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
Tickets are still on sale for Chicago Theatre Week Continued! The continuation of the annual celebration from the League of Chicago Theatres, that offers discounted tickets to more than 100 performances across the city runs through February 23. For details on what you can see go to https://www.choosechicago.com/chicago-theatre-week/
Raves
Fool for Love
Steppenwolf Theatre through March 23
Highly Recommended
You suddenly find yourself peering into a cheap motel room in the Mojave Desert that is so palpable and real you can almost smell the leavings of those who recently departed from its tacky embrace.
You are also smack dab in the middle of a story. Perhaps it’s a love story; perhaps not. Whatever it turns out to be, Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love holds you in its clutches from its angry beginning until its heartrending end, as pinned and unable to escape as the couple at its center.
Carolyn Neff is May, the female half of that couple, and she is as exquisite as she’s ever been, which is a high standard. Neff uses body tension and rapid-fire words to express Mae’s passion and fury, whether it’s putting on a blood red dress, clinging to a leg or screaming in a face. This role fits Neff as well as that clingy red dress. Nick Gehlfuss as Eddie is definitely her match. His lanky frame never really relaxes even when he’s lying on the motel’s weary bed. He is in a tensile state all the time whether he’s taunting May, threatening her, grabbing her or expressing more tender feelings.
Sitting and watching their battle is The Old Man, whose connection is unclear until the end, and who offers periodic commentary. At first this seems an uncharacteristic role for Tim Hopper, despite his wide range at Steppenwolf, but he moves into it with the ornery grace of an old cowboy, grumbling as he pulls on his boots. The other onlooker, though by accident, is the doltish Martin, who shows up in the middle of the action not knowing what will hit him. After a dramatic entrance, Cliff Chamberlain expertly plays this loser as a man so naïve and slow that you pity rather than detest him.
Fool for Love is full of surprises I won’t reveal other than to say there is a lot of shock and sadness. Hard as it is to imagine, there are also funny moments though often the humor comes more from the snap of the characters than the situation itself. The three Steppenwolf ensemble members – Chamberlain, Hopper and Neff – are all sublime in this revival of Shepard’s play and so is Gehlfuss. Jeremy Herrin’s excellent directing keeps the passions high and the fires raging throughout the 65 minutes that his cast is onstage. Todd Rosenthal’s tacky room with the neon “Motel” sign above it and trash all about is perfect, as are Raquel Adorno’s costumes from that red dress to Martin’s necktie, the hippest thing about the man.
There’s talk about how Shepard is the ideal Steppenwolf playwright and, indeed, there is a long history of the theater doing his plays. Perhaps that’s because the intensity of effort required of actors and directors – and even the audience – in a piece like Fool for Love captures the Steppenwolf style. Perhaps it’s because this play is heartbreakingly tragic in a way that fits right into Steppenwolf’s broken-souls collection of characters even though it lacks the brutality of some others. Whatever the case, Fool for Love is electric. It offers a night at the theater that you don’t want to miss.
A Slow Air
Steep Theatre Company through March 1
Recommended
From the moment Athol starts talking in A Slow Air, you are drawn in, and realize you want to know everything about him. The same is true for Morna, the other character in this play now at Steep Theatre.
It is a credit to the actors who portray this duo, Peter Moore as Athol and Kendra Thulin as his sister Morna, both of whom so fully inhabit these siblings, that we are hooked from the start. A founding member of Steep, Moore is well known to its audiences, and almost always excels – even when the plays he is in don’t. Now middle-aged and handsomely gray, Moore’s Athol is a man who knows he’s made some mistakes. He is troubled by several events in his life, including the 14-year estrangement from his sister, and the 2007 terrorist attack on the Glasgow airport. Both of these circle him as he stands, talking about his life in and around his suburban Glasgow house, like a plane wanting to land. Thulin’s Morna is an expert portrayal of the familial outlier, who chose to go it alone, a single parent who cleans houses to support her son, with whom she has an uneasy relationship. Both actors have mastered pitch-perfect Scottish accents, which support the easy physicality they create for Athol and Morna. Each of their facial expressions and movements feel exactly right. Thulin’s face is a wonderful to watch as she moves through emotions, especially when her winsomely toothy smile illuminates it.
As the dual monologues continue, facts are revealed that give the audience a deeper understanding of this brother and sister. It’s almost as if an onion is being peeled, and the removal of each layer brings tears but there are moments of grace and love here as well. Director Robin Witt sure-handed direction strips away any unnecessary fluff so the focus is on the individuals. Sotirios Livaditis’ spare set enhances that focus.
Playwright David Harrower’s A Slow Air is not an epic play but it is an insightful portrait of the complexities of family, with a particular focus on the people who make up a family and the way they interact – or don’t. It is the sort of intense piece at which Steep succeeds. For that reason, as well as the fine acting by two of its ensemble members, A Slow Air is the ticket to a worthy evening.
Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley
TimeLine Theatre Company in partnership with the american vicarious and DePaul University, performing at DePaul’s Cortelyou Commons through March 2
Highly Recommended
Full disclosure: James Baldwin has long been one of my heroes for his brilliance, courage and ability to express himself on the page and verbally. So it was with some trepidation that I went to a reenactment of the famous 1965 debate between Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr., a well-known conservative author and intellectual of the time. I need not have worried.
The actors portraying these two men made the right decision to take just enough of their speech styles and mannerisms to make Baldwin and Buckley recognizable but not so much as to make them caricatures. Baldwin’s distinctive clipped speech, as if he is almost biting off his words, was unique, as was his deeply intelligent combination of profound analysis and common sense, which he conveyed with a mix of reason and controlled rage.
Teagle F. Bougere has it down pat, perfectly inhabiting the man without ever disrespecting who he was. A particularly brilliant moment comes when he stops in front of Buckley on the word “liar” in one of his brilliantly complex sentences and stares down at his opponent in a chilling moment of silent accusation before moving on. Bougere captures Baldwin’s body language as he reacts to Buckley’s comments, particularly the more offensive ones. His brow furrows. His chin lifts. He purses his lips. His hands go deeper in his pockets. But he never has to utter a word.
Instead of making Buckley a comic character, which is hard to resist given how he used to arch his back, strut in a cartoonish and pretentious way and speak down his nose, Eric T. Miller chooses to play Buckley as an ingratiating gentleman, who does his best to charm his audience – and even Baldwin, though that is more of a challenge.
Bougere and Miller as Baldwin and Buckley are the star combatants in the historic mid-1960s televised debate at Cambridge University’s Union. Convened by the Cambridge Debate Society, it followed British Parliamentary style with debaters representing the government and the opposition. The question presented to that night’s overflow crowd was: “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”
TimeLine is recreating the feel of that debate by partnering with DePaul University and holding performances of Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley in the school’s Cortelyou Commons, an environment much like the Cambridge Union Chamber. TimeLine also partnered with the american vicarious’ Artistic Director Christopher McElroen, who adapted and directed the Baldwin-Buckley debate to prepare for its 60th anniversary this year. McElroen’s directing is deft, and his adaptation wisely sticks with the original, restoring a critical query from the audience that is missing from the televised version.
Although Baldwin and Buckley are main event, Cambridge students played starring roles in the 1965 debate, and they do in this 60th anniversary version as well. In a lovely touch, four students from The Theatre School of DePaul University rotate in the Cambridge Club roles. In the performance I saw, Jack Baust and Alex Perez convey the nervous but intense passion of students, and match their elders with their expressive and often exasperated facial expressions as the debate moves forward.
Perhaps not surprisingly Buckley never answers the question at issue. Instead he pulls the age-old trick of making Baldwin into the exception, and tries to reframe the debate so they are equals, as if Baldwin was a white colleague, meaning either that he did not consider Baldwin an equal until now, does not consider him part of the Black community despite Baldwin’s obvious and preferred identification as such or thinks only whites rather than Blacks can have this debate but will temporary grant Baldwin race access. Any of these explanations are odious for obvious reasons.
The question in the debate is: “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”
The question for 2025 audiences is somewhat different: Is this debate still relevant? The answer at the performance I saw was a resounding yes.
Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley gets my vote as a must-see for 2025 – or for any year.
Fat Ham
Goodman Theatre through March 9
Highly Recommended
This is not your father’s ghost’s Hamlet. Nope. And thank goodness.
For starters, it’s set in a small Southern town backyard during a post-nuptial BBQ. There are similarities to Shakespeare’s Danish play of course. The main character’s mother has just married his father’s brother though here it is a week after his father was murdered in jail. His father’s ghost keeps appearing and demanding his son avenge him. The differences might seem greater. Did I mention that this beleaguered son is a gay Black man? Not like any Hamlet you’ve ever seen?
And “there’s the rub,” the one that makes you laugh. Also ham in this adaptation pertains to the fact that this family is known for its pork butchering and, by the way, they prefer sauce to rubs. Take heed that there were purists opening night who sat stone-faced, and critics who fussed and whined later. Don’t get me wrong. I am devoted to Shakespeare – or rather to his best plays. I regularly argue that his genius is the timelessness of his work, which allows for constant reinvention and modernization. Fat Ham is nothing if not that. Younger audience members loved it, as did many middle- and late-middle aged ones, and even my mid-80s friend. I’ve seen my share of Hamlets. So has she. My least favorite was one where Hamlet ended up naked for no explicable reason. This play is deeply emotional for me because it was my beloved husband’s incorrect attribution of a line from it that made me realize his fatal brain cancer was pushing him to his end. I am confident that he, a man who studied and celebrated words, would have adored how Fat Ham embraces and plays with Shakespearian and Black English, delighting in and honoring both.
But back to Fat Ham since, after all, “The play’s the thing.” Playwright James Ijames’ reimagining of Hamlet is a delight. It reinvents this classic in unexpected creative and riotous ways, introduces different emotional realities and fills our ears with wicked jokes rather than poison. When Shakespeare’s words are quoted, they fit and are lovely to hear in this different context. Not only do Ijames and his excellent acting corps, expertly directed by Tyrone Phillips, explore the complicated emotional themes of Hamlet, they honor the bond between mothers and sons, plumb the complexities and tricky territory of homophobia in Black communities and the emasculation of Black men. The sensitivity and humor with which this is accomplished is moving.
The impressive Victor Musoni as Tio AKA Hamlet’s loyal friend Horatio is the first onstage and remains a winningly whacky philosopher with a crush on Hamlet’s mother Tedra AKA Getrude. Anji White is a wonder as this beautiful woman who adores her son and accepts his gayness, as she does her life, which has been anything but easy. She shimmers and sparkles, finding ways to eke joy out of her reality and stand by her men. Her late and current husband, both wickedly and wonderfully played by Ronald L. Connor, offers an ideal mix of lustful evil and malice that induces shivers. Trumane Alston is Juicy, her son, who would be Hamlet were this Shakespeare’s play. His is a hard role since he is depressed about his mother’s unseemly speedy marriage to an unfavorite uncle, wrestling with the death of an awful father and his own gayness because it is an issue for others. It is hard to tell if Alston’s disconnected portrayal is an effort to convey this. Sometimes he can be very moving and persuasive but other times he seems too distant. The always-excellent E. Faye Butler enters screaming with her unhappy daughter in tow. Here she is Rabby, the family friend, always in high dudgeon, holding the moral ground when not gossiping or eating everything in sight. She is a small-town Polonius, and her daughter Opal is Ophelia. Ireon Roach plays Opal with a charmingly adolescent combination of irritation at her intrusive mother and genuine sibling-like fondness for with Juicy. Then there’s her tall handsome brother, who will eventually bring down the house. Sheldon Brown’s Larry arrives in military dress with a cake in hand and exudes empathy and honor. He turns out to be full of surprises – and perhaps the kindest person in the play.
Arnel Sancianco’s set and Jos N. Banks’ costumes couldn’t be more perfect from Larry’s cake that keeps moving around to the wedding decorations to Rabby’s purple dress to Tedra’s turquoise jumpsuit. They are a feast for the eyes to complement the feast for the ears that Ijames and the Bard have given us.
Treat yourself to this dramatic gift of words and ideas, this updated Shakespeare that honors the original and does what art should by reinventing a classic and giving us much more to wrestle with and think about. Best of all, while we are thinking, it makes us laugh and we all need that.