Concerts

In a world . . . where Norse mythology meets prog rock on a set seemingly built by precocious middle-schoolers, brothers Jorik and Jarl battle one another and several deities (best known to modern audiences via the Marvel Universe) to wear the crown of their kingdom. Songs are sung, seas traversed, swords crossed, and evil vanquished; the people rejoice and peace rules the land.

ValhallaThrough 2/5: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, The Edge Off Broadway, 1133 W. Catalpa, theplagiarists.org, pay what you can (suggested donation $15)

If this calls to mind a game of Dungeons & Dragons soundtracked by Yes or Magma, you’re on the right track. Adapted by Bryan Haney and Kate Nawrocki from a concept album by Haney’s band, Cirkut Mob, and directed by Nawrocki, the overall effect is spirited cosplay meets high school musical. Lacking the budget for the million-dollar effects the production aspires to, designer Nina D’Angier-Castillo’s shadow puppets evoke a child’s world of make-believe where a toy Viking ship can crash convincingly in a pretend sea that is just a long piece of cloth waved to and fro by a playground friend. The spell breaks when grown-ups belt tunes with on-the-nose lyrics about good and evil and the like. The live band, led by Elizabeth Bagby, backs these groaners skillfully, but not unlike the 70s dinosaur rock they are an obvious and loving tribute to, it’s best to ignore the lyric sheet.

I kept imagining how much more affecting this would all be if it were performed by actual children rather than adults pretending but there’s no faulting the effort or desire of anyone involved, no matter their age. 

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If you were concerned that Chicago’s storefront theaters lost their mojo during the pandemic, get thee to Terry McCabe’s gripping production of The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. It’s a meta-accomplishment: not a false note in this version of a play that’s entirely about false notes. Pinter’s breakthrough piece (albeit a flop at the time), encompasses all the themes for which he later became known: the mindlessness and dishonesty of most of what passes for communication; the universal capacity, and appetite, for savagery; how no one is innocent but anyone might be a victim; how most efforts at heroism—or even simple humanity—end with a whimper.

The Birthday Party Through 2/26: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 2/13 and 2/20 7:30 PM; City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit.org, $34 ($29 seniors, $12 students and military)

McCabe has cast the show flawlessly, anchored by perfect-pitch Elaine Carlson as Meg, whose comic cluelessness devolves into hideously willful blindness, and by James Sparling as Goldberg, who looks and sounds exactly like Patrick Stewart at his most posh while simultaneously nailing every stereotype of the East End London Jew getting what he wants at others’ expense. The entire six-person ensemble is strong, and there’s a particular pleasure in watching 6-foot-6-inch Will Casey as the henchman McCann looming over David Fink, a foot shorter, as the titular guest of honor and designated victim Stanley.

I’ve often felt that I don’t understand what Pinter is on about: menace, sure, and the comedy of cruelty, but to what end? I can offer this production no higher praise than to say, now I get it.  Highly recommended, as in Do. Not. Miss.

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Like many of the American musical theater greats, Cabaret is one of those shows that can suffer from style-creep,wherein an unwritten but generally agreed-upon aesthetic tradition grows into self-parody. For John Kander and Fred Ebb’s legendary pre-WWII Berlin-set romantic drama (based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten and the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood), that usually translates to a Kit Kat Club that’s more of a strung-out haunted house than a cheeky flesh fair anyone would actually want to rain deutsche marks on. Not so in Porchlight’s nachtclub, a sparkling, inviting, exuberant pansexual party (led by Emcee Josh Walker) that puts a hearty emphasis on the “willkommen.”

Cabaret Through 3/5: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3:30 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Thu 2/2 1:30 PM; open caption Sat 1/28 and Sat 2/4 3:30 PM; Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 773-777-9884, porchlightmusictheatre.org, $45-$77

Establishing that contrast is essential in order for any of the second-act gut punches to land, and in that respect, director Michael Weber, associate director/choreographer Brenda Didier, and music director Linda Madonia leave bruises and draw blood. I found my eyes welling up with spectacle tears long before the first emotional blow, and I suspect that has to do with just how masterfully pieced together these musical theater elements are, from the crystalline vocals to the bombastic ensemble-wide numbers to the intimate conversations between (ahem) “roommates.”

Gilbert Domally, who brings a radical softness to the character inspired by Isherwood, makes for a heart-melting partner with Sally (Erica Stephan, giving a performance for the ages). Even Angela Weber Miller’s and Patrick Chan’s Anhalter Bahnhof-inspired set and lighting design has a sense of gravity and impermanence to it, as if to ask: if brick, studded steel, and heavy cathedral wooden buttresses won’t survive the looming tsunami of inhumanity, what chance do we have?

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Redtwist’s rolling world premiere of The Great Khan with the National New Play Network couldn’t be better timed. When Florida’s Department of Education had just rejected an Advanced Placement course in African American studies. When Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders just signed an executive order banning critical theory in public schools, making Arkansas the 18th state to limit how racism and sexism are taught. And when Missouri lawmakers just proposed three similar bills, which will also allow parents to monitor school curricula. 

A rebellious production about the effects of racism and sexism on Black teens, written by Michael Gene Sullivan and directed by Jamal Howard, this intimate play calls on viewers to confront “history” through the eyes of high schoolers, who aren’t afraid to ask the tough questions. 

The Great Khan Through 2/26: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3:30 PM, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-728-7529, redtwisttheatre.org, $40

After fighting off a group of boys who were assaulting his friend Ant (Monique Marshaun), Jayden (Simon Gebremedhin) and his protective mother, Crystal (LaTorious Givens) move to a new neighborhood. At his predominantly white school, Jayden strikes a deal with his history teacher, Mr. Adams (Bryan Breau): he’ll do his Genghis Khan report if Mr. Adams can name 20 Black Americans who aren’t athletes or entertainers. Traumatized by the world, Jayden grows fascinated with the Mongolian emperor’s vengeful spirit. But when Khan (Steffen Diem Garcia) visits Jayden, he reveals the story written about him is only part of the truth. 

It’s a multiplex piece that demands adults grow up. With Jayden’s class partner Gao Ming (Josie Mi) as our narrator, we start to question how we enable these whitewashed tales and are inspired to find our own answers. If anything, you’ll realize that history is a great con. 

Read More

Christina Anderson’s luminous and wise the ripple, the wave that carried me home (now at the Goodman in a coproduction with Berkeley Rep, where it played in fall 2022) unfolds in mesmerizing capillary waves of memory, selective and otherwise. (“This country is built on selective memory,” one character observes while watching the Rodney King trial in 1992, and it’s impossible to argue with that, given the escalated police violence 30 years later.)

the ripple, the wave that carried me home Through 2/12: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Tue 1/31 7:30 PM, Sun 2/5 7:30 PM, and Thu 2/9 2 PM; touch tour and audio description Sat 2/5 2 PM (touch tour 12:30 PM), ASL interpretation Sat 2/11 2 PM, Spanish subtitles Sat 2/11 8 PM, open captions Sun 2/12 2 PM; Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $15-$40

Janice (Christiana Clark) is a native of fictional Beacon, Kansas, where her late father Edwin, a civil rights activist who focused on desegregating the town’s public pools, is about to have a pool named in his honor. Janice has several reasons for not wanting to travel from Ohio to Kansas for the ceremony, no matter how much Brianna Buckley’s Young Chipper Ambitious Black Woman, a volunteer with a Black community group in Beacon, implores her. Those reasons spool out as Anderson’s play takes us through nearly 40 years of history. It begins when Janice’s mother Helen (Aneisa Hicks), from the “thinking class” Black people of Beacon, and Edwin (Ronald L. Conner), a “necessity” Black man, (as in “working for the bare necessities”) meet and begin courting in the mid-50s; moves through Janice’s own adolescence as a budding swimmer; and concludes in the midst of the King riots. 

Edwin and Helen’s joint activism kicks into high gear with the “Beacon Three”—a group of white and Black boys who, unable to find a pool where they can swim together, drown in a garbage-filled lake. Yet that activism hits differently for Helen than it does for Edwin in sometimes horrifying ways, which has repercussions for their daughter.

Directed by Jackson Gay, Anderson’s play lets us see the characters and their causes with complexity (intraracial class differences, as well as gendered abuse, come into focus), along with sorrow and horror at the repeating cycles of white abuse. A recurring line, “Is this your first time in America? Let me show you around,” hits with both humor and heartache at the unwillingness of white Americans to confront racism. Yet by the end, there is also a hard-won pride and hope washing over the women in the story.

Read More

In a world . . . where Norse mythology meets prog rock on a set seemingly built by precocious middle-schoolers, brothers Jorik and Jarl battle one another and several deities (best known to modern audiences via the Marvel Universe) to wear the crown of their kingdom. Songs are sung, seas traversed, swords crossed, and evil vanquished; the people rejoice and peace rules the land.

ValhallaThrough 2/5: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, The Edge Off Broadway, 1133 W. Catalpa, theplagiarists.org, pay what you can (suggested donation $15)

If this calls to mind a game of Dungeons & Dragons soundtracked by Yes or Magma, you’re on the right track. Adapted by Bryan Haney and Kate Nawrocki from a concept album by Haney’s band, Cirkut Mob, and directed by Nawrocki, the overall effect is spirited cosplay meets high school musical. Lacking the budget for the million-dollar effects the production aspires to, designer Nina D’Angier-Castillo’s shadow puppets evoke a child’s world of make-believe where a toy Viking ship can crash convincingly in a pretend sea that is just a long piece of cloth waved to and fro by a playground friend. The spell breaks when grown-ups belt tunes with on-the-nose lyrics about good and evil and the like. The live band, led by Elizabeth Bagby, backs these groaners skillfully, but not unlike the 70s dinosaur rock they are an obvious and loving tribute to, it’s best to ignore the lyric sheet.

I kept imagining how much more affecting this would all be if it were performed by actual children rather than adults pretending but there’s no faulting the effort or desire of anyone involved, no matter their age. 

Read More

If you were concerned that Chicago’s storefront theaters lost their mojo during the pandemic, get thee to Terry McCabe’s gripping production of The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. It’s a meta-accomplishment: not a false note in this version of a play that’s entirely about false notes. Pinter’s breakthrough piece (albeit a flop at the time), encompasses all the themes for which he later became known: the mindlessness and dishonesty of most of what passes for communication; the universal capacity, and appetite, for savagery; how no one is innocent but anyone might be a victim; how most efforts at heroism—or even simple humanity—end with a whimper.

The Birthday Party Through 2/26: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 2/13 and 2/20 7:30 PM; City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit.org, $34 ($29 seniors, $12 students and military)

McCabe has cast the show flawlessly, anchored by perfect-pitch Elaine Carlson as Meg, whose comic cluelessness devolves into hideously willful blindness, and by James Sparling as Goldberg, who looks and sounds exactly like Patrick Stewart at his most posh while simultaneously nailing every stereotype of the East End London Jew getting what he wants at others’ expense. The entire six-person ensemble is strong, and there’s a particular pleasure in watching 6-foot-6-inch Will Casey as the henchman McCann looming over David Fink, a foot shorter, as the titular guest of honor and designated victim Stanley.

I’ve often felt that I don’t understand what Pinter is on about: menace, sure, and the comedy of cruelty, but to what end? I can offer this production no higher praise than to say, now I get it.  Highly recommended, as in Do. Not. Miss.

Read More

Like many of the American musical theater greats, Cabaret is one of those shows that can suffer from style-creep,wherein an unwritten but generally agreed-upon aesthetic tradition grows into self-parody. For John Kander and Fred Ebb’s legendary pre-WWII Berlin-set romantic drama (based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten and the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood), that usually translates to a Kit Kat Club that’s more of a strung-out haunted house than a cheeky flesh fair anyone would actually want to rain deutsche marks on. Not so in Porchlight’s nachtclub, a sparkling, inviting, exuberant pansexual party (led by Emcee Josh Walker) that puts a hearty emphasis on the “willkommen.”

Cabaret Through 3/5: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3:30 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Thu 2/2 1:30 PM; open caption Sat 1/28 and Sat 2/4 3:30 PM; Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 773-777-9884, porchlightmusictheatre.org, $45-$77

Establishing that contrast is essential in order for any of the second-act gut punches to land, and in that respect, director Michael Weber, associate director/choreographer Brenda Didier, and music director Linda Madonia leave bruises and draw blood. I found my eyes welling up with spectacle tears long before the first emotional blow, and I suspect that has to do with just how masterfully pieced together these musical theater elements are, from the crystalline vocals to the bombastic ensemble-wide numbers to the intimate conversations between (ahem) “roommates.”

Gilbert Domally, who brings a radical softness to the character inspired by Isherwood, makes for a heart-melting partner with Sally (Erica Stephan, giving a performance for the ages). Even Angela Weber Miller’s and Patrick Chan’s Anhalter Bahnhof-inspired set and lighting design has a sense of gravity and impermanence to it, as if to ask: if brick, studded steel, and heavy cathedral wooden buttresses won’t survive the looming tsunami of inhumanity, what chance do we have?

Read More

Redtwist’s rolling world premiere of The Great Khan with the National New Play Network couldn’t be better timed. When Florida’s Department of Education had just rejected an Advanced Placement course in African American studies. When Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders just signed an executive order banning critical theory in public schools, making Arkansas the 18th state to limit how racism and sexism are taught. And when Missouri lawmakers just proposed three similar bills, which will also allow parents to monitor school curricula. 

A rebellious production about the effects of racism and sexism on Black teens, written by Michael Gene Sullivan and directed by Jamal Howard, this intimate play calls on viewers to confront “history” through the eyes of high schoolers, who aren’t afraid to ask the tough questions. 

The Great Khan Through 2/26: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3:30 PM, Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-728-7529, redtwisttheatre.org, $40

After fighting off a group of boys who were assaulting his friend Ant (Monique Marshaun), Jayden (Simon Gebremedhin) and his protective mother, Crystal (LaTorious Givens) move to a new neighborhood. At his predominantly white school, Jayden strikes a deal with his history teacher, Mr. Adams (Bryan Breau): he’ll do his Genghis Khan report if Mr. Adams can name 20 Black Americans who aren’t athletes or entertainers. Traumatized by the world, Jayden grows fascinated with the Mongolian emperor’s vengeful spirit. But when Khan (Steffen Diem Garcia) visits Jayden, he reveals the story written about him is only part of the truth. 

It’s a multiplex piece that demands adults grow up. With Jayden’s class partner Gao Ming (Josie Mi) as our narrator, we start to question how we enable these whitewashed tales and are inspired to find our own answers. If anything, you’ll realize that history is a great con. 

Read More

Christina Anderson’s luminous and wise the ripple, the wave that carried me home (now at the Goodman in a coproduction with Berkeley Rep, where it played in fall 2022) unfolds in mesmerizing capillary waves of memory, selective and otherwise. (“This country is built on selective memory,” one character observes while watching the Rodney King trial in 1992, and it’s impossible to argue with that, given the escalated police violence 30 years later.)

the ripple, the wave that carried me home Through 2/12: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Tue 1/31 7:30 PM, Sun 2/5 7:30 PM, and Thu 2/9 2 PM; touch tour and audio description Sat 2/5 2 PM (touch tour 12:30 PM), ASL interpretation Sat 2/11 2 PM, Spanish subtitles Sat 2/11 8 PM, open captions Sun 2/12 2 PM; Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $15-$40

Janice (Christiana Clark) is a native of fictional Beacon, Kansas, where her late father Edwin, a civil rights activist who focused on desegregating the town’s public pools, is about to have a pool named in his honor. Janice has several reasons for not wanting to travel from Ohio to Kansas for the ceremony, no matter how much Brianna Buckley’s Young Chipper Ambitious Black Woman, a volunteer with a Black community group in Beacon, implores her. Those reasons spool out as Anderson’s play takes us through nearly 40 years of history. It begins when Janice’s mother Helen (Aneisa Hicks), from the “thinking class” Black people of Beacon, and Edwin (Ronald L. Conner), a “necessity” Black man, (as in “working for the bare necessities”) meet and begin courting in the mid-50s; moves through Janice’s own adolescence as a budding swimmer; and concludes in the midst of the King riots. 

Edwin and Helen’s joint activism kicks into high gear with the “Beacon Three”—a group of white and Black boys who, unable to find a pool where they can swim together, drown in a garbage-filled lake. Yet that activism hits differently for Helen than it does for Edwin in sometimes horrifying ways, which has repercussions for their daughter.

Directed by Jackson Gay, Anderson’s play lets us see the characters and their causes with complexity (intraracial class differences, as well as gendered abuse, come into focus), along with sorrow and horror at the repeating cycles of white abuse. A recurring line, “Is this your first time in America? Let me show you around,” hits with both humor and heartache at the unwillingness of white Americans to confront racism. Yet by the end, there is also a hard-won pride and hope washing over the women in the story.

Read More