The Man in the Chair

The Drowsy Chaperone

The house lights dim leaving the audience waiting in the dark for something to happen. Suddenly a man’s voice breaks the silence. The unnamed man confides that his personal prayer at every musical he attends, while sitting in a theatre before the lights go up, is that the show be short and that the actors stay out of the aisles. This audience laughs knowingly because they’ve undoubtedly been at a play where the fourth wall is broken and theatergoers become asked to clap, sing along or even come up on the stage. The feeling is, “Hey, I paid YOU to entertain ME!” 

Let the Good Times Roll!

Blues For an Alabama Sky

Welcome to the Harlem Renaissance. The bootleg champagne is flowing and the good times are rolling. It’s 1930 and Pearl Cleage’s exuberant and deeply moving play is sometimes funny and peppered with blues and jazzy music. But the play also provides a clear look at the lives of five very different individuals while tackling some serious social issues. Ms. Cleage’s drama celebrates the art, music, dreams and deep friendships forged within the urban African-American community during the Depression. Somewhere offstage are the shadows of luminaries like Langston Hughes, Margaret Sanger, Josephine Baker. But onstage we’re treated to four amiable and attractive New Yorkers whose lives are about to change, thanks to the blues brought on by a newcomer from Alabama.

Deep Cut

The Rise and Fall of Little Voice

If you’ve never seen Jim Cartwright’s play, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, you might assume that it’s yet another of those Broadway or Hollywood musical melodramas about a real-life or fictional singing sensation who rises to worldwide fame and then is destroyed by drugs, drink, groupies, self-doubt, the depredations of the music industry, or Fame itself.  We’ve all seen this story before.

A Soul in Torment

A View From the Bridge

Shattered Globe Theatre is known, and relied upon for, their consistently excellent productions. Their current presentation of “A View From the Bridge,” one of Arthur Miller’s finest, most gut-wrenching dramas, is as rewarding an evening in the theater as you’re ever going to find.

Birthdays Are Like Boomerangs

Revolution

Someone once wrote that best friends are like soulmates. They stick by your side, no matter what. And that’s what playwright Bret Neveu celebrates in his world premiere that’s named for the hair salon where two of the three characters are employed. In fact Puff, the newly-appointed manager of Revolution Hair Cuts, has decided to commemorate her 26th birthday in an unusual location: the alley behind the mall where she works. She agrees to share the day with her best friend and co-worker, Jame. The Rain Forest Cafe looms just 300 feet away and serves up some provocative drinks, perfect for a special occasion. But their hard-earned paychecks can go a lot further and provide a greater blowout on the loading dock of Revolution. 

STEP UP TO THE MIKE 

Mic Father, Like Son

Whatever happened to the funny drunk?

Subtext Theater Company’s enjoyable new comedy, Mic Father, Mike Son (not the greatest title, frankly) begins with a retirement party for the number one-rated radio personality in Kansas City, Mike Aldridge, Sr., to which the station’s newscaster, Marty (Andrew Pond) shows up uninvited.  Marty, who claims to be a non-drinker, quaffs a couple of cranberry-and-vodkas, and is almost instantaneously transformed into a bug-eyed, blundering blabbermouth who stumbles about the stage, collapses repeatedly and mugs shamelessly for the audience.  As a performance, it’s hammy, retrograde, tasteless, irresponsible, a relic of the era of Jackie Gleason or W.C. Fields — and absolutely hilarious.  (I never understood why in our socially self-conscious age funny drunks went out of fashion, as they’re always portrayed as fools.) It’s the best thing about this somewhat uneven play, and — as far as the anachronistic stumblebum clowning — that’s easily explained by the fact that the Aldridge family home, as the program states, “has not been redecorated since 1982.” Neither, apparently, has playwright and director Jonathan “Rocky” Hagloch’s approach to comedy, and that’s mostly a good thing.

A Thriller Chiller

The Mousetrap

The model for every theatrical thriller ever written, “The Mousetrap,” Agatha Christie’s famous murder mystery, is still playing 71 years later in London. The play has the distinction of being the longest-running of the modern era. With well over 29,000 performances to its credit, Ms. Christie’s crime drama is an especial favorite with regional and educational theatres. The Guinness Book of World Records calls Dame Agatha Christie the best-selling crime novelist of all time, but in 1930 she began a second career as a successful playwright. From over 20 scripts, which include “Ten Little Indians” (or its original title “And Then There Were None”), and “Witness for the Prosecution,” it’s “The Mousetrap” that still remains Christie’s most popular theatrical work.

A Passing Beauty

By the time Chicago theatre-goers read this review, the Three Crows Theatre production of Martin McDonagh’s play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, will most likely have already closed.  Its foreshortened run — just 12 performances in 11 days, closing September 17 — is the result of a fire at the theatre company’s original venue.  

A Work in Progress

Baked! The Musical

A real cause for celebration, the magnificent and unique Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre has opened its 26th season of musicals and concert productions. Fred Anzevino’s crowd-pleasing, critically lauded venue, always recognized for its high quality entertainment presented in an intimate setting, is beginning the year with a Season of Sondheim. But before those three sublime Stephen Sondheim musicals take to the stage, Theo is doing something else it does that makes Anzevino’s theatre so special. They’re giving a pair of fledgling writer/composers an opportunity to fully stage their new musical.  

Last Tango in Boston

North & Sur

North & Sur by Oscar Perdomo Marín, in its world premiere production by Water People Theater, is an engrossing, site-specific evening of theatre about an imagined meeting between a poet from the North, the enigmatic bard from Boston Edgar Allan Poe, and a poet from the South, the Argentine female poet Alfonsina Storni.