Author: Colin Douglas
Duck and Cover or Fight Back?
This is Only a Test – Broken Nose Theatre
It’s come to this: almost everyone owns a gun now in this country, and school shootings are practically a daily occurrence. The result is lockdown drills being held in every educational institution that are as commonplace as tornado and fire drills. But playwright Eric Reyes Loo has taken these preventative exercises to another level in his world premiere drama. Inspired by a report he saw on MSNBC about how one high school was doing more than simply locking down, in response to the epidemic of shootings in this country, Loo saw a play in the students’ reactions to their training. The kids were skeptical at being instructed how to fight back. Their collective view of the program was that it was all fake and just like practicing for a school play.
Read More
Out of the Closet
Sons of Hollywood – Windy City Playhouse
It’s fair to say that most audiences who attend this “Play With Music” will have never heard of movie star, Ramon Novarro. But playwrights Barry Ball and Carl Menninger have done their research. They’ve delved into the lives of both Navarro and his best friend, Billy Haines, then added in the character of co-star and mutual friend, Lucille LeSueur (who would later be known as Joan Crawford). They’ve spiced up their story up with enough fiction and fantasy to add a degree of dramatic cohesiveness and sufficient sexual titillation. The result is an entertaining full-length play set primarily in the world of silent films and the early talkies of the 1920’s and 30’s.
Read More
Animosities Soon Drizzle Away
Outside Mullingar – Citadel Theatre
John Patrick Shanley (the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Moonstruck” and the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright of “Doubt”) has written a tightly constructed, charmingly romantic fable about four stubborn people and, ultimately, the power of love. Set in rural Ireland, the story, inspired by the playwright’s Irish cousins, revolves around two neighboring, elderly adults and their 40-something offspring. It’s about a farm, about the relationship between these two dwindling families and about how loneliness can be sent packing when love is invited into one’s life.
Read More
Melancholy With a Few Laughs
Blues in the Night – Porchlight Music Theater
Because it’s the birthplace of the Blues and the longtime home of Jazz, this musical revue is, quite naturally, set in Southside Chicago, at a rundown hotel during the Great Depression. The show is the 1980, Tony-nominated creation of TV and film director, Sheldon Epps. Although there’s no dialogue to connect the songs, the musical selections seem to kind of blend into a sketchy story set in this Windy City boardinghouse. Never given actual names, the main characters are simply called The Lady from the Road, The Woman of the World and The Girl with a Date. Together with The Man in the Saloon and with frequent appearances by The Dancing Man (a character created especially for this production), the fragmented plot centers on the women’s relationships with the same repugnant Romeo.
Read More
The Most Beautiful Sound I Ever Heard…
West Side Story – Marriott Theatre
Back in the 1950’s when newspapers were just beginning to cover the tragic stories of teenage gangs killing each other while waging turf wars, a new show would evolve from these events that would forever change the face of the American Musical. Noteworthy, too, was that this new theatrical form resulted from a collaboration between artistic geniuses Arthur Laurents (book), Leonard Bernstein (score), Jerome Robbins (direction and choreography) and a new kid on the Broadway block named Stephen Sondheim (lyrics).
Read More
A Son’s First Hero
Queen of the Night – Victory Gardens Theater
In travis tate’s one-act dramedy, having its Chicago premiere at Victory Gardens Theater, the audience feels as if they’re listening in on a conversation that’s occurred between fathers and sons for decades. It’s not new. A father and his son try to reconnect while on a weekend camping trip at a Texas state park. Ty, the twenty-something son, is flamboyantly gay. Stephen, his dad, is divorced from Ty’s mother, and she’s about to remarry. Although we don’t see him, Ty also has an older brother who, we’re told, feels similarly disconnected from his father. For three nights and days they camp out in the woods, where the birds, bugs and bears roam freely, and the two men try to finally come together.
Read More
Endless Deja Vu
Groundhog Day: The Musical
Each year, Phil Conners, a cynical, arrogant, womanizing television weatherman from Pittsburg, is assigned to cover the annual Groundhog Day celebration in the rural town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Cocky Mr. Conners views this assignment as being beneath his journalistic talent. However, once again he reluctantly accompanies his cameraman, Larry, and Rita Hanson, his lovely new producer, to the small hamlet, whose only claim to fame is a meteorologically clairvoyant rodent. From the start, things don’t go very well…and they continue to grow worse.
Read More
Unstoppable Girl Power and Talent
Women of Soul With a Special Tribute to Aretha Franklin – Mercury Theater
You probably think it’s electricity, but there’s actually so much Girl Power and unstoppable musical talent and energy on the stage, it’s lighting the marquee above the Mercury Theater. For the next several weeks, this company of eight dazzling divas, along with one gifted guy, are taking their audiences on a melodic trip down memory lane. The songs never stop and the portrayals of these famous soulful women are incredibly accurate and magical.
Read More
High Flying Adored
Evita – Drury Lane Theatre
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s pop/rock opera is a spectacular work of art, no matter where it’s produced. The musical has been entertaining and emotionally affecting audiences around the world since its 1978 West End opening. That first English production followed the success of a concept record album two years earlier. The show became an unprecedented hit and was awarded London’s Lawrence Olivier Award for Best Musical. Then “Evita” opened on Broadway the next year, where it became the very first British musical to win the Tony Award for Best Musical, along with six others, as well as a whole raft of additional accolades and honors. I’ve been fortunate to have seen many of these earlier productions, including a stellar 2013 National Tour that was fantastic.
Read More
You Can’t Stop the Beat!
Hairspray – Broadway in Chicago
“The Nicest Kids in Town” are teasing their hair, singing and dancing up a storm and striking a blow for equal rights in the latest production from Broadway in Chicago. It’s a bang-up, non-stop, rock ’n rolling Tony Award-winning musical that makes audiences want to get up and dance in the aisles. This National Tour is masterfully directed by Matt Lenz with almost nonstop, high-octane choreography, originally by the enormously talented Jerry Mitchell, and recreated here by Michele Lynch. This non-Equity production thoroughly entertains, while capturing all the spirit and social relevance of Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan’s script, which was adapted from the campy1988 John Waters film.
Read MoreRECOMMENDED SITES
