Events Next 7 Days – The Short List (Theater)
El Stories
Open run: Sat 11 PM,Theater & Performance
The latest iteration of the Waltzing Mechanics' long-running homage to the Chicago Transit Authority tries to encapsulate comedy, tragedy, and the triumph of the spirit in vignettes that play out in an onstage train car. It inhibits itself in one important way: the "el stories," based on interviews, are told verbatim—and I found the likes, ums, and buts distracting (and perhaps a troubling metastatement on how language has devolved). Linguistics aside, nothing in Chicago is more relatable than the el, and some standout bits resonated with a universal truth: the drunk bro's inappropriate advances, the sick passenger making everyone else wish they could teleport to safety, and the impromptu late-night sing-along. —Marissa Oberlander $15
The Magic Parlour
Open run: Fri 7:30 and 9:30 PM; also Sun 5/12, 1 PMTheater & Performance
This 60-minute, late-night magic show is exactly what it should be: funny, lively, intimate, and utterly baffling. House Theatre of Chicago member Dennis Watkins blends quick-witted improv and physical comedy with freewheeling patter as he performs classic illusions. Though his sleight-of-hand is impossibly subtle, it was the mind reading tricks that seemed to have drawn several inquisitive skeptics back for another look on the night I attended. A curio-shop intimacy and cash bar encourage audience participation, and Watkins, with his Eagle Scout looks, clearly takes a mischievous pleasure in the unexpected. Just let your cell phone go off during the show and see what kind of fun he has. --Keith Griffith $75
Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind
Open run: Fri-Sat 11:30 PM, Sun 7 PM,
773-275-5255Theater & Performance
The Neo-Futurists perform 30 plays in 60 minutes in this "futurist evening in the grand Italian tradition." The fare changes weekly in this long-running production; between two and 12 new scripts are performed each week depending on the roll of a die. This is funny, wise, nakedly honest, sometimes unsettling, and invariably entertaining theater. —Jennifer Vanasco $9 plus the roll of a die ($10-$15)
The Magic Cabaret
Open run: Wed 8 PM, 773-404-7336Theater & Performance, Halloween
P.T. Murphy and David Parr's show continues to "take the 'ic' out of magic." Classic bits involving card tricks and swallowed needles blend with anecdotes about Chicago's history as a magic capital and Murphy and Parr's own youthful obsessions with the craft. The two deliver a bombast-free evening of chamber illusions, bantering easily with each other and the audience in a spare and intimate setting. A chilling interlude invoking H.H. Holmes, the serial killer immortalized as the "devil in the White City," reminds us that no amount of prestidigitation can reveal the motivations of monsters. --Kerry Reid $20, no one under 13 years old admitted
ComedySportz Theatre
Open run: Thu 8 PM, Fri 8 and 10 PM, Sat 6, 8, and 10 PMImprov/Sketch
Part of a national chain of comedy clubs, this company is known for quick improv games (think Whose Line Is It Anyway?), but it also stages long-form improv. LCD screens and sophisticated lighting and sound systems amplify the sports-style improv of the company's eponymous production, ComedySportz. There's a snobbery in the Chicago improv community that looks up at the "art" of the long form, with its emphasis on story and characters, and down on the "entertainment" of the short, with its emphasis on games and punch lines. ComedySportz falls emphatically in the entertainment camp; its bottom line is laughter, and it gets plenty of it. The show is structured as a competition between two teams performing multiple games that require audience participation. A referee ensures that the players--a rotating roster from a company of about 50--work clean or they finish the game with a brown bag over their heads. The formula is practically foolproof: players may flash their quick wits in winning responses, but they're even funnier when they fail. In one game a team had to devise a pick-up line, each member contributing a word. Moving rapidly from player to player, the line developed: "Tonight-I'll-tango-with-your-face." Probably wouldn't work at a bar, but at ComedySportz it killed. --Ryan Hubbard
$19
The Book of Mormon
Through 10/6: Tue-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PMTheater & Performance
I know it'll seem incomprehensible to you fans of talking turds, but I've never paid Comedy Central's South Park much mind one way or another. And when New York fell all over itself last year appreciating The Book of Mormon, I wondered if there wasn't just a smidge of hyperbole in calling the musical by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone (along with Robert Lopez) the best of the "century." Now that I've seen the Chicago production, however, I've been—well—converted. A wise mix of nasty satire and compassionate truth telling, Parker, Stone, and Lopez's tale of Mormon missionaries in Uganda is as entertaining—and, strangely, uplifting—a piece of work as anything in recent American theater. Although the book draws whole quivers full of big red arrows to everything that's ludicrous about the Mormon way, it also ends up making a case for the hope we all derive from silly myths. Meanwhile, playful as it is, it ranks up there with Lynn Nottage's Ruined in exposing the danger, dignity, and distortions of African life. The cast is uniformly and perfectly seductive. And is that Steppenwolf's famously earnest James Vincent Meredith, showing a new side of himself as the Ugandan village chief? Incredible. —Tony Adler
$65-$125
A Nude Hope: A Star Wars Burlesque
Open run: Sat 7:30 and 9 PMTheater & Performance
Answering the prayers of nerdy straight guys everywhere, this Geek Girl Burlesque show features a bunch of scantily clad women reenacting the first Star Wars movie. The only character who isn't played by a woman, R2-D2, is represented by a trash can. M.C. Curran's script closely follows the plot of the original except that the action frequently pauses so cast members can strip down to pasties and panties. Even Chewbacca gets a turn. In the spirit of Minsky's, Timothy Bambara's staging is more suggestive than raunchy and as concerned with laughs and novelty as with titillation. It also offers the rare chance to see Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi perform a posthumous striptease to the Bee Gees' "I Started a Joke." —Zac Thompson $35
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
Lipstick Goes on Last
Through 6/23: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PMTheater & Performance
Charting where this nostalgic comedy goes awry may actually require graph paper. The domestic dissatisfactions of Meredith, a shrill, alcoholic 70s housewife and sometime beauty queen, come to light in the run-up to her daughter Megan's first school dance, and are felicitously resolved when, after some soul searching, Meredith determines to forgive, forget, and quit drinking. The script redraws no emotional boundaries, and other obvious problems, like stifling marital arrangements and closeted homosexuality, receive no serious treatment, unless loads of pointless innuendo count. Drunkenness, outrage, and teen angst seem simultaneously arbitrary and forced. As Megan's dad, Guy F. Wicke brings a much-needed shot of freshness to a production otherwise inoculated against funny. —Jena Cutie $30
Amadeus
Through 7/13: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM; no show Thu 7/4, additional shows Wed 7/3 and 7/10, 8 PM 708-445-4440Theater & Performance
The murder conspiracy that lies at the heart of Peter Shaffer's 1979 drama—that rival composer Antonio Salieri was responsible for Mozart's death—is fiction, but it still makes for great theater. Especially when it's presented with as much intelligence and fire as it is in Mark Richard's staging for Oak Park Festival Theatre. Directing again after a long hiatus, Richard has crafted a graceful, powerful production that artfully balances both the emotional and intellectual sides of Shaffer's script, and Kevin Theis and Chris Daley expertly bring the lead antagonists to life. Theis is particularly fine as Salieri, embodying all that's dark and bright in this deeply conflicted character. —Jack Helbig
Dinner With the Elams
Open run: Thu 8 PMImprov/Sketch
It takes a great deal of good chemistry for an improv group to click—without it, funny riffs go hanging and good scenes are cut short. Dinner With the Elams has an unfair advantage in that department, as three of the performers are siblings and the other two are marrying into the family: joining Erica, Brett, and Scott Elam in the experienced team are Brett's fiancee, Jet Eveleth (artistic director of the Chicago Improv Festival), and Scott's fiancee, Lisa Burton. It's an enticing hook and makes for plenty of ribbing, like on the night I went, when Erica started off the show by having Scott tell how he lost his virginity. But it doesn't devolve into awkward teasing and gross-out humor, and only once did siblings threaten to kiss. Instead, the family builds scenes unselfishly, working as a really poised and awfully hilarious unit to bring out the best in each other. If their Thursday night show is this good, the family reunion must be formidable. —Asher Klein $12
The Improvised Shakespeare Company
Open run: Fri 8 PMImprov/Sketch
Seven strapping men in swashbuckler shirts improvise a two-act Shakespearean play based on a title suggested by the audience. At the show I saw, "The Taming of the Jew" inspired the Bard's usual themes (religion, family, betrayal) and plot devices (murders, disguises, fortunes gained/lost) as well as an uncomfortably funny circumcision. Director-performer Blaine Swen, a veteran of long-form Shakespearean improv who swears they don't conspire during the intermission, has assembled a vigorous ensemble of actors and proven improvisers. Their experience doing Shakespeare flowers in the language: they relish iambic dialogue, execute perfectly timed asides, occasionally utter rhyming couplets (some hilariously forced: "Let us be quick-sa, and get to the bar mitzvah!"), and drop parodic phrases ("scurvenous knave," "midfortnight report") and well-placed anachronisms (the bar mitzvah had a DJ). Even the ending echoed the real plays: story lines resolved tidily--and uproariously. (RH)
$14
The Funny Story Show
Open run: third Fri of each month, 7:30 PMSpoken Word/Poetry Slams/Open Mikes
Six local comics tell autobiographical anecdotes. $5
Whirled News Tonight Presents Newspeak
Open run: Sat 8 PMImprov/Sketch
The current incarnation of director Jason R. Chin's production is smart. On the night I attended this show, based on audience contributions of news stories, a sketch involving Bipedal Locomotion Enterprises would have taken a prize for vocabulary alone. The ten-member ensemble also made casual references to Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and William Golding. And how many twentysomethings can do an accurate Alfred Hitchcock impression extempore? Instead of going for the broad and vulgar, these folks more often opt for the microcosmic. A patriarchal defense of polygamy is transformed into a wife lamenting the responsibilities of having multiple husbands. A report about terrorists plotting via Internet cafes sparks visions of subversive activities impeded by spam, pop-ups, and IMing. The players exhibit a genuine rapport: articulate dialogue unfolds logically, swiftly, and concisely. --Mary Shen Barnidge $14
Late Nite Catechism
Open run: Thu and Sat 8 PM 312-988-9000Theater & Performance
A bona fide born-in-Chicago international hit, this simultaneously nostalgic and satirical comedy by Vicki Quade and Maripat Donovan concerns a nun instructing her students—that's you—on the dos and don'ts of dogma. —Jack Helbig $30
