New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on March 20, 2012 by lisafindley

Here’s a fun one: Pulp Fiction as told in Shakespearean verse. Well, only sometimes in verse, but always in olde tyme language, which makes for some great moments of recognition when the audience hears an infamous Tarantino line translated into Jacobean vocabulary. Here’s an excerpt of my play review:

Zagoren’s Vincenzio has a good amount of John Travolta’s take on the character, but he adds a wonderful hangdog quality that bounces off King’s angry Julius well. Christopher Kidder’s direction is fast-paced, and the production finds a rhythm that suits both the prince of pop culture and the true Bard.

You can read the rest of the review here. It definitely needs to be shorter, and do we need the whole offstage rape scene? I think we do not.

But otherwise, it’s a good romp. Tarantino’s films are talky anyway, so moving this to the stage didn’t lose much in visual terms. And then there are the little touches: The guy doing Butch’s dad has Christopher Walken’s cadence down pat. Pumpkin, the guy who robs the diner with his girlfriend, wears a Hawaiian shirt–with leather laces down the middle, just like men’s blouses of old.

It’s fun. Grab a drink (looks like you can have them in the theater), settle in for the first half, and frankly, skip out on the second half to make your own bard-inspired mischief.

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on March 1, 2012 by lisafindley

I’m glad I got to see a mainstage Strawdog Theatre Company play. They’ve been around for ages, which means they have more latitude than younger companies to dust off older scripts and see what they can do with them. That seems to be what they did with The Petrified Forest (see also their Duchess of Malfi coming this spring). I enjoyed the show, especially Caroline Neff, who always seems to contain about 2.5 times more energy and emotion than normal humans. Here’s an excerpt of my play review:

Squire looks at her pictures and asks her to read poetry, and next thing she knows, Gabby’s in love. The timing is inconvenient, since the end of the second act sees the infamous Duke Mantee (Jamie Vann) and his henchmen using the café as a rest stop on their escape from the law after a massacre in Oklahoma.

You can read the rest of the review here. It’s an enjoyable show, but not an earth-shattering one. A pleasant way to pass a couple hours in Lakeview.

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on February 24, 2012 by lisafindley

Last week I saw South Pacific at the Cadillac Palace downtown, and I have to say, I don’t think that musical has aged well. Or at least, the production I saw certainly hasn’t. Here’s an excerpt of my play review:

Aside from a few well choreographed numbers (“Dame,” “Honey Bun”), almost all the songs are sung hands at the side, staring straight ahead. Characters sit down randomly in the middle of songs, as if they’re too tired to make it through the whole number on their feet. The overall effect is of a tired and uninspired production.

You can read the rest here. I also wonder if it played as well as people remember when it first came out, because there are a lot of slow songs. The ratio of slow songs to fast is just way too high to stay entertaining for a full three hours of Broadway entertainment. Rodgers and Hammerstein definitely got the ratio better with Cinderella and The Sound of Music.

If you’re planning to see a touring Broadway production in Chicago this year, I’d say wait for another one. This isn’t the one to drop your hard-earned cash on.

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on February 14, 2012 by lisafindley

And in the center ring, we have another play review. (Last week was a busy Centerstage week for me, and tonight I see South Pacific, so you can expect even more.) Quest Theatre has been putting on FREE shows for ten years, which is an impressive feat in this town. I saw Barnum, a musical that was originally staged in 1980, and is just as much fun today. Quest does a lot of family-friendly shows, and their call-outs to kids in the audience and fun puppetry does aim for them, but this isn’t just for kids (I mean, there’s a story about an extramarital affair and some hurdy-gurdy dancing from a 160-year-old woman).

Here’s an excerpt of my play review:

In a funny recurring bit, Barnum lets the audience in on various kinds of humbug, like the marriage humbug or the patriotic humbug. There are all kinds of ways to reach people and persuade them to your point of view, and Barnum used them all in his endeavors.

You can read the rest of the review here.

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on February 13, 2012 by lisafindley

Just in time for Valentine’s Day comes a tale of love gone horribly wrong: The Gingerbread House at Red Tape Theatre in Lakeview. Here’s an excerpt of my play review:

Imagine the story of Hansel and Gretel, but instead of following the children down the path of breadcrumbs, we follow the parents into their own increasingly dark forest. That’s the premise of Mark Schultz’s “The Gingerbread House.” Money is tight and life is miserable for Brian (Mike Tepeli) and Stacey (Meghan Reardon), so they decide to make all their problems disappear by doing the unthinkable: they sell their kids.

Yep, it’s quite the premise, and it holds promise for the first half hour. But it goes on too long (two hours, with an intermission) and loses the intensity that was so compelling at first. Still, the set, direction, sound, and acting is all good–all the elements are there except for a tight script. I will want to see another show by this company to see what else they can do.

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on January 26, 2012 by lisafindley

I saw another play! It was… unsatisfying. A story about two hoarding brothers in 1930s Manhattan has a lot of possibility, and yet we spend more time with a pair of stereotypical Irish cops than with the eccentric hoarders. This could’ve been a kind of Grey Gardens, if it had stayed focused. Ah well–there were some good parts, especially the physical comedy bits. Here’s an excerpt of my review:

Homer spends the entire first act of the play trying to get away from Langley, although he’s bound by a promise to his father to take care of his naïve younger brother. When the tables are turned in the second act and Langley takes care of Homer, there’s an opportunity to explore what that means to each of them, but instead we’re asked, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and are told, without subtlety, “yes.”

You can read the rest of the review at Centerstage.

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on December 15, 2011 by lisafindley

This is another recommended show: Opus at Redtwist Theatre up in Edgewater. It puts four people in a room (rotating out a fifth) and watches them implode after years of power struggles and a communal desire to reach new musical heights. Here’s an excerpt from my play review:

This structure teases out the subtleties of the relationship between Dorian (Paul Dunckel) and Elliot (Michael Sherwin), and their power struggle within both the bedroom and the rehearsal space. It’s partially a metaphor of which should ultimately reign in music-making, the head or the heart, but the metaphor never supersedes the humanity of these flawed, talented artists.

You can read the rest of the review here.

Pro tip: Don’t be late! Redtwist doesn’t have late seating and you will be sad as you watch the TV monitor in the lobby showing the play you can’t get into. I learned this when traffic made me all of five minutes late to opening night, and I had to come back the next day to actually see and review it. (Many thanks to the staff at Redtwist for accommodating me there.)

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on November 22, 2011 by lisafindley

I know I encouraged you all to go see a panto, and that still stands, but if you have some spare cash or come into some as an early Christmas present, spend it on The Jackie Wilson Story at the Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center. The show runs through the beginning of January, so you have plenty of time to go see the best replication of one of the most beautiful voices in American singing, Mr. Excitement. I swooned a bit in my play review:

Kelvin Roston Jr. is breathtaking as Jackie Wilson; he gets all the clear, smooth highs and earthy, sensual lows of Wilson’s voice, and his energetic dance moves are mesmerizing. For those of us who never got to see Jackie Wilson in concert, Roston’s dynamic performance is likely the closest we’ll ever get, and that is an opportunity you don’t want to pass up.

Read the rest of the review here.

New Centerstage Review Up — See this Play!

Posted on November 17, 2011 by lisafindley

Dearest fellow travelers, in case you missed my exhortation last year, let me repeat it: go see a panto. If you’re in Chicago, you’re in luck, because an Evanston theater company puts on a panto every Christmas season. Forget the tired old Goodman A Christmas Carol, or even any of the we’re-taking-the-piss-out-of-earnest-Christmas productions; Piccolo Theatre is where it’s at. But what is a panto? Here’s an excerpt from my theater review:

‘Pantomime’ is a bit of a misnomer; the British panto involves no miming. Indeed, it’s a raucous production involving cross-dressing, musical numbers, sly pop culture references, and rowdy audience participation. A fairytale or well-known story is reworked for maximum comedic effect, with adjustments made to fit in standard panto characters like the dame, the villain’s henchman, and the slightly clueless hero.

Read the rest here.

What fun! I’ve been to a couple in England on family vacations, and I still remember screaming out warnings to the hero, “He’s right behind you!” as the villain crept up for an attack. It is no less fun to do this as an adult, I promise you. So get thee to a panto!

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on October 28, 2011 by lisafindley

Profile Theatre’s A Behanding in Spokane was thrilling and discomfiting, but also empty and hopeless. Staged like a particularly well-executed playwriting exercise, we begin truly in media res, as a one-handed man shoots into a closet, calls his mother, and opens the door to let in a frantic young woman waving a dessicated human hand. What. is up. Here’s an excerpt of my play review:

Thad Hallstein’s set is so spot-on, it looks like he picked up the dingiest motel room he could find and put it down in the middle of the theater. Such a room requires a mood as bleak, and Cox sets the tone with his cruel, efficient treatment of Marilyn and Toby, and his singular focus on getting back what is rightfully his.

You can read the rest here.

I’ve never seen a Profiles show before, and while I enjoyed this show somewhat (I think the review came off more positive than I intended, oops), I’m not sure I’ll be back. They have produced just about every Neil La Bute play ever written, and I’m not super interested in supporting a theater that’s that obsessed with putting on La Bute’s misanthropic, sexist, would-be Mametism.