Author: Colin Douglas
Photographs Left Undeveloped
Sundown, Yellow Moon – Raven Theatre
Cody Estle, the clever and accomplished young Artistic Director of Raven Theatre, has gently navigated this inaugural production of his company’s 37th season. Rachel Bonds’ mellow, somewhat merciful one-act drama is warmhearted, but doesn’t go anywhere. It’s like seven characters in search of a plot, or a series of photographs left undeveloped. By the end of this play with music, the audience is left wanting more.
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Overstuffed With Facts and Fiction
Mosquitoes – Steep Theatre
Like the titular insect, in the US premiere of Lucy Kirkwood’s latest drama, the author of “Chimerica” and “The Children,” tiny things appear bigger than they actually are, while larger problems sometimes unfortunately fade into oblivion. Kirkwood shows how as our scientific knowledge expands our personal understanding of each other diminishes. Yet, in a play overstuffed with so many facts and ideas, the playwright creates an argument for her theme that this is an epoch of erudition, but also an era of fear.
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Poetic and Gritty
The Brothers Size – Steppenwolf Theatre
In Steppenwolf Theatre’s latest exciting offering for Young Audiences, Director Monty Cole presents ensemble member Tarell Alvin McCraney’s second installment of his trilogy, “The Brother/Sister Plays.” Mr. McCraney is the Oscar Award-winning screenwriter for “Moonlight,” the co-creator of Steppenwolf’s recently acclaimed “Ms. Blakk for President” and the playwright of the marvelous drama, “Choir Boy,” which recently wowed New York audiences.
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A Witch, a Giant, a Mermaid and a Son
Big Fish – BoHo Theatre
Get ready to be impressed, thoroughly moved and absolutely inspired to live your life with all the exhilaration and empathy as humanly possible. BoHo Theatre has a magical hit on its hands with this beautiful, deceptively simple and gloriously production. Directed with so much love and care by the multitalented Stephen Schellhardt, this intimate production bursts beyond the stage and into the audience, warming hearts and, at times, evoking tears.
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You Take the Good, You Take the Bad
The Facts of Life – Hell in a Handbag
The magical Mr. Cerda has done it again! Finding a seemingly endless cache of farcical fodder amid the sitcoms and films of the 1970’s and 80’s, the masterful Artistic Director and creative wizard behind Hell in a Handbag Productions has hit upon a new source for his clever, campy parodies. In his clever mashup of two very different sources, David Cerda has blended the 1973 made-for-TV horror film, “Satan’s School for Girls,” with “The Facts of Life,” the chirpy television sitcom about another girls’ school.
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A Caged Songbird
A Doll’s House – Writers Theatre
A program note states that a theatre is a charged space, filled with energy and anticipation. Rather than being invited to sit back and relax, the audience is urged to lean forward and engage in the story they’re about to experience. This is sound advice for a groundbreaking, 19th century drama that was, in its 1879 Danish premiere, considered shocking and controversial. Henrik Ibsen’s play, which was based on the life of his friend, Laura Kieler, depicts how Victorian women lacked opportunities for personal fulfillment in a male-dominated world. Although times have changed significantly, equality among the sexes is still an issue everywhere, which makes this production in 2019 especially timely.
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A Psychological Horror Story
Equus – Aston Rep Theatre Company
In 1973, British playwright Sir Peter Shaffer heard a report about a horrific crime that took place in the small town of Suffolk. A 17-year-old boy had, without any understandable provocation, blinded a stable full of horses with a metal spike. Shaffer who, prior to writing “Equus,” had authored such popular plays as “The Private Ear” and “The Public Eye,” “Black Comedy” and “The Royal Hunt for the Sun.” He would go on to write a number of other important dramas, including “Amadeus” and “Lettice and Lovage.” However, of all Shaffer’s plays, this psychological horror story remains his most popular and often-produced drama.
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Stories That Kids Will Gobble Up
The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show – Chicago Children’s Theatre
As the lights dim a gentle voice reminds adults to silence their cell phones; but our host also gives permission to the show’s target audience, ages 2-7, to join in telling the stories, if they’re so moved. It’s a “no shushing production,” much to the delight of both the children and their parents, because it’s so hard to keep quiet when you’re hearing stories that are so familiar you just have to add your own voice. And kids will certainly gobble up the stories they’re about to experience.
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A Musical Daisy Chain
Hello Again – Theo Ubique
If it’s true that sex sells; this show should bring in a fortune. However, you would never know from the innocent title of this curious little 90-minute musical that it depicts just about every form of sexual expression known to man. And, in the intimate Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre, that means you get simulated sex practically in your lap. Younger and more sensitive audiences should be warned that Michael John LaChiusa’s 1993 musical is a mature, explicit treatise about how people have used sex as power throughout every decade of the 20th century.
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Lost in Space
X – Sideshow Theatre
It’s haunted house season again. As Halloween approaches, all over Chicagoland the scary habitats are popping up everywhere. The holiday has turned into a month-long celebration of all things eerie, just as Autumn begins to nip the air. But in this latest Chicago production by British playwright Alistair McDowall, known for such unsettling dramas as “Brilliant Adventures” and “Pomona,” he’s created a new kind of haunted house. Tension builds as ghostly apparitions appear and ominous events occur. Strange sights and sounds torment and terrify the crew as the astronauts and the audience find themselves helplessly lost in space.
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