Non-Equity Jeff Awards Announced

Posted on May 1, 2012 by lisafindley

Okay, one more theater-related thing this week, and then no more til my next (potentially controversial!) review. Last week the Jeff Committee announced nominees for the Non-Equity Jeff Awards (the Tonys of Chicago), so I checked out the list to see if anything looked familiar. And lo!

“Opus” — Redtwist Theatre (for Play, Director, Ensemble, Sound Design, Artistic Specialization)

“A Behanding in Spokane” — Profiles Theatre (Supporting Actor)

“One Flea Spare” — Eclipse Theatre Company (Supporting Actor)

“Under the Blue Sky” — Steep Theatre Company (Supporting Actress)

“We Live Here” — Theatre Seven of Chicago (New Work, Artistic Specialization)

“Cyrano” — The House Theatre of Chicago (New Adaptation, Original Incidental Music, Costume Design, Fight Design)

“The Spirit Play” — The Strange Tree Group (Original Incidental Music, Artistic Specialization)

“The Sea” — Theatre Mir (Sound Design)

For my money: Opus was one of my favorite shows last year and definitely deserves Director or Play. I would not give it Artistic Specialization (it was nominated for Music Coach); one of the actors never once did vibrato on her viola!

Caroline Neff, yes, should of course win Supporting Actress for Under the Blue Sky. We Live Here was another one of my favorites and deserves a win for New Work (and Cyd Blakewell, who was also great in last year’s MilkMilkLemonade, was a standout here).

Cyrano was terrific, and the fight scenes were breathtaking. I did like the music in The Spirit Play.

Hey, eight nominated shows! Not bad. And I agree with most of the nominations for those shows. Even better. Some of the nominated shows are still running, so check them out while you still can.

In a Forest of Comments, Dark and Deep

Posted on April 30, 2012 by lisafindley

Well, that was interesting. As you may have seen on Facebook, one of my quickie posts promoting my latest theater review on Centerstage caught the eye of the playwright for that show. Neil LaBute, a nationally known playwright, screenwriter, and film director, somehow found my personal blog and responded to my criticism of his characterization of women in his works. (I was able to confirm with someone who knows his email address that it really was him writing in, and not a random Internet LaButist.)

I know this isn’t an original thought, but what a strange place the Internet is! Connecting people who would never meet in real life, and allowing for real-time interaction. Usually when I have an “oh, Internet!” moment, I’m smiling at a friend of a friend offering travel advice, or a total stranger sharing an experience that relates to one of mine. Having an “oh, Internet!” moment when a major contemporary playwright is sniping away at me is quite a different thing.

He’s done this before, with another young woman critic. He wrote a frame for Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s 2010 Taming of the Shrew, and Caitlin Montanye Parrish reviewed it for Time Out Chicago. He took to the comments with great gusto, others joined in, and it was quite a long thread. Sadly, TOC seems to have taken down the comments on that post, which is way too bad. Still, there is evidence out there of the storm, and one blog post even copy/pasted the comment that started it all.

Now, before I get in trouble for writing another “hyperbolic” (LaBute’s term for my writing) sentence, let me say that I was going to point out that his misogyny continues apace because he only tore down my (lady) review and not anyone else’s (dude) review. But no worries, he hates all the haters, not just women. Such growth! (Or maybe he continues to hate TOC after that 2010 dustup, I don’t know.)

So okay, he goes after all his critics because, like many artists, he sees critics as the enemy. Some critics are dicks, sure, just like some artists are dicks. But most of us work real hard to be thoughtful in our reviews. As I mentioned in the comments of that post, the post-show conversation is a place for productive conversation, not petty bickering.

LaBute didn’t fight fair–pretty much every comment was undermining and defensive, rather than engaged and interested in the other commenters’ positions. That’s too bad, because the discussion could have been a lot more interesting for everyone involved. But he picked a fight on the Internet, and that’s a losing proposition. So I let him have the last word–on every thread–since that seemed to be really important to him.

It was a funny little interlude in the life of this blog and a reminder that people with Google Alerts on their name can turn up where you least expect them.

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on April 24, 2012 by lisafindley

Ugh, Neil LaBute, ugh. He’s often described as “edgy” or “controversial,” and as is often true with other artists described in those terms, that translates to “nasty” and “boring.” I didn’t intend to take on the American premiere of his latest, In a Forest, Dark and Deep, but I didn’t read my editor’s schedule closely enough and found myself reviewing it last Thursday. (I should add that I did my best to go in with an open mind and see this production for what it was, rather than what I expected it to be.) There’s no question that LaBute can write decent dialogue and quickly take an audience to new depths of discomfort, and that’s a talent. But to do so without once writing a convincing female character is hackish. And to claim that you want to explore issues of truth and intimacy in your play, but then making your play clearly take sides and pass moral judgments, is dishonest.

Here’s an excerpt from my play review:

Cox is wonderful as a man who knows his place in the world and likes to opine on how others should live in it. Lowe is good too, but she has much less to work with, and there’s the crux of the problem. Betty is an incoherent character, a cheap assemblage of all the things men hate women for supposedly being: snobbish, slutty, unfaithful, bitchy, ambitious.

You can read the rest of the review here. I’m in the minority here in the theater world; LaBute is still quite the popular figure. Chris Jones loves him (although I think Jones and I have had opposite reactions to every single play we’ve both happened to review, so that’s not too surprising).

It’s too bad Profiles is so enamored of LaBute as to make him a resident playwright, because they have a talented group of people working there who could spend their time on plays that explore the breadth and depth of the human condition rather than LaBute’s sour misanthropy disguised as controversial profundity.

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on April 17, 2012 by lisafindley

I was thrilled to find that Steep Theatre’s The Receptionist was a reasonable 75 minutes with no intermission. I have a friend who works as a stage manager, and she’s said that she doesn’t understand plays that have intermissions. The actors don’t need them, the crew doesn’t need them, and she doesn’t think the audience does either. I agree! For the most part, playwrights can say what they need to say in an intermission-less 80 minutes or less. Far too often, the energy dissipates completely by the time it picks back up, and that’s a huge loss.

Anyway, this was a great ensemble piece, although I appreciated Caroline Neff a little more than the other actors, as usual. She’s so good! Here’s an excerpt of my play review:

“The mood is set before the show even starts: Muzak versions of Top 40 hits play while the audience settles in, and the perfect set design (Stephen Harold Carmody) replicates every small office lobby in the country, effectively establishing a sense of malaise with a few inspirational posters and a sad potted plant. Then the titular receptionist enters and starts transferring calls to voicemail while chatting with the staff, and office workers in the audience might wonder if they went to the theater or just never left work for the day.”

You can read the rest of the review here. The play is definitely worth a trip up to Andersonville.

New Centerstage Review Up

Posted on March 27, 2012 by lisafindley

I’ve had this problem before–what do I say in a review when the play was fine, was okay? Especially when much of the fault lies with the script rather than with the performances. Last week I saw The Sea at Theater Wit, and most of the performances were spot-on, and the sound effects were good, and the direction had it rolling along nicely. But the script wants to be about nine different things and only partially succeeds at two of them. Here’s an excerpt of my play review:

The artistic notes on Theater Mir’s “The Sea,” as well as those on the original production from 1973, make much of the play’s examination of the dangers of xenophobia and fearing the unknown, and while that is an interesting subject, it doesn’t seem to be the actual focus of the play. This confusion shows on stage, as the play is never sure if it wants to be a comedy or a drama, and the actors are forced to walk that shaky line with uneven results.

You can read the rest of the review here. Also, I couldn’t tell how much of it was the part and how much of it was the actor, but Brett Schneider could have played an actual alien for all the sense he made as a character.

So no, I probably wouldn’t recommend it if you only have room in your budget for one play this month, but I’m not sorry I saw it. And the bit with the ladies rehearsing for their theatrical presentation was great stuff.

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.