Monthly Archives: February 2019
The Chocolate Cream Soldier
Arms and the Man – ChicagoShaw Theater Company
Continuing their 25th season, which is celebrating “All Shaw, All the Time,” is this popular and charming classic. Considered to be one of the playwright’s most entertaining comedies, ShawChicago has included a new production of this play in a season that celebrates the company’s namesake. Audiences unfamiliar with this company’s superb handling of the playwright’s works are in for a real treat. The play truly is the thing, because ShawChicago’s productions consist primarily of the author’s words. Stripped of snazzy scenery, ponderous props and special effects, the actors receive all of the focus, all the while carrying scripts and portraying their roles upon a bare stage. Mary Michell, in the tradition of the company’s late founder and artistic director, Robert Scogin, guides her actors toward their discovery of the play’s dynamics and pitch. She draws their performances downstage and full front. Working from music stands, the cast focuses front, engaging the audience as their acting partners. The result is an intimate performance that truly focuses on the author’s text.
Chicago Musical Theatre Festival
5th Annual Chicago Musical Theatre Festival – Underscore Theatre Company
Producing a new musical is hard. Nearly impossible. The time, the energy, and the cost make it a daunting task. It’s part of the reason most new Broadway musicals are revivals of classics or adaptations of known, successful properties. There’s no other way to ensure a show will make back its investment. To counter that, Underscore Theater Company is dedicated to nurturing new works in Chicago. For the fifth year, they take submissions from writers around the world and give a chosen few productions over the course of three weeks. By pooling backstage resources like sound and lighting equipment and crews, new musicals can be more economically staged, and hopefully reach a wider audience.
Read More
Comedy With a Capital C
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder – Porchlight Theatre
The magnificent production that earned the Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League and the Outer Critics Circle Awards for the Best Musical of 2014 is now a glorious production at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. This comedy, which borrows its plot from the 1949 British film, “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” and was, in turn, adapted from Roy Horniman’s novel The Autobiography of a Criminal, is as over-the-top as a play can be. With an operetta-like score, composed by Steven Lutvak, a book by Robert L. Freedman and lyrics by both gentlemen, this delightfully madcap musical is more fun than a day spent at Faulty Towers.
Read More
Permission to Start Over
The Roommate
A pair of very talented Chicago actresses absolutely own the stage in Citadel’s excellent continuation of their sixteenth season. Ellen Phelps and Laurie Carter Rose star in Jen Silverman’s two-hander about a couple of middle-age women, each from very different backgrounds, who are about to share a house together in Iowa City. Sharon, a 55-year-old divorced empty nester, decided that her roomy, two-story house is big enough for another inhabitant. After she placed an ad for a roommate, it was answered by Robyn, a woman about the same age, who’s decided to leave her Bronx home for the peace and quiet of rural Iowa. What evolves throughout this entertaining one-act is a powerful character study of two women who are each searching for a new beginning.
Read MoreRECOMMENDED SITES
