chicagoland Games show while rolling around in Nerf gear to avoid a tyrannosaurus rex made of PVC pipe, I'm pretty sure they've got it. Amiable host Aaron Amendola ushers an audience member through a series of onstage challenges geared toward overcoming a megalomaniac hell-bent on ushering in a dino-apocalypse. The obstacles—which may involve brushing a Wiffle Ball off somebody's shoulder—are too slight to provide any real stakes. It's clear, though, that this crew has the crowd and stage skills to create something special. —Dan Jakes $5
Aspects of Love
Through 5/19: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PMTheater & Performance
What happens when a high-powered composer like Andrew Lloyd Webber decides to write a musical's book as well as its music? Aspects of Love happens: a show with a fragmented story line and spasmodic character development but lots and lots of singing. The premise seems promising enough: a young man, his uncle, and his uncle's mistress all fall for the same charismatic actress. Director Fred Anzevino and music director Jeremy Ramey play to the show's strengths, packing it with strong singer-actors who are capable of giving Webber's characters the illusion of depth while making his songs soar. Three in particular—Kelli Harrington, Colette Todd, and Rochelle Therrien—set the stage on fire whenever they're on it. —Jack Helbig $30-$35
Comrades Mine
Through 5/19: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Thu 5/9 and 5/16, 8 PMTheater & Performance
Maureen Gallagher's new Civil War drama is the straightforward, engrossing account of Emma Edmonds, who—disguised as a man—served in the Union Army as a soldier, field nurse, and spy, then deserted after being found out. Steering clear of sensationalism and political preaching, the play—fluidly and imaginatively directed by Anna C. Bahow—focuses not only on Edmonds's service but on her efforts in the 1880s to claim her military pension. The nine-person cast, including Justine C. Turner as Emma, deliver honest, grounded performances, and the atmospheric music marks sound designer Gaspard Le Dem as a significant new talent on the Chicago scene. —Albert Williams $28.50
Ganesh Versus the Third Reich
5/16-5/19: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PMTheater & Performance
Suppose I told you that Australia's Back to Back Theatre works with "intellectually disabled" actors? What would you expect from one of their shows? Drama therapy? Elementary theater games? A bunch of sweet simpletons making an endearing hash of, say, a scene from The Odd Couple? Or The Boys Next Door? I know I imagined all sorts of feel-good crap—until I saw a DVD of Back to Back's Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, as staged at Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne. Believe me, the thing is utterly, wittily, sometimes even brutally crap-free. Continue reading >> $28
In a Garden
Through 5/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PMTheater & Performance
Howard Korder's sly 2010 play unfolds in Aquaat, an Iraq-like Middle Eastern nation ruled by a Saddam Hussein-esque dictator called Najid. At the start it's 1989 and things are very, very good. Evidently rolling in oil money, Najid's Westernized, sophisticated minister of culture, Othman, is busy overseeing huge construction projects by celebrity architects like Michael Graves. But he's saved one small job for Hackett, a young Canadian with no major buildings to his credit. Of course, history intervenes. In nine scenes covering 15 years, we watch the ineluctable arc of Najid's tyranny transform both Hackett's commission—a gazebo in a garden—and his relationship with Othman. What looks at first like a straight-out satire turns dark and even touching in Lou Contey's staging. Larry Grimm makes a study of frustration as Hackett, but it's Rom Barkhordar's show: his Othman is a minor functionary of tragic complexity. —Tony Adler $25-$30
Superior Donuts
Through 5/19: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PMTheater & Performance
I've never seen a play go from hilarious to heartbreaking as quickly as Open Door's engaging, intimate staging of this 2008 piece by Tracy Letts does. It's not a sucker punch, though. There's plenty of setup for each plot twist—not that there are many. For much of the show the main tension is in the building of a tentative peace and then friendship between doughnut shop owner Arthur Przybyszewski (Randall Hoole) and Franco Wicks (Patrick Agada), a gregarious, smart-ass college student Arthur hires to help out in the store. Even when things take a darker turn, comedic touches (a cop wearing a Trekkie costume giving news about an assault, money to pay a debt stuffed into a Kotex box before being handed over to a thug) keep things almost light-hearted. —Julia Thiel $25
Adult Entertainment
Through 5/19: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PMTheater & Performance
In Elaine May's 2002 satire, porn stars with a public-access sex show enlist the help of their cameraman, a Yale graduate, to write an art film that will help them escape the adult industry. But after getting a look at their new screenwriter's required reading—The Jew of Malta, Dylan Thomas, Our Town, even Susan Sontag—the actors become a little too thoughtful, putting their careers and lives in jeopardy. The punch line is that exposure to education and culture can have adverse effects. Under director Doug Alberts, the actors in this Bard and Fool production do right by the comedy, but a particularly glaring problem becomes clear during the musical numbers: they're awful singers. —Tal Rosenberg $12-$15
Collected Stories
Through 5/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2:30 PMTheater & Performance
"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." The saying comes from Zen tradition, but it refers to an archetype as universal as mortality itself, expressed in artworks from Oedipus Rex to All About Eve: children must destroy their parents—biological or spiritual—in order fully to become themselves. Still, there's nothing to say that the parent has to go quietly. Ruth Steiner is a literary lion and Lisa Morrison her grad-student cub; Donald Margulies's canny 1996 script follows their relationship over the course of six years, during which Lisa gets big enough to be dangerous. Gwendolyn Whiteside is unnecessarily skittish as Lisa—more like a naive freshman than somebody going for an advanced degree. But the role of Ruth is built for a tour de force, and Carmen Roman delivers a fine, strategically ambiguous one. As directed, appropriately, by the mother-daughter team of Mary Ann and Jessica Thebus, this American Blues Theater production culminates in a knock-down, drag-out that leaves welts. —Tony Adler $10-$49
2433 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL 60614
Near North
773-871-3000Girlfriend
Through 5/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PMTheater & Performance
The uncritical embrace of woman-without-a-man pathos, among other rom-com tropes, is the engine that drives this Keely Flynn script, about two twentysomething BFFs. It's terrain regularly traveled in pop culture, from Sex and the City to Girls; unlike the women in those shows, though, Flynn's girlfriends don't seem to like each other very much. When Caro lands a role in Romeo and Juliet, Anna can't keep her jealousy in check, and the idea that they need each other at all relies on various cliches of female theater-people bonding, rather than the complicated realities of friendship. Given the low-stakes setup, the best parts of this are played as sketch comedy. The rest falls flat, with a script that takes on various plot twists and detours into farce and puppetry—more than Amy Buckler's 90-minute production can handle. —Suzanne Scanlon $15-$20
Oklahoma!
Through 5/19: Wed-Sun, times vary; see websiteTheater & Performance
Lyric Opera's mounting of Rodgers and Hammerstein's landmark 1943 musical offers audiences a rare chance to see Agnes de Mille's original choreography, with its innovative melding of folk dance and classical ballet, performed by top-flight dancers under the guidance of de Mille protegee Gemze de Lappe. And it's great to hear Robert Russell Bennett's arrangements of Rodgers's score played by an opera house orchestra under James Lowe's baton. But despite splendid vocals (notably soprano Ashley Brown in the female lead) and expertly timed comic supporting performances (kudos to Usman Ally as a womanizing traveling salesman), director Gary Griffin's handling of the story's dramatic core—the rivalry between a cocky cowboy and a threatening farmhand for the love of a headstrong farm woman—is shallow. The result is sometimes exhilarating and always entertaining, but Oklahoma! is capable of more. —Albert Williams $32-$153
The Pajama Game
Through 5/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PMTheater & Performance
Maybe all the larger-than-life Mormons, big fish, and Aussie queens tramping through Chicago's theaters have me jaded, but this 1954 musical feels like a museum piece from another time, when unions ran the town and gender politics weren't proper dinner table conversation. Still, the Music Theatre Company's production is another showcase of Jessica Redish's flawless Fosse choreography (especially during the deliciously divey "Hernando's Hideaway") and a cast of top-notch talent. Jason Richards and Dana Tretta provide comic relief as Vernon Hines, the "time study man" who keeps Sleep Tite Pajama Factory on schedule, and Gladys, the witty object of his affection. And of his jealous nature—some passionate knife throwing certainly livens things up in the second act. —Marissa Oberlander $27-$40
Pride Films and Plays Gay Play Weekend
5/17-5/19: Fri 7 PM, Sat 4 and 7 PM, Sun 1 and 4 PMTheater & Performance
A weekend of five new works that explore themes of sexuality, in settings from rural Michigan to northern England. $10
The Ruling Class
Through 5/19: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PMTheater & Performance
Peter Barnes's pitch-black 1968 comedy concerns an insane British nobleman who imagines he's Jesus Christ, the god of love; disabused of his delusion, he comes to see himself as the Old Testament god of vengeance incarnated as Jack the Ripper. Barnes's satire of upper-class privilege and sexual and religious hypocrisy isn't subtle, but it's brutally funny, and the play deserves better than Goat Song Theatre's amateurish production. Evan Sawdey handles the challenging lead role (immortalized onscreen by Peter O'Toole) without any serious missteps, but the supporting performances are shallow, the English accents slipshod, and one crucial part—the aristocratic family's elderly Jeevesian retainer—is fatally miscast as a long-haired Falstaffian rogue. Worst of all, the costumes don't remotely suit the characters and setting. —Albert Williams $15-$20
Still Alice
Through 5/19: Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 PM, Sun 3 and 7:30 PMTheater & Performance
The most succinct first-person account of living with Alzheimer's disease remains the one provided by the first person diagnosed with it. Auguste Deter was 51 years old and otherwise healthy when she was brought, in 1901, to Dr. Alois Alzheimer's clinic in Frankfurt, Germany, with a strange case of what looked like premature senility characterized by confusion, volatile behavior, and severe memory lapses. "I have lost myself," she said. That about sums it up. The plaques and tangles Alzheimer would find in Deter's brain after her death, five years later, were strangling more than her neurons. They were destroying her identity, too. The past makes us who we are; if we lose access to it, we lose access to ourselves. Continue reading >> $36-$70
Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan Ave.
Gold Coast/Mag Mile/Streeterville
312-337-0665Trumbo: Red, White, and Blacklisted
Through 5/19: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PMTheater & Performance
Buffalo Theatre Ensemble presents this drama about the Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted and sent to prison in 1947. $25-$33
