Whimsical Roaming SHERLOCK Is the Perfect Summer Activity
Do you remember what it was like to see your world as a game? I picture myself as a child, a small flame-haired thing, running around heavily-wooded Defiance, Missouri, thinking my little universe is but an ever-stretching scene of discovery. An oddly shaped stone, a lost pen cap, the first summer firefly– everything in sight was a clue to unraveling the wonder of the everyday. I was happy to catch a glimpse of that feeling again this weekend with SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE MYSTERY OF PORTAGE PARK, watching merrily on as adults and children alike take delight in the seemingly ordinary world around them.
Deftly Crafted Would-Be Superheroes Fly in PROWESS
In a time when most storefronts have little faith in their audience to make it through 90 minutes without looking at their phone, Prowess flies through it’s 2+ hour run time.
RENT Serves Up ‘Honest Living’ at Metropolis
“Honest living! Honest living!” an ensemble member cries out, miming a window washer in this setting of grimy, mid-AIDS epidemic New York City. I don’t think I’ve ever really noticed this moment in RENT before. But isn’t that what RENT is? Honest. Living.
JOHANNA FAUSTUS Is a Cloudy Adaptation
Armed with innovative storytelling tools, the Hypocrites can transport you through time and space with simple, committed magic, often leaving the wizardry at the tip of their fingers to ignite whenever they wish. It is no surprise they present epic stories in a modern, easy-to-connect-with style.
DEATH AND HOUDINI Still Daring as Hell
At the House, they take great care of their audience. I usually shrink down in my seat at the thought of audience participation, but under Nathan Allen’s direction and Watkins’ mastery, to participate feels like we might be in on the trick.
Hilarious ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS Is Not to Be Missed
Richard Bean’s ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS—based on the 18th-century commedia dell’arte play The Servent of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni—is a laugh-out-loud, silly, whip-crack smart comedy, and probably the most fun I’ve had at the theater in a long time.
Passionate Actors Drive HAYMARKET
Underscore Theatre Company has put a beast of a show together in this world premiere musical/song cycle about this defining moment in the labor movement and Chicago history.
TWISTED KNOTS Delivers Honest Laughs
Unlike today, the working men of the 60s were not allowed to display vulnerability in their careers or marriage. This play revisits the era of yesterday in a modern setting where men believe they must always excel without fail in every aspect of life, especially career and family. Frank Mormon, a salesman on the brink of a midlife crisis, allows his neurotic superstitions to render him incapable of having the sexiest of New Year’s Eve celebrations with his prostitute for hire, who we quickly discover is his role playing wife. Dale Danner’s TWISTED KNOTS is a simple yet hilarious story, akin to an episodic sitcom, like the good ones I use to watch with my grandfather. The ones that always left the audience with metaphoric lessons of life.
DISCORD—The Gospel According to Jefferson, Dickens and Tolstoy
There is quite a bit of harmony in DISCORD, Northlight’ 41st season closer: an intellectual discourse between three historical giants while they dissect theological and philosophical ideas accompanied by a dynamic mixture of highbrow and lowbrow humor.
NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRY Bubbles over with Ideas
NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRY is staged exactly where it should be. Wedged behind a tiny door at the end of a dark alleyway, Trap Door Theatre’s space perfectly suits this absurd portrait of drab and depressing life in Poland after World War II. Joanna Iwanicka’s set, a single dull, monochromatic room flanked by electric blue refuse (think Sin City, but five feet away from you) spills ever so slightly into the audience. You’re simultaneously in the room and observing it. A tiny, glowing TV screen sitting downstage center faces the stage, muddling the notion of who is watching whom.
