Performing Arts Search – Member Picks
Big 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
773-528-9696The Night of the Iguana
Through 5/25: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PMTheater & Performance
A reverend struggles with his faith during a night in a tropical Mexican hotel. $32 suggested donation
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
Don Quixote
5/25-5/26: Sat 7 PM, Sun 2 PMDance
University Ballet of Chicago presents a comedic rendition of the Miguel de Cervantes novel. $5-$12
Pal Joey
Through 5/26: Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PMTheater & Performance
A rich, middle-aged socialite and a dumb but sexy young dancer exploit each other for fun and profit. Locked in a loveless marriage, the socialite wants a little something on the side; the dancer, a gold-digger with the morals of an alley cat, wants someone to pay the bills. The socialite sets the dancer up in a "love nest," as it used to be called, and bankrolls the would-be star's new nightclub. It's a standard scenario of showbiz sleaze, but in the landmark Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey, set in late-30s Chicago, there's a twist: the socialite is a woman, the dancer a man. That role reversal is unconventional even now, when relationships between young guys and old dolls still raise eyebrows in some quarters. In 1940, when Pal Joey premiered, having a woman on top was downright perverse, if not perverted. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson called the show "odious" and decried its "depravity," asking rhetorically, "Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?" Continue reading >> $39
The Robbers
Through 5/26: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PMTheater & Performance
Friedrich Schiller's first play, from 1781, recalls the Gloucester subplot of King Lear: a charismatic villain steals the inheritance and position of his virtuous brother, and their father realizes too late that he's trusted the wrong son. Schiller turns the bad seed, Francis, into a despotic count, while his wronged sibling, Charles, becomes the morally conflicted leader of a band of thieves. Brad Gunter's modern-dress staging for Strangeloop Theatre has an all-female cast and a let's-play-dress-up framing device that's ill defined and unnecessary. The director's occasional heavy-handedness is redeemed, however, by the show's whiz-bang pacing—even during long speeches on the nature of freedom—and swashbuckling performances, especially Margo Chervony's blazing turn as Francis. —Zac Thompson $10-$15
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
The Hunting of the Snark
Through 5/28: Sun-Tue 8 PMTheater & Performance
Lewis Carroll's 1874 poem, about a boatload of ill-prepared would-be huntsmen tracking a never seen but possibly deadly creature, may be a heavily coded memorial to his uncle, a lunatic-asylum inspector killed by a patient a few months before the poem's creation. Or it may be pure nonsense. Whatever it is, its exacting rhyme scheme creates a giddy tension between formality and fancy, giving the cryptic work its power. Director Josh Sobel packs ample Carrollesque fancy into Strawdog Theatre Company's 50-minute adaptation, his childlike 12-person cast embarking on spontaneous adventures and inventing ingenious images out of suitcases, bits of rope, and handheld lights. But they play the silliness, never the seriousness—forgetting that Carroll himself delivered whimsy with an unwavering poker face. —Justin Hayford $15
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
Hump Night
Through 5/29: Wed 7:30 and 10:30 PMImprov/Sketch
Kevin Mullaney hosts this improv-based variety show, which features local comedians and musicians. pay what you want
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
GrimmFest
Through 6/1: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PMTheater & Performance
The first annual GrimmFest features eight original pieces inspired by classic stories from the Brothers Grimm. $10-15
A Study in Scarlet
Through 6/1: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PMTheater & Performance
Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Sherlock Holmes in the 1887 novella on which this new adaptation is based, and that makes it a fascinating historical document. We get to see Holmes at a point when most of his well-known characteristics are present but haven't yet solidified into paradigm or cliche. He's a brilliant if desultory college student, pursuing what we might now call a self-designed major and displaying what we might now identify as autistic-spectrum behavior. His deductive method is still such a novelty that it gets its own chapter. And the story itself is peculiar, featuring a long flashback to the American west and—believe it or not—the depredations of some evil Mormons. Trouble is, Doyle's structure is just as peculiar as his story. The flashback appears as a kind of extended coda, after the case has already been solved and all the tension dissipated. Adapter/director Paul Edwards doesn't do anything to fix that, so the final third of Promethean Theatre Ensemble's 90-minute production is plain tedious, Mormons notwithstanding. —Tony Adler $22
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
