The Des McAnuff-directed Summer: The Donna Summer Musical begins with a seasoned Donna Summer, or Diva Donna (Dan’yelle Williamson), recounting how in her early days, a colleague asked her what people will be doing years from then. She responded she didn’t know, but one thing’s for sure: they’d be dancing.

Though the “The Queen is Back” opening number was crowded with several dancers and somewhat blinding outfits on stage, what follows is a fascinating exploration of a life well lived. This touring musical (book by Colman Domingo, Robert Cary, and McAnuff, featuring hits created by Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Paul Jabara, and others) breezes through the stages of Summer’s life, from childhood as Duckling Donna (Olivia Elease Hardy) growing up in Boston to Disco Donna (Alex Hairston) who becomes the queen of 1970s disco, to Diva Donna, who wants to slow down and enjoy family life.

Throughout the production Diva Donna provides context to what’s happening in her life and in her head. Moments of joyous relief, angry thought, and everything else in between is expressed by older Donna, who now has the wisdom to understand the sometimes-reckless decisions of others and herself and breaks it all down for the audience.

From top to bottom, the production is all glitter, sparkle, afros, leather and animal print: a testament to the glamorous life of the legendary singer. (Paul Tazewell created the costumes, with wig design by Charles G. LaPointe.) Yet the glamour was not without difficulties.

In every stage of life, she has loved and lost, in one way or the other. As a child, she lost friends in church who said her voice sounded like a police siren. Donna of the disco era fired (and sued) her manager Neil Bogart (John Gardiner) when she learned he was misappropriating her money, and Diva Donna suffered an ultimate loss, laying her parents to rest. Yet still, the groovy performer persisted.

Messages of independence and equal pay loom large when Donna’s lawsuit against Casablanca Records comes up, accompanied by an energetic and profound performance of “She Works Hard for the Money” that’s enough to make every member of the audience as angry as the singer must have been upon learning that she hadn’t been receiving the fair fruits of her labor.

A standout moment from this number is when an unnamed lawyer (Brooke Lacy) reveals that Donna is in an exploitative contract and says, “This may be disingenuous coming from a middle-aged white guy like me.” Though played for laughs, it’s hard to miss the sheer amount of women playing people presumed to be men throughout the production. From top hats and suits to short wigs and canes, a subtle, yet forthright, statement is made about how in the high point of Donna’s career, gender lines were blurred within the disco (and often queer) community, as they are now.

Summer’s struggle with the antidepressant Marplan and suicidal thoughts are stepping-stones to her recovery from the pressures of a fast-paced career, showing how the disco queen dealt with her own depression and anxiety offstage.

The final scenes of the musical end before her demise; she and her daughters sing “Stamp your Feet” from 2008’s Crayons (her last studio album), when she discloses she has cancer. And “Friends Unknown” honors friends who died of HIV/AIDs years prior, offering possible hope of redemption for her rumored past hurtful remarks about a community who adored her. (Summer reportedly said “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” at a 1983 concert, though she denied ever calling AIDS “divine retribution.”) From there, up-tempo “Hot Stuff” and “Last Dance” close the production.

At the end of it all, Donna Summer proved herself to be more than just the “disco queen” of the 70s. But even if she’s only remembered for disco music, Summer reminds us that that’s A-OK, too. v

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In the dicey business of bringing historic opera to contemporary audiences, Lyric Opera’s current production of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades is a winner. Three hours and 45 minutes long? Sung in Russian? No problem; deal me in. This exploration of obsession is compulsively watchable.

Said to have been composed in a 44-day frenzy, the opera is based on an Alexander Pushkin story about an obsessive gambler–a subject Pushkin knew firsthand. The opera (with a libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, the composer’s brother), expanding on this theme, is about obsessive ideation that fixes on romance as well as gambling, before moving on to guilt.

The central character, Gherman (tenor Brandon Jovanovich), is hell-bent on possessing both Lisa (soprano Sondra Radvanovsky), a woman he’s fallen in love with at first sight, and a dangerous secret her grandmother happens to possess that will allow him to win at cards. Lisa’s a stretch for this impoverished outsider–she’s engaged to marry a prince (baritone Lucas Meachem). Against the odds, Gherman succeeds in winning her heart, but–and this is the crux of the story–driven as he is, he can’t stop there. He persists in his quest for her grandmother’s secret, leading to a devastating final loss.

This is psychodrama powered by the sweep and emotional acuity of Tchaikovsky’s Russian romantic score. The 20-year-old production, originally directed by Richard Jones, with sets and costumes by John Macfarlane (directed here by Benjamin Davis), moves the action up to the tense grey 1930s. It makes use of puppets, graveyard humor, and surreal shifts in perspective to weave an increasingly claustrophobic and ominous spell. Radvanovsky and Jovanovich powerfully, wrenchingly, give voice to their characters, and everyone in the huge cast–including the Lyric Opera Chorus and members of the Chicago Children’s Choir–plays up to their game.

Musically, it’s an embarrassment of riches, starting with the trio of men who launch the action: tenor Kyle van Schoonhoven and bass-baritone David Weigel as Gherman’s associates, and bass-baritone Samuel Youn–Alberich in Lyric’s Ring–in another neatly executed nasty turn as Gherman’s pernicious friend Count Tomsky. Then there’s a trio of mighty mezzo sopranos: Jill Grove as a governess; Elizabeth DeShong as Lisa’s friend Pauline; and spot-on veteran Jane Henschel making her Lyric debut as Lisa’s grandmother, the Countess, once known as the Venus of Moscow.

Also, of course, the Lyric Opera Orchestra. A more traditional Queen of Spades was the first opera Andrew Davis conducted as Lyric’s music director. As he heads into his final season in that job (he’ll depart in 2021), this production is an apropos bookend to his 20-year tenure. v

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Antarctica has hit a record high temperature. Sixty thousand known cases of the new coronavirus are causing global panic. Australia is still on fire. And the U.S. is gearing up for elections. The Times Are Racing, the title of the Joffrey Ballet’s winter mixed repertory program, captures a sense of the urgency we surely all feel. Yet few guiding principles–not even escapism–bring order to the presentation. The oldest pieces, Mono Lisa (2003) and The Sofa (1995) by Itzik Galili of Israel, account for two of the three Joffrey premieres–the third being the 2017 ballet by New York City Ballet resident choreographer Justin Peck that closes and titles this show. The other two works, British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s Commedia (2008) and Bliss! created on commission by Chicago’s Stephanie Martinez in 2019, offer a nod to modernism with Stravinsky scores. Though the company’s dancers looked in fine form, the program does not cohere into a discernible vision, nor is it truly a study in contrasts.

The evening opens with Commedia, an episodic, deconstructed vision of harlequins set to Stravinsky’s Pulcinella suite under the gaze of a painted set of masked faces. Center stage, a ballerina splats in second position onto the lap of her partner, her legs hooked behind him. It doesn’t have a prelude or a follow-through; it merely exists as an interjection. Commedia is like this–all disjointed steps and scenes that reference the imagery of commedia dell’arte without any of the purpose. Dancers wear incomplete assortments of masks, capes, and ruffs and occasionally execute a stylized gesture amid the technical display, but, in the absence of context, can drama or humor exist? One solution was presented opening night when Gayeon Jung and Edson Barbosa took the stage for the Gavotta con due variazioni. Bright with unpretentious verve, their evident delight in each other made a moment as simple as Barbosa’s head popping up behind Jung’s arm more charming to watch than the pinwheeling lifts that punctuate the work.

While Wheeldon’s work uses scenario as a framework for cerebral technical exploration, Galili’s contributions showcase explosive intensity. Mono Lisa starts with the lights lowered to the floor and a haze of fog. A pair of bare legs (Victoria Jaiani) comes into view. Enter a man (Stefan Goncalvez). A duet of aggressive strutting and fiendishly difficult partnering, sort of like William-Forsythe-meets-voguing, proceeds without a resolution beyond the fatigue of its performers.

The Sofa, which artistic director Ashley Wheater (recently knighted by the British Empire) describes in his program note as “a light look at romance in the modern world,” is easily the most disturbing piece in the program. Viewed as a rapid-fire series of pratfalls on a sofa that doubles as trampoline, it could be humorous and rather dazzling. And yet, The Sofa simply can’t be viewed in the abstract. A single duet repeats, once with a man and a woman (Temur Suluashvili and Anna Gerberich) and once with two men (Suluashvili and Fernando Duarte), the first time a cartoonish rendition of domestic violence, the second time defusing the tension of the first with the consent that presumably underlies a sadomasochistic relationship. She elbows him in the chest. He picks her up and throws her. She smacks his face and rides him sidesaddle. Etc.–all as Tom Waits croons, “Nobody, nobody will ever love you / The way I could love you / Because nobody is that strong.” The punchline of the piece, that the abusive man becomes the submissive partner in the second duet, is, despite Wheater’s program note, particularly problematic in a moment that exactly coincides with the end of Harvey Weinstein’s trial–or haven’t we learned anything about consent yet?

Communal masculinity forms the centerpiece of Bliss! where a shirtless set of machos dance in unison, classical steps interspersed with a shoulder roll here, a hip thrust there–a strangely idyllic picture that is interrupted by the intrusion of two women in rhinestone-encrusted figure skater costumes, who distract and fracture the group. With a presence that matches his command of technique, Barbosa gives a standout performance that carries him right into Peck’s work, seen for the first time with a company other than NYCB. Danced by a cast of 20 in sneakers and street clothes, The Times Are Racing is Jerome Robbins’s Glass Pieces with Twyla Tharp’s energy to the relentless pulse of Dan Deacon’s 2012 America album, with lots of patterned pacing, carefully coordinated breaks to the upright order of classicism, and some fabulous male duets. Barbosa’s electric charisma blazes, visualized by the glistening corona of sweat that radiates from his hair as he whips his head, as if youth really were eternal. v

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Claude McKay Love recounts his life in two parts that many will be familiar with: before college and after college. At just five years old, Claude is abandoned by his mother and father who he’s been told have moved to Missouri from Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, leaving Claude to be taken care of by his grandmother and her longtime best friend, Paul. Before they leave, the young Black boy sees his parents’ friends disappear, setting the stage for a series of moments of abandonment.

Gabriel Bump’s Everywhere You Don’t Belong (Algonquin Books) follows Claude as he grows up on the south side of Chicago, then goes away to college in Missouri. A young Claude is somewhat satisfied living in South Shore, being filled with love by his grandmother and Paul. It’s not until a riot kills several people in his neighborhood that struggles of violence and abandonment mount, and he is compelled to go to college to get away from the city.

From the start there is a strong premise of moving away. Before his partner, Teeth, dies, Paul tries to convince him they should move to Florida; a family friend left South Shore after struggling to accept his wife had left him, also for Florida; and their two children ended up in another state without either of their parents. Not long after, Claude’s childhood teacher Ms. Bev goes missing, his childhood friend Bubbly moves to Oak Park, and his other friend Nugget enrolls in a middle school on the north side, both lifetimes away for any child living in a city as large as Chicago without the resources to travel.

As the book progresses, more friends move away and change becomes the ultimate constant for Claude. But the timing of events in the novel is murky. There’s so much reflection on the history of Chicago, like the 1968 Democratic National Convention, that it becomes easy to think the book takes place in the late 60s and early 70s. It’s not until drill rapper Chief Keef is mentioned that I realized that Claude was living in the 2010s when he was in high school. Obama is also mentioned here and there, but it’s unclear which political office he’s holding at the time.

In Claude’s South Shore, a fictional riot happens. No more are the days of the neighborhood being safer, with mostly Irish and Jewish residents. Black people moved to the area, white people moved away, and violence increased in the 1980s, leading to the South Shore Claude knows. Mixing real and fictional events can create a strong new world, and including local school closings hints at the struggles this community faces. Yet the story is still missing world-building to paint how Claude’s South Shore “magically” became a more violent environment; while it could be assumed that local businesses had gone out of business or were not being supported, stable jobs were not available, and the area was a food desert (amongst other real-world resource issues in South Shore), Claude is mostly seen catapulted between home, school, and sidewalks. It’s an oversight that could easily make readers who are unfamiliar with Chicago fall victim to the lazy trope about violence on the south side.

A more vivid picture could have made clear why Claude’s South Shore is so susceptible to violence and why residents are angered by police presence in the area. His neighborhood on Euclid Avenue soon goes into uproar after a police killing of an innocent boy who was feeding his neighbors’ pets while they were on vacation. The Redbelters, a neighborhood gang who seem to gain so many members that enrollment in local schools decreases, face the police while residents of the area either join the fight or try their best to leave the scene before tension mounts.

Claude is nearly caught in the uproar with a friend, Janice, and her aunt Annette. Ultimately, 26 people die in the riot, including Janice’s uncle. Janice’s aunt eventually leaves her, too. The foundation of the two teens’ confusing (and quite unhealthy) romantic-yet-unromantic relationship becomes the center of Claude’s life until the end of the book, when he is in college.

The bluntness of Claude and his childhood friends provides many literal laugh-out-loud moments, like when Bubbly says, “My parents think a police officer tied him to the tracks because Teeth wouldn’t fuck him.” Among the constant deaths and other losses, Bump ensures a laugh–even if it’s a guilty one–to soften the blows of Claude’s reality. The second part of his story is completely unrooted from precollege Claude. Whether it be a symptom of his growing up or intentional plotting, Claude’s relationship to the city and others, even himself, feels confusing and it becomes difficult to understand why he makes choices that seem to contradict what he said was of value to him as he grew up in South Shore, like safety and a sustainable future.

In adulthood, Claude learns that whether he’s in Chicago, or Columbia, Missouri, home is more about who you’re surrounded by than where you are. Though Janice only considers leaving Chicago after a run-in with the Redbelters, the urgency of having to leave Chicago to thrive, no matter who you’re leaving behind, remains. It’s unfortunate and understandable that Claude, like many other real-life south siders, finds it difficult to see a future in the city that raised them. If only Claude could see that as a Black American, he’ll be running forever if he continues to rely on others to tell him where he belongs. v

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Long before smartphones provided immediate access to porn and the ubiquitous “dick pic,” gay men were limited to physique magazines, adult bookstores, and covert illustrations produced by Bill Schmeling (also known as “The Hun”) and his more popular contemporary, Tom of Finland, to view hardcore expressions of gay male desire–all of which were taboo 50 years ago, if not against the law.

Today, the work of Schmeling–once obtainable only in discreet, plain-wrapped packaging via mail order–is available for in-person, public viewing at the Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M) in Chicago, which acquired the collection in the summer of 2019.

According to LA&M’s executive director Gary Wasdin, Schmeling’s work, with its depictions of fearless, sex-positive acts, will educate and titillate viewers as it first did in the 1960s, perhaps even more so today in an age marked by factory-style porn where live streaming platforms means everyone is his/her/their own adult content studio.

“Intense is probably the word that comes to most peoples’ minds when they see Bill’s art,” Wasdin says. “People see these images and instantly think of Tom of Finland because his work is so iconic. Bill’s work is in that general style of exaggerated hypermasculine art, but it is more raw, aggressive, and much more sexual, with depictions of kink play, BDSM, and lots of bodily fluids.”

Beyond Schmeling’s portrayal of “dangerous” fantasies featuring “tormented” men in brutal and often compromising situations–a trademark of the Hun’s style–was his penchant for drawing interracial sex scenes, an element that made his work all the more innovative, especially for the time. In fact, Schmeling was white and his husband, Roland, an inspiration for a solid portion of his work, was African American.

“I think it’s just amazing to see art like the Hun’s and realize that people were pretty fucking creative, and despite the challenges of the time, people were doing some amazing stuff and enjoying life,” Wasdin says. “These artists and photographers are pioneers who put themselves out there to make this material accessible for all of us.”

“The Bill ‘The Hun’ Schmeling Collection” encompasses tens of thousands of items, from personal correspondence to sketches to original artwork. “Archives generally measure collections by feet, not by item,” Wasdin says when pressed for a more specific number to describe the scope of the collection. “The Hun collection is probably 200 linear feet, packed mostly in bankers’ boxes, and then of course, the art is stored separately from that.”

In August 2018, Wasdin began the delicate process of discussing the acquisition of the collection from Schmeling, who at the time was storing it rather indiscriminately, from attic to basement, in his two-story house in Portland, Oregon. It took about a year of conversations with the 81-year-old artist before he granted the release of his life’s work to the LA&M.

“We came to an agreement to have his full collection come here–meaning Bill didn’t want to parcel out pieces here or there–and from a researcher’s standpoint that is something we’re always anxious to do,” Wasdin says. Schmeling’s donation included not only the entirety of his collection of illustrations and comics, but also the ability to use his images and to sell merchandise. (And, yes, there is a gift shop on-site where attendees may purchase anthologies of his work, comic books, and greeting cards).

In July 2019, Wasdin, his archivist, and a LA&M board member traveled to Schmeling’s home to pack up the collection and prepare it for shipping to Chicago. “When Bill first met me he said, ‘You have really small feet!’ As you see in the comics, the Hun had quite a fetish for feet,” explains Wasdin with a good-natured laugh. “The whole experience was phenomenal. He was so warm and friendly.” Schmeling–who suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease–passed away on September 12, 2019.

Visitors to the LA&M, from the casual viewer to the academic researcher, are granted access to the collection as long as prior notice is given to the museum. “This collection is approachable from a lot of different angles,” Wasdin says. “It could be of interest to someone studying the history of gay pornography to someone researching the evolution of BDSM and kink and its growing acceptance in the U.S., to someone writing a novel set in gay New York City 1972–the options are boundless.” Low-resolution photography for not-for-profit purposes is permitted, as is posting on social media, although some of the Hun’s imagery may not meet the terms and conditions established by various platforms.

“A lot of people, quite frankly, see some of Hun’s artwork and they’re like, ‘Nope, that’s too extreme,’ Wasdin says. “It’s not for everybody, but that’s part of the beauty of it–things are not supposed to [appeal] to everyone. I will say that for me, personally, I always liked the Hun because it is more like me: I’m big, I’m hairy, and that’s what the Hun was, that’s what his characters looked like. It’s almost inconceivable to think of a pre-Internet world where it was almost impossible to find people like you, where you couldn’t simply Google ‘hairy, naked dad-bods.’

“It’s important to remember that these drawings weren’t just Bill’s fetish–he was making a living at this, which is a testament to the level of interest that was out there,” Wasdin says. “His work helped us proliferate a connection and a sense of community and revealed a completely different perspective of human sexuality.” v

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Among the matches burning in the dumpster fire of U.S. immigration is the system of chutes and ladders facing foreign artists. To make a long, very complicated story short: Overseas artists who want to stay in the U.S. without obtaining a U.S. spouse– or those who’ve already married another foreign national–must apply every three years for an artists visa. This is also known as the O1B: Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement.

Woof.

As they check off the long list of qualifications that comprise such an application, the artist must present press coverage of their work. You know, art criticism, a thriving field with abounding coverage.

Double-woof.

That’s where badass art critic and historian Lori Waxman wants to step in. An internationally renowned critic with a regular byline in the Tribune, Waxman is currently bringing her 60 wrd/min project to artists in need of this press–live and free of charge. Waxman spends 25 minutes looking at submitted work and writes a 200-word review. As a former student and number one Lori Waxman Superfan, I can attest that her writing is nothing short of face-meltingly insightful. This is truly a gift to Chicago’s artistic community.

While the initiative launched on February 1, artists can still schedule appointments for the 22nd, with completed reviews published in the April issue of Lumpen. For more information, visit 60wrdmin.org. To schedule an appointment, email [email protected]. v

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It’s not every day you see 128 roof tiles displayed on a gallery floor, ash from joss sticks painted on a canvas, and artwork cocreated by trained silkworms. But at Wrightwood 659, it’s possible. The four floors of the museum are filled with “The Allure of Matter: Material Art From China,” a new exhibition that looks at Chinese artists working in the material arts movement, which focuses largely on every-day items like hair, plastic bottles, or found objects. These artists experiment with one material for decades and transform it into something monumental. The Smart Museum of Art and Wrightwood 659 are introducing this movement in two parts with a total of 26 artists who produced work from the 1980s until the present day.

When I walk into the space, the docent reassures me that there is no right or wrong way to view the exhibition. I take the elevator up and am confronted with Zhu Jinshi’s work, Wave of Materials, a large installation made from xuan paper, cotton thread, bamboo, and stones. Xuan paper is a type of material used by calligraphers and painters and has been used as a significant material in Jinshi’s work since the late 1980s. Here, Jinshi crumples, flattens, and hangs the paper from the ceiling to create a monolithic, yet delicate, installation on the top floor.

Traveling down leads viewers towards Transformation, an installation created by Yin Xiuzhen in 1997. Scattered across two gallery floors and down a set of stairs, the piece exhibits black and white photographs on tiles that lie on the floor. I appreciate the experimentation with displaying photographs, as photography can become traditional and less experimental than other mediums, transfixed to frames on white walls. Xiuzhen takes city streets–the rubble, the physical materials that build a city–and conflates them with images of day-to-day life from her Beijing neighborhood.

My favorite piece in the exhibition is Zhan Wang’s Beyond 12 Nautical Miles–Floating Rock Drifts on the Open Sea, made in 2000. The single-channel video documents a performance of a stainless steel “rock” floating in the open sea. The viewer sees a shining silver object with soft edges rocking back and forth slightly on the waves for eight minutes and 36 seconds. The work is meant to reference how any country can claim open water as their own territory, and how the rock simply travels wherever the waves take it. In five different languages, the rock has the following inscribed into its surface: “This is a piece of art created specifically to be exhibited in the open sea. If by chance you pick it up, please put it back into the ocean. The artist thanks you from afar.”

Bringing things back down to earth are Liang Shaoji’s trained silkworms. What started small has resulted in Chains: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Nature Series, No. 79, a large installation of chain-like pieces hanging from the ceiling wrapped in silk and cocoons from Shaoji’s silkworms. The artist–who has said, “I am a silkworm”–has raised them for more than 25 years. In his Nature series, the silkworms spin silk into certain objects, and in this work, it’s hollowed chains. Shaoji and his silkworms create work together as they play the role as the artist and the art.

It’s challenging to take in and absorb the exhibition, especially because the artwork is exhibited in two different parts of the city. Digesting one exhibition takes time to process; the works all range in concept and unconventional material. A personal tip: pick a museum to visit first, bring water, take a breather for a day or two, and tackle the next collection with a new set of eyes. It takes physical and mental time to sit with each piece, to really interpret and analyze the process. But at the end of it all, it’s worth it. v

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Anton Chekhov’s famous dictum that if a gun is introduced in the first act, it must go off by the second is reimagined in Franco-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco’s Kiev in the seemingly innocuous form of a diving board. No one literally goes off the board into the stinking murky waters of the pool on the Badenweiler estate, soon to be demolished by steamrollers. But what it hides has poisoned the whole family.

The parallels to Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard are deliberate. But Blanco, whose work receives its dynamic and absorbing U.S. premiere with Aguijon under Abel Gonzalez Melo’s direction (in Spanish with English supertitles), has more than the economic disruptions of one family in mind. And that pool, in which matriarch Eiren Badenweiler’s child drowned years earlier, isn’t just about that earlier tragedy. The Badenweilers are representative of any family living under–and complicit in–the horrors of an authoritarian state, like the one that dominated Uruguay in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Eiren (Rosario Vargas), like Madame Ranyevskaya in Chekhov’s play, is torn between past and present, and depends upon generous helpings of denial to help her deal with her pain. But that denial has come at great cost to her disabled son Alden (Oswaldo Calderon) and daughter Dafne (the luminous Marcela Munoz), who soothes her own pain in opiods when not trying to smooth the conflicts among everyone else. Uncle Esvald (Sandor Menendez) has kept the estate running over the years–but for what purpose?

The arrival of Tavio (Israel Balza), the former tutor for the drowned boy, threatens to uncover everything Esvald has tried to hide. But his own guilt (and the disaster unfolding in the city of the play’s title) means that a true healing reckoning can’t be found. “The civil atom is as dangerous as the military atom,” Esvald observes at one point. In Kiev, that civil danger lives on; remorseless, relentless, and inescapable. v

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Kate Hendrickson directs the Chicago premiere of Krista Knight’s Lipstick Lobotomy, an arch but moving 2019 play about mental illness, conformity, and the search for understanding in World War ll-era America. When Ginny (Ann Sonneville) checks into an upper-crust sanitarium hoping to be cured of obsessive thinking and persistent depression, she immediately latches on to Rosemary (Abby Blankenship), an unruly fellow patient and the eldest daughter of kingmaker Joseph Kennedy. What starts out as an over-the-top comic skewering of social mores gains a tragic gravity as the “cure” for the women’s illnesses comes into sharper focus.

Ginny’s and Rosemary’s families want them to fit in and not embarrass them, so they resort to the latest, largely-unproven procedures to correct their behavior. When Rosemary’s lobotomy goes so badly that it leaves her permanently incapacitated, Ginny is forced to rethink her ardent desire to follow her friend into the operating room.

The conflict between the desire to be like everyone else and to hold on to what makes one unique is an evergreen problem, given a twist in Knight’s cheerfully tragic text. Each era has its quack cures that look barbaric in hindsight. I have no doubt that many 2020 treatments for mental and emotional troubles will be considered savage and inept within a couple decades. So cutting out chunks of brain matter to make women behave is, sadly, not as outlandishly archaic as it should be. The horrific final image of a roomful of patients dancing and singing in grotesque smile masks is now lodged in my head like a bad dream. v

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Before Ta-Nehisi Coates laid out “The Case for Reparations” in the Atlantic in 2014, Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 classic A Raisin in the Sun clearly showed the effects of racism on Black Americans seeking better living conditions–a problem we’ve yet to fully address. The Younger family–so cramped for space in their roach-infested apartment that son Travis has to sleep on the living room couch–hopes to buy a better piece of the American pie, thanks to a life insurance payout from their late husband and father. But what that pie looks like varies wildly, and Invictus Theatre Company’s current revival of Raisin, directed by Aaron Reese Boseman, honors those conflicting dreams with conviction and heart.

Matriarch Lena (Cheryl Frazier) wants to buy a house, even if that means moving to an unfriendly white neighborhood. Her son, Walter Lee (Michael Lewis), wants to stop being a driver for white people and take the wheel of his own destiny by buying into a liquor store. His little sister, Beneatha (Ashley Joy), wants to be a doctor and is torn between a bourgeois beau, George (Keith Surney), who is interested in her as arm candy, and a Nigerian student, Joseph (Jo Schaffer), who offers a broader vista for her life. Meantime, Ruth (Nyajai Ellison), Walter’s wife, is facing an unexpected pregnancy and anguish about her husband’s growing anger about his deferred dreams.

Hansberry crammed a lot of life into that small flat (the story is based in part on her own family’s legal challenge to racist restrictive housing covenants), and Boseman’s production goes for broke with heartfelt zest, spilling over the edge of Kevin Rolfs’s appropriately tiny dingy set. On opening night, there were some moments where the actors didn’t feel completely connected to each other, but it’s clear that they know these characters’ hurts and hopes to the bone, and I suspect the ensemble will grow even stronger over the run. v

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