Results tagged “theater”

…but there’s way too much to dig through to find it. It’s an oversimplification, but our main problem with Goodman Theatre’s High Holidays, a new play by Alan Gross, boils down to this: it's overkill. Yes, some parts were cute and / or fun. Yes, there were some solid, touching moments, However, the good parts of this show were overshadowed by issues that made us feel alienated, rather than drawn-in.

Remember Molly Brennan? That girl who played Harpo Marx? Remember how we wrote about her not so long ago? Well, we’re not going to hide the fact that we’re fans, which is why we’re writing again to say you should really check out Madame Barker’s Holiday Variety Show at the Prop Theatre.

In case you plan your theater-going 4 months in advance, tickets for the much-anticipated Chicago-run of West End, then Broadway, blockbuster Billy Elliot went on sale yesterday. The show is scheduled to open in March and could be the next Jersey Boys or Wicked. According to the Tribune, the show will play for as long as it makes money. We enjoyed the show in London but we have no idea what the Chicago production will be like. We'd say it's worth the gamble, though.

GayCo, Chicago's home for gay and lesbian sketch comedy, delivers the laughs with its new show, The Audacity of Nope or How I Fell for a Pansy Scheme, which runs through Dec. 5 at Strawdog Theater. Written by the performers themselves, the show has enlivened recent events facing the LGBT community with loads of laughter that leave practically no stone unturned, including Iowans singing about ham balls and equality.

In case you weren’t listening the first time, you should really go see Death of a Salesman at Raven Theatre. Yes, the title might conjure up some high school nightmares, but this production is top notch and has just been extended through January 16. Arthur Miller is all over the Chicago map this season, and while we can’t speak for the other productions, Raven does it right. It’s also a great show to enjoy with the folks for the holidays. (In case there weren’t already enough holiday performances going on.) Though not technically an upper, Salesman will make you appreciate what you have and come together with the ones you love. Isn't that what the holidays are all about?

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?

At the center of End Days is the Stein family. There’s Sylvia (a neurotic mother who, despite her Jewish upbringing, has recently found Jesus and Evangelism), her husband Arthur (a former corporate bigwig who lost his entire staff on 9/11), and their daughter Rachel (a high schooler in a goth phase). Add to the picture Nelson Steinberg, a newcomer to Rachel’s school who’s in love her (and his Elvis costume, which he always wears), Jesus, and Stephen Hawking, and it sounds like a ridiculous farce. But it isn’t. On the contrary, its earnestness is what makes it both successful and a bit too neat.

Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein is too funny. There are too many overused jokes, too many corny gags, and too much suggestive language. Watching the musical at the Cadillac Palace Theatre is like overdosing on Halloween candy. Sure it’s enjoyable and delicious, but in the end, you’ve consumed nothing substantial and you feel a little sick.

Broadway doesn’t love Chicago as much as it led on. Just one week after the opening of Chicago director David Cromer’s Broadway debut with Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, producers posted a closing notice for Sunday and cancelled plans for Broadway Bound, another Cromer-directed Simon show scheduled to open in a few weeks. Memoirs received mixed reviews, but apparently it needed rave reviews to live on. The show didn’t do well in the box office and advance ticket sales were weak.

Call it a hunch, but we’re guessing you weren’t invited to Redmoon Theater’s Halloween performance at the White House. Yeah, we weren’t either. But no worries, there are plenty of shows to check out this weekend. In no particular order:

First off, we should tell you that we’re more familiar with Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein” than Mary Shelley’s original novel. Or the Boris Karloff movie. Or any other version, really. (Our apologies to the Chicagoist Literary and Film Offices if they’re ashamed of us in any way.) The point is: We fully accept that The Hypocrites’ Frankenstein may have included references that went right over our heads. That being said: Prior knowledge and research certainly enrich the audience’s experience, but they shouldn’t be required. Throughout this entire show, we couldn’t shake the feeling that we had missed something. It was a frustrating 70 minutes.

We love storefront theater. There are no daunting crowds; the actors are right there; and you can usually enjoy a beer during the show. Chicago thrives on these theaters, and Rogers Park’s No Exit Café numbers among the best of ‘em. And while we also love Theo Ubique and applaud their gutsiness in Man of La Mancha, we felt a little too close to this production.

It seems like every other day we're reading about yet another theatrical project that makes us wonder if the success of Glee has caused some kind of collective brain short-circuiting. [Ed. note: I can't wait for Glee to die. How has no one else noticed it's just a cross between American Pie and the 4th season of Ally McBeal?!] Read for yourself.

There is a reason we read certain plays in high school. Sure, they’ve been done countless times across the country, occasionally in god-awful productions. Their plot summaries are all over the internet, and they can be a little boring to read. But sometime, somewhere, those words came to life onstage and changed the landscape of American culture. So before you groan that Death of a Salesman is at Raven Theatre for its second time, you should really go see it.

“Every exit is an entrance somewhere else,” Tom Stoppard writes in his Tony-award winning Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, currently playing in an excellent production at Writers’ Theatre. When the actors leave the stage where do they go? For Stoppard, the characters in Hamlet leave Shakespeare’s world and enter Stoppard's twisted universe of philosophical contemplation that left our heads spinning, in a good way.

The 41st Annual Equity Jeff Awards were held on Monday night - and since we couldn’t attend, we have to admit we were pretty amused to read that the ceremony was a bit of a mess. But despite our predilection for schaedenfreude, we do sincerely congratulate all of the winners - even if some of them didn’t bother to show for the ceremony. Extra kudos to TimeLine’s The History Boys for taking home more awards than any other production (five).

When we saw the advertisements for Lookingglass’; Fedra: Queen of Haiti, we were worried about taking our parents to the show. This “explosive” retelling was sure to bring out the junior higher in us during our folks’ visit, but we braved it anyway. However, we didn’t feel uncomfortable once. Maybe it’s a sign that we’ve outgrown parental awkwardness, but we’re pretty sure that’s not the case. The show simply did not deliver on its promises.

Lettice and Lovage, which opened Redtwist Theatre’s season last week, was written by playwright Peter Shaffer specifically for Maggie Smith. Although it won Dame Smith the 1990 Tony Award for "Best Actress In A Play" and was nominated for "Best Play" in that year, to be honest, we don’t think the script is that good. We certainly appreciate a show that provides two meaty roles for women, and yes, it’s cute - but it’s also way too long, and kind of…fluffy. Fluffy shows can be great, if they’re well-executed. Lettice and Lovage isn’t sharp enough to compensate for its fluff - an issue we suspect was not as prevalent with Maggie Smith driving the show. We just can’t help but wonder: why choose this play?

Yes, we know the headline is cheesy - but if you can’t take it, you probably won’t like the show. Yeast Nation (the triumph of life) is a new musical from the creative minds behind Urinetown, Mark Hollmann (music and lyrics) and Greg Kotis (book and lyrics). Now in its Midwest premiere at American Theatre Company, the show takes place four billion years ago, when single-celled organisms floated in the primordial soup. Although it’s written in the same self-aware style as Urinetown, the music is decidedly more 80s hairband. Perhaps more importantly, any sexual tension written into the show is tempered not only by the fact that yeasts produce asexually, but also - and this isn’t addressed - everyone is related, as they are all descendants of the same yeast. The whole thing is a bit odd - but then again, it’s about a bunch of yeast cells, so what else could it be?

Everyone is afraid of something. Lucinda is afraid of the monster under her bed. but he's not your ordinary monster. And Mia McCullough's brilliant new play Lucinda's Bed at Chicago Dramatists is anything but ordinary. It's plays like these that keep us going to the theater.

There are lots of cheap ways to see theater in Chicago, but free tickets are normally reserved for friends, family and press. Lucky for you, Theatre Communications Group (TCG) thinks you should see shows for free too - at least for this month.

Is it October already? Sure is, but you can still remember September in The Fantasticks at Porchlight Music Theatre. This refreshing production may not be the best one we’ve seen, but this musical has one of the most beautiful scores around. So as long as your cast can sing, which this one certainly can, you’ve got a great show.

I hope you’ll forgive my forsaking the usual Chicagoist first-person plural on this one - I think it’s warranted.

Mistakes Were Made, starring the Oscar nominee and currently running at A Red Orchid Theatre in Old Town, has been extended. The remainder of its run had been sold out but now Wednesday evening performances have been added through October 28. Hurry up and get tickets now. Shannon's performance is absolutely volcanic, and at only $30 a pop they won't last long.

We realize we’ve written a lot of “but” reviews lately. As in “it’s good, but…” Although it probably wouldn’t be very interesting to read, we really do wish we could tell you everything we see is good - we love theatre, and we want you to love theatre too. So we’re both relieved and slightly giddy to be able to say to you all: The Goodman Theatre’s Animal Crackers is damn good theatre.

Year Zero is a play of many firsts: The first of two plays presented in the first cycle of Victory Gardens’ “Ignition Festival,” and the first play to open in the theater’s brand-new Studio Theater. Created “to introduce exceptional new writers of color under the age of 40 to Victory Gardens,” the festival presents an exciting opportunity for playwrights and audience alike - unfortunately, we just weren’t that excited.

We've fallen in love with The Moth and its regular podcast -- discovered through its being featured on This American Life a few times -- and are excited to see they're kicking off a regular StorySLAM in Chicago, beginning with tonight's event at Martyr's.

Folding theaters, plunging box office numbers and mass layoffs have dominated the theater headlines of late. And as journalism suffers along with the stage, reviews, profiles and upcoming show previews have become few and far between in some publications. So as we were flipping through our Wall Street Journal this morning (O.K., O.K., it was a press release), we were surprised and excited to hear that there is some hope out there for the business we call show. Our very own Steppenwolf Theatre Company has been named on of the top 15 places to work by the Wall Street Journal’s Top Small Workplaces 2009.

At the center of Fake, which opened Steppenwolf Theatre’s season on Tuesday night, is the “Piltdown Man.” A reconstructed skeletal head consisting of skull and jawbone fragments allegedly discovered in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England in 1912, Piltdown Man was considered to be the missing link between man and ape. Although its authenticity was challenged almost immediately, it was not declared a forgery by the scientific community for 40 years, when advances were able to prove that the reconstruction was actually an orangutan jawbone combined with the skull of a modern man. Got it? Now on to the actual play.

We didn’t know much about Brendan Behan’s The Hostage before we showed up at Griffin Theatre's opening night, but after reading dramaturg Stefka Mihaylova’s program notes, we figured we were up to speed. It’s 1960, the Republic of Ireland is independent from England but separate from Northern Ireland, and former I.R.A. (Irish Republican Army) member Pat is renting his inn as a brothel to make ends meet. It sounded pretty heavy. But then some drag queens started doing a jig. And we realized we should’ve brought some whiskey to the party.