Events This Weekend – New Review (Theater and Comedy)
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
1-800-650-6449Lear
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
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
