Results tagged “500clown”

Tickets might be going for $1800 on Craigslist for Second City, but you can still hear and see some funny (and cultural) things on the cheap at the Chicago Humanities Festival. From the dance lecture “Foot is a Funny Word” to the panel “Laughter and the First Amendment” and, a personal favorite, “Laughter Bollywood Style,” the final weekend seems to be full of reasons to chuckle. So what if Tony Kushner was a round last weekend and we missed it?

Molly Brennan wants everyone to stop being mad. She's playing Harpo Marx/The Professer in the Goodman Theatre's much-anticipated production of the Marx Brothers musical Animal Crackers, and despite what you may have heard, she has no gender-bending agenda. However, even Brennan was a bit skeptical at first. "The Goodman? A girl playing Harpo?" she says, remembering her initial reaction to the theater's proposition. "It never occured to me that they would think of that." And when she was actually cast, even after missing the first audition, she still couldn't believe it. "Really? Really? You want me?...It felt very much like a gift."

From tumbling clowns to flying middle-aged men, the two shows playing at the Steppenwolf couldn’t be more different. One’s a comedic, musical improvisational concoction; the other is a deftly didactic story. Here’s our reviews of both shows.