Raves

Past Raves

I am not a theater critic but I have been devoted to covering theater since my early 1980s reports on the explosion of Chicago storefront theaters for National Public Radio. On The Mara Tapp Show in the 1990s, I was honored to host weekly conversations about and offer scenes from some of Chicago’s best shows, and delighted when those interviews filled houses for our local theaters.

In 2015, at the request of friends, I started a series of emails with recommendations for shows I thought worthy of patrons. Some years later, actors, directors and publicity people in Chicago’s theater world prevailed on me to share these raves, a request I accepted, especially in light of the increasing tensions in the theater world and need to keep Chicago theaters healthy. Read more…

Find out what the critics think at the Review Round-up on the website of TheatreInChicago.com.

Breaking News

Theater Raves has been renamed Raves to reflect the fact that I am now also raving about music performances and art exhibitions. Here’s to raves about all the arts!

I’ve stepped into the 21st Century and you can find my raves on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/tappraves/. Please follow me to shine a spotlight on the excellent performing arts organizations and artists I am honored to cover.

Theater Raves

Do Something Pretty

Rivendell Theatre Ensemble through June 14

Highly Recommended

What’s compelling about Do Something Pretty is how it teeters on transitions, capturing the anxiety teenagers face as they head into high school or college or life. By harnessing the humor and heartbreak of the insignificant and more meaningful moments in these rites of passage, Rivendell’s new show manages to be both ordinary and profound.

The play takes place on a hot late summer night in 1992 in small-town Massachusetts. School is a few weeks away and two young people slouch on a couch watching TV and eating Doritos. Phoebe is 13 and wants to be an adult. Jason is 19 and wants to be more than a friend to her sister Evie, whose return from work he awaits. Evie wants to leave it all behind now that she’s graduated from high school and on her way to college. The menace of the murder of a missing girl whose body was just found buried in a nearby back yard hovers over this play, a metaphor for the sense of danger and unease that grips these young people’s lives. In a story fraught with uncertainty, the perils here are quieter ones that linger, the sadness of people with no fulfilling futures.

Playwright Melissa Ross’ sensitive script creates conversations that sound trivial but actually cut deep with brutal honesty. Ross takes on sexuality, trauma and abuse in ways that neither trivialize nor stereotype them or her characters. Jessica Fisch’s careful direction elevates the chatter yet respects the silences that naturally emerge in conversation. The skilled actors turn what seems like silly meaningless dribble into barbs and, often, extraordinary insights about each other. What emerges is a portrait of people at the start of their adult lives who already feel lost, deserted and without hope. “Sometimes I feel like I’m yelling and yelling and nobody’s listening,” says Evie. Like her sister and friend, her fear that it will not get better is palpable. “Why is it that some people get all the good stuff in the world and they don’t even care?” she asks. The friend who accompanied me and I were struck by how these teenagers survived in homes devoid of positive parental models, crippling them when it came to making smart choices because this is a play about children raising children.

The actors excel in conveying all this in ways that feel authentic. Katherine Mallen Kupferer brings a natural awkwardness to Phoebe, conveying preteen naivete and attitude with remarkable physicality whether it’s through her posture or her facial movements. This is her Rivendell debut but her Chicago theater roots run deep. Mallen Kupferer’s prowess got national recognition in the lovely film Ghostlight in which she played the teenage daughter to her real-life parents, both gifted actors, Tara Mallen, Rivendell’s founder and artistic director, and Keith Kupferer. Mallen Kupferer is already a star in her own right and Do Something Pretty showcases her continuing skill at carrying on her family’s ability to elegantly embody members of the working class while making each role entirely her own. Jocelyn Zamudio is adept at capturing sister Evie’s toughness and her touching love of and protectiveness towards her baby sister. Reilly Oh perfectly personifies a lost young man, pining away for a woman he can’t have, perplexed by his responsibilities and sense of failure. The ease with which he does this is admirable hiding, as it does, behind his low-affect presence. His melancholy is palpable but Oh manages to make his Jason appealing by showing his good heart. As the loud jerk who is dating Evie, Jasper Johnson adds shape to a role that could be one-dimensional.

The technical team is equally strong. Lindsay Mummert’s set design and Sam Lancaster’s props capture a working-class home with its worn edges and belongings. Sierra Walker’s lighting flattens and warms the space in ways that illuminate the script and the action. The same is true for Eric Backus’ sounds that range from era-appropriate music to the destructive roar of an approaching car. Saanan Tiwari’s multiple costumes fit each person and scene.

All of this adds up to an engrossing evening that offers insights and a sensitive examination of what troubles us as we stumble through life trying to connect, succeed and hold onto hope. Even though it’s set in the early ‘90s, Do Something Pretty speaks to so much that’s happening right now. That makes it worth seeing.

Job

Writers Theater through June 14

Highly Recommended

It starts with a gun. Actually, Job, an arresting, shocking play, has multiple beginnings, which is a fine foreshadowing of the many surprises to come.

This is a challenging piece to let alone write about, let alone wrap your head around – perhaps apt for a play about a therapy session – because of those surprises, which would be ruined should they be revealed. Call this a high-order head game with soaring stakes.

Jane works for a major tech company. A video of her breakdown went viral so she is now on leave. The only way Jane can return to the job that consumes her life is with a sign-off from a crisis therapist. This brings her to Loyd, a therapist quite a bit older than she is, and an epic battle on multiple levels begins. What is constant in this taut show is tension.

Rae Gray brings her considerable skill at portraying alienated, troubled people to Jane with an almost a surgical precision. She presents as deeply troubled woman. Gray’s portrayal of a millennial whose breadth of knowledge and emotion breaks the stereotypes about her generation is smart and insightful. She is the kind of person who is too bright to do well on multiple-choice tests because she can see how each of the answers is possible. Christopher Donahue is the psychologist to whom she comes. A boomer who seems California laid-back, fitting since the play is set in San Francisco, Donahue is adept at expressing calm, passivity and fear in what becomes a contest of power and control. 

Max Wolf Friedlich’s play addresses much in under 90 minutes. It tackles the tech world, takes on the ugliest sides of the evil, evil web, lays bare generational and gender divides and obstacles and examines the patient-therapist relationship in a time in which therapy is so prevalent and psychobabble seems dangerously close to becoming a common dialect. David Esbjornson’s stark and precise direction keeps this intimate and disturbing show focused.  

That disturbing intimacy extends to the audience, which is brought fully into the action by Jack Magaw’s set that occupies the middle of the smaller theater at Writers. Willow James’ and Christopher Kriz’ chilling sound design punctuates the show with alarming utterances and sounds, dramatically lit by James F. Ingalls. All add to the unease heavy in the room.  

Job is a psychological drama in every sense, a show that draws you in and forces examination of the many issues it presents before its shocking ending. See it for the acting and what it tells us about ourselves and our times.

Windfall

Steppenwolf Theatre Company through May 31

Highly Recommended

What a thrill to have Tarell Alvin McCraney back in Chicago with his incandescent new play on Steppenwolf’s stage. Long a star in our city’s dramatic galaxy, his works have staying power. I remain enraptured by Steppenwolf’s 2010 production of The Brother/Sister Plays, McCraney’s decade-spanning trilogy that explores life in the Louisiana Bayou, West African mythology and ends with a hurricane. His Choir Boy about a young Black student navigating his role in a prestigious school, and Ms. Blakk for President, an homage to a Chicago drag queen that McCraney starred in and co-authored with Tina Landau, still occupy my thoughts. This playwright’s range is stunning and his works are connected by his lyrical yet realistic dialog, as well as the brilliance of his plots and characters. 

Once again, with Windfall, McCraney’s astonishing command of language unwraps the beauty of Black life to reveal its splendor. It speaks to our times. Based in Chicago but not limited by its borders, his new play offers yet another layered portrait of the obstacles and trials that government and society create for Blacks. Here a father is offered a Faustian choice that dishonors much, including father-son relationships.

Everyone in Windfall understands the value of money, and money is at this play’s dramatic heart. That makes sense when it’s revealed that yet another Black person was shot by police and a settlement payout is being offered because this is how our government tries to buy Black complicity and silence. Windfall has many layers and goes in many directions, which is praise rather than critique since it shows the layered nature of the work and McCraney’s brain. The play is also is full of universal themes, like the tensions between parents and their children, the hopes parents have for their children, the love and independence children seek, the press of life and loss, how loss haunts us, the monetary worth of a life, the overlay of the city-state that can break all bonds.

McCraney’s words, full of musicality and gripping thoughts, are brought to life by the sure and intelligent direction of Awoye Timpo and a sublime cast. The actors occupy the entire theater and occasionally engage the audience. One illuminating moment allows hope and joy to emerge. 

Most of the cast comes from Steppenwolf’s richly talented ensemble and upholds its tradition of excellence but the father and one of his sons are making their Steppenwolf debuts. Michael Potts plays Henri “Mr. Mano” Tamaño as a man sure in his skin but tortured in his multiple losses of those he loves. A devotee of The Wire, I found his performance here equally compelling. His child Eli is a charismatic activist and has become a cult figure. Esco Jouléy imbues this young person with the presence required of such a near-holy being.

Eli’s closest friends and followers are played by two ensemble members, Jon Michael Hill and Namir Smallwood, both of whom possess an extraordinary ability to portray wildly different people onstage. Hill’s memorable Steppenwolf successes include the analytic and perceptive son in Purpose and a hyperkinetic, computer-savvy Ariel inThe Tempest. Smallwood recently shone as a gentle, compassionate father in Mr. Wolf and a son enraged by abuse in The Book of Grace. Here each persuasively, and with ease, brings the solid support of a good friend mixed with the believable devotion of a follower who still retains his individuality. Glenn Davis is ideal as Mr. Mano’s less-favorite child. The exasperation and rage he brings to Marcus, whose grasp of economics is more sophisticated than his father’s, is biting yet when his gratitude emerges it is equally authentic. Hill and Smallwood are impressive in additional smaller but essential roles, as dictated by McCraney’s script, and Alana Arenas shines in her three incarnations. Each is driven by duty and/or money and each pays Mr. Mano an official visit bringing bad news. Arenas moves from the tentative First Lady, her efforts to be efficient eclipsed by a shocking development, to Miss Second, flitting about the stage with a realtor’s relish, to The Last One, who exudes evil while delivering the ugly realities of Mr. Mano’s situation.  

The creative team is as strong as the actors with a few standouts. In an impressive use of the theater’s in-the-round setting, Andrew Boyce’s set allows cast members to circle the action and hop onto the raised stage when they are a part of it. Qween Jean’s costumes are spot-on for each role but especially delicious when it comes to Alana Arenas. Music Director Mahmoud Khan amplifies the songs in a way that makes them present and important but never overwhelming.

The result is that Windfall works on all levels, elevating McCraney’s play and those who shape and animate it, and giving all the stature deserved. The gift to audiences is a show overflowing with ideas, love, tragedy, activism, humanity and hope. McCraney’s work is so smart, so good at capturing the conflicts and complexities of Black life, and life in general, as to merit repeated viewings. That places it in a rare dramatic cohort. Make sure you experience this theatrical treasure before it departs.

Eelpout!

Shattered Globe Theatre through May 30

Highly Recommended

Call this one an enchanting Minnesota Little Mermaid but with a man. And please think Hans Christian Andersen and not Disney even though the ending is more Disney-happy than Brothers-Grimm-gruesome. Eelpout! is such a delightfully wacky story that it’s fortunate its constantly changing currents carry one along leaving little time to ponder the impossible watery twists and turns it takes.

The premise is simple: Two Minnesota guys are having a bachelor fishing party in an ice house. Their names are Ole Olsen and Sven Svensen, and they’ve been best friends since kindergarten. They’re joined by Lars Larsen, a wildly unpopular weirdo and now the third wheel. The first part of Paul W. Kruse’s play has these three tossing back booze while uttering ridiculous ritualistic chants, punctuated by riotous male comments and rites. Yet, from time to time, and not that infrequently, these young men express deep, sometimes breathtakingly beautiful, thoughts. In fact, Sven and Ole’s first appearance is magical, a moment in nature that leaves them awestruck and reveals their closeness. Then there are the fish, many fish, who play a huge role, making them more than just a good catch. Ditto for the women, who may seem less epic and dreamy but turn out to be rather wise.

Lives in this show are dictated by the small town from which these Minnesotans come, and the comforts, limitations, irritations and surprises that brings. To say much more would be to deprive audiences of the thrill of this fishing excursion on Lake Mille Lacs.   

None of it could work without this utterly original script, perfectly directed by Jeremy Ohringer and masterfully acted – pun intended though the women quite match the men here – by a first-rate cast. Jeff Rodriguez is an ideal Sven, capable of being “one of the guys” but hiding so much more. She handles the layers in her role, which has the greatest range in the play, with admirable ease, sweetness, resignation and humor. Watching her is a joy. Carl Hallberg as his buddy Ole, the groom-to-be, gives us a more traditional guy but one who also has some surprises and profound thoughts. Dinah Berkeley is an exemplary Lars, quickly demonstrating their weirdness and proving how they’ve earned their most-disliked title. 

Rebecca Jordan portrays a realistic but loving woman who knows what time it is and has her own set of surprises, as does her daughter, played with a delicious mix of naivete and knowledge by Taigé Lauren. Lydia Moss is a bride-to-be who is resigned but cheerful and, like her future mother-in-law, a realist. All the fish deserve praise for their iridescence and dancing skills but the main fish merits a shout-out. Jesús Barajas’ talking fish is equal parts irritable and sensual, and he adeptly shines a light on being different, which turns out to be an important theme in this play.

Delena Bradley’s costumes fit the actors like second skins whether they are human flesh or fishy gills and scales and they are as hilarious as the play. Eleanor Kahn’s set, with its raised platform, offers options above and below water. Props by Saskia Bakker add mirth. Christopher Kriz’s original music and sound round out the experience with beauty and humor.

As someone who endured several cold years in college and later working for Minnesota Public Radio at a time when the state was really white and far less comfortable with diversity than it is now, the Minnesota jokes rang true. A trip I took to Duluth was particularly exciting for the contrasting presence of Italians and Eastern Europeans who worked the Iron Range mines. The only Black I saw was Muhammad Ali on a pinball machine. Sven, Ole and Lars would have been right at home. 

The young friend who joined me was as captivated as I was by the unexpected actions and events in Eelpout!, as well as its ability to plumb the under-ice depth of its characters and the challenges and sorrows they face.

This is a piece that completely turns masculinity on its head, causes uncontrollable laughter and still manages to speak truths about being lonely, the other or trapped. Best of all is that it does so with humor and joy, making it a completely engaging undertaking. Don’t let this one get away!

Musical Homage

Remembering Tom Lehrer

I was about 11 when Tom Lehrer jumped into my consciousness and stole my intellectual heart.

I’ll blame it on my parents who were crazy about this genius mathematician-turned-showman, the author of some of the wittiest satirical songs most of us had ever encountered. We spent many a night after family dinner wearing out the vinyl on Lehrer’s That Was the Year that Was. By the time I was12 I knew all the lyrics on that album, and a couple other well-worn records by Tom Lehrer. For true Lehrer devotees, picking a favorite song is impossible but singing as many as possible as often as possible is impossible to resist – much to the annoyance of non-Lehrer fans or other sorts of American Puritans he would most certainly eschew. Fortunately, my parents were far from that, and I had the good luck to marry a man who happily sang Lehrer along with me, though he was usually in key. So Lehrer’s late July death at 97 hit me with enough of a smack that it’s taken me a while to collect my thoughts, and to trace his impact on my life.

In my junior year of high school, my mother was offered a visiting professorship at Harvard Law School, an opportunity she happily accepted for many reasons, not least among them that she’d not been able to accept the full scholarship Radcliffe offered her because her parents couldn’t afford to send her across the country for college. Already a surly teenager, I was eager to escape the irritating pretensions of the University of Chicago, where the administration often made racist and other horrible decisions that eclipsed the good work and politics of my parents and their friends and colleagues. My parents took the view that while the Hyde Park neighborhood had some merits and lots of smart and wonderful people, it also possessed a cloyingly small-town nature that required true city folks like us to leave it often to explore the delights of Chicago, and to find decent restaurants. Given this, my adolescent spirit was prepared to dive into in the cosmopolitan charms of Cambridge and Boston. That disappeared as soon as I discovered that pretense and academic pedigrees were an art form at Harvard compared to the rumpled, multisyllabic, grumpy nature of your average U of C habitué or Hyde Parker.

The fact that I was sent to a “school for young ladies” in a Cambridge house did not improve my teenage outlook. However, one fact, and that school’s proximity to it, elated me. Tom Lehrer taught at Harvard and lived nearby. Call me naïve but, at 15, I thought the best way to meet him was to go to his house every day after school and sit on his steps in the hopes that he would emerge or come home after work whereupon I would express my admiration of his brilliant lyrics and fawn all over him. Weeks went by. This did not happen. Finally, one cold afternoon, the door opened and my heart leapt. A woman peered out and asked me why I was sitting on her porch every day. I explained that I wanted to meet Lehrer and asked if this wasn’t his house. Yes, she replied, but he had the good sense to go to Santa Cruz that winter and she was renting his house. Crestfallen, I went home and consoled myself with art. At that time, I intended to be a dancer and choreographer so I persuaded one of my two school friends, both also outliers, to join me in creating a dance to Lehrer’s “The Vatican Rag.” Her Czech mother sewed our nuns’ habits from old pillowcases, and we used Mardi Gras beads that doubled as belts we could swing around and as rosaries.

We started performing our “Vatican Rag” around Cambridge. People seemed to like it, except for one woman who found it scandalous and turned to express her view to my father, who was sitting next to her. “That’s my daughter,” he said with some pride. He was a professor of humanities and religious studies among other subjects so I like to think that it was more than mere paternal pride.

The Cambridge grapevine, it turns out, was as good as the Hyde Park one. When Lehrer returned to Cambridge in the spring, word reached him that two girls were performing a dance to his “Vatican Rag” around town. Connections were made, and Lehrer came over to our house, singing and playing the piano while I performed our dance for him. His delight was contagious but not nearly as enormous as mine. My mother, herself delighted, filmed this encounter. Alas that ancient videocassette returned with me to Chicago only to become the one piece of my luggage the airlines have lost forever so all I have is the memory of that remarkable afternoon – and, of course, Lehrer’s glorious song.   

I headed off to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in the Fall but was so smitten with Lehrer that I managed to stay in touch with him. He was campaigning for George McGovern by singing at fundraisers, and the Twin Cities were on his tour. I got to spend an intoxicating evening following Lehrer around and watching him work his magic on crowds. By then, he’d performed on Sesame Street, singing adorable little ditties about “silent e” and its alphabetical relatives. He tickled the Twin Cities audiences by sharing the “Adult X-rated” version of “Silent E.”

As I’ve revisited his repertoire since his death, I’ve been struck by the giddy joys Lehrer’s lyrics cause in songs like “New Math” and “The Elements,” and the relevance of his lyrics in so many songs from “Pollution” to “Who’s Next?” Consider these from “National Brotherhood Week:”

Oh the white folks hate the Black folks
And the Black folks hate the white folks
To hate all but the right folks is an old established rule
But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week …
It’s fun to eulogize the people you despise
As long as you don’t let them in your school
Oh the poor folks hate the rich folks
And the rich folks hate the poor folks…
Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everybody hates the Jews
But during National Brotherhood Week
National Brotherhood Week
National Everyone-Smile-at-One-Another-hood Week
Be nice to people who are inferior to you
It’s only for a week so have no fear
Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year

I was moved to discover in the many odes to and obituaries to Lehrer that he decided to release the rights to all his songs, telling his fans, “So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.” He even had a website created for people to download his songs.

No doubt that only expanded Lehrer’s following, as does his songs’ infectious singability, which has made me continue to sing Lehrer’s songs across so many decades whenever and wherever the spirit moves me, which is often. Our children grew up on Lehrer’s songs as well, and I am now introducing my grandbaby to his oeuvre. I’m sure she’ll enjoy the kiddie versions of his Sesame Street songs when she learns to read but, for now, we’re working our way through the age-appropriate highlights of his adult repertoire so she can decide what her favorite will be.

And now for something completely different…

Now this is funny! Duane Cerny is always worth reading but this month’s column is particularly relevant to any who attends any live performances. Full disclosure: Duane has edited many of my raves.