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.
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Remedios Varios: Para Las Aflicciones Del Cuerpo Y El Espíritu (For the afflictions of body and spirit)
Inspiration came to Carlos Carrillo in the middle of an exhibit of an artist whose paintings he’d never seen before. The Puerto-Rican born composer was working on an opera for Chicago Opera Theater as part of its Vanguard Initiative, described as an “immersive residency” for those who have never composed an opera.
There Carrillo stood surrounded by otherworldly creations in the 2023 Art Institute of Chicago exhibition Remedios Varo: Science Fictions. Varo was a refugee, first from her native Spain to escape the Spanish Civil War, then from Paris to escape World War II. She went to Mexico where she spent the rest of her life as part of its vibrant art scene. There, she and two other female Surrealists became known as “the three witches” for their fantastical artwork about the lives & power of women.
“As I was going through the exhibit, I was building a story,” Carrillo recalled. “By the time I got to the triptych, I had the story.” That story grew from the three-part painting at the end of the exhibition and it became Remedios Varios: Para Las Aflicciones Del Cuerpo Y El Espíritu (For the afflictions of body and spirit). Carrillo’s opera will be performed April 5.
“There was a communication between my ideas and the paintings,” said Carrillo, who was moved by the connections Varo made. “She talked about music in a mystical way. There’s a lot of instruments in her painting, and she talked about music opening this door.”
Like Varo, Carrillo is an artist whose work makes connections across the arts. “I need that,” he said, noting that he “grew up in a generation [that] read everything.” He attributes some of his natural curiosity to his Puerto Rico education that involved reading and studying across disciplines. “I love knowledge, and I want to know more,” he said. Carrillo’s education continued at the Eastman School of Music from which he earned his undergraduate degree, at Yale University at which he received a masters in music and at the University of Pennsylvania at which he completed his Ph.D. At each place, he said he was fortunate to study with musical giants. He followed in their path by teaching at DePauw University, Reed College and the Conservatory of Music in San Juan, Puerto Rico before joining the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Music faculty.
Composing music about the visual arts can be challenging. “It triggers something in the imagination that is not a one-to-one correlation of what the painting has,” Carrillo explained, adding that with Varo’s art led to “a communication between my ideas and the painting.” The encounter caused him to ask, “What is the meaning of this?”
The Varo-inspired opera gave Carrillo the chance to practice an important element of his craft – using his art to address politics, which are particularly precarious for artists and professors in this moment. “Opera can be entertainment but it can also be a response to what’s happened,” Carrillo noted. “In society things happen, oppression and fights … In society, what you have left is the music, the paintings, the books so the art remains behind – a symbol of what happened, testament of what we fought. … My response to things that are happening in society is opera, this work of art.”
COT describes Carrillo’s opera as the story of an herbalist who “struggles to heal a community afflicted by a siege of maladies and a homesick boarding-school student dreams of escape. … This searing new opera looks at a culture rapidly strip-mining itself of its riches, and embraces the realm of the imagination as fertile ground for regeneration.”
When asked how he would describe the music he composes for those unfamiliar with opera or contemporary classical music, Carrillo’s answer is simple: “I think it’s beautiful.” He knows that word is often eschewed by those in the arts but it is a value essential to his creative process and music. “The idea of beauty, I define it,” Carrillo explained. “I’m not trying to write for a particular person. I am trying to create something that it is important to me and hope people will connect with it.”
Make your Carrillo connection this Saturday, April 5th, at the Chicago Opera Theater premiere of Remedios Varios: Para Las Aflicciones Del Cuerpo Y El Espíritu (For the afflictions of body and spirit) at The Athenaeum Center for Thought and Culture.
Raves
The Winter’s Tale
in The Winter’s Tale.
Photos by Aaron Reese Boseman Photography.
Invictus Theatre Company through April 20
Highly Recommended
When the second half begins with an actor solemnly blowing on an unfurling party favor, it’s clear Invictus Theatre’s take on The Winter’s Tale will diverge wildly from any you’ve previously seen.
Yes, there is the Lear-like moment of rage though here the baseless banishment of a queen stems from jealousy. Yes, there is a case of mistaken identity. Yes, there are the removals and murders of royals. Yes, there are the young lovers, one with a secret identity. Yes, there is the classic Shakespearean contrast between the restrained but often joyless royals and their courtiers and the far-less-refined but definitively happier shepherds in the forest.
This story is a classic one familiar to fans of the Bard and of fairy tales: King Leontes of Sicily suspects his beloved pregnant queen of infidelity with the King of Bohemia, who is his childhood friend. Leontes tries and banishes her and all their progeny, condemning them to death. That’s the first half of The Winter’s Tale. The second half erupts in joyous mirth peppered with somber scenes of Leontes’ descent into madness. It is what Shakespearian experts call a “problem play” because of its very different and seemingly united halves so it is rarely done but I’ve always found it intriguing and moving. Besides it has one of William Shakespeare’s two best stage directions – the first being “Enter Ghost,” which kicks off Hamlet. In The Winter’s Tale the excellent stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear,” does not appear until Act III but it heralds one of the most amusing murders in the Bard’s oeuvre.
Queen Hermoine’s warm and loving relations with her son and members of the court are interrupted by King Leontes’ rage. “You speak a language that I understand not,” the queen tells her husband during her trial, as he scoots around the stage in a wheeled throne full of menace and disdain. Andrea Uppling gives us an admirably calm and reasonable Hermoine, who protests her fate with a love that cannot erase her husband’s irrational rage. Michael Stejskal skilfully captures Leontes wild range of emotions, from blind fury to deep depression to forgiveness and remorse. His body maps the king’s bitter rage with staccato moves, his despondence with diminished posture familiar to anyone who’s had a depressed loved one, his love and forgiveness with a lift of his face and limbs.
Sicilian Noblewoman Paulina is played by Amber Dow with courage and power, standing up for her queen to a king blinded and crazed by jealousy as his courtiers look on, unable to stop him. She does this at a time in which women were usually powerless to assert such authority. Paulina takes the rational human approach in her pleas to the tortured king. She is the moral compass, a force urging fairness and love. Sicilian Nobleman Camillo plays a similar role on the king’s side but his nature is less forceful and brave. Kim Pereira conveys Camillo’s tortured efforts with grace.
And then there’s that second half…
Sam Nachison nearly steals the show as Autolycus, a flim-flam traveling salesman. In the spirit of the best Zero Mostel moves – think his brilliance in The Producers – Nachison introduces himself with a riotously polished full-body pickpocket that masquerades as a striptease. His elastic face, fine singing voice and comic bits are unmitigated delight.
Much of this second half of The Winter’s Tale belongs to those shepherds and their entourage, who bring an ebullience to this production. The shepherds’ bawdy humor called to mind a line from a much sadder Shakespearian monologue. “There with fantastic garlands did she come / Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples / That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,” Laertes says, as he describes Ophelia’s drowning in Hamlet, “But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.” When I was learning this speech at age 15 for drama class, my professor father helped me understand it line by line. “Think about it,” he instructed when it came to those liberal shepherds until my face showed I’d figured it out. I ask the same of you. Pause. Indeed! Shakespeare always lifts the happy-uneducated-peasants-versus-smart-tortured-denizens-of-the-upper-classes cliché right out of its stereotype, and he does so again in The Winter’s Tale. The lines from Hamlet seem the perfect encapsulation of this “problem play,” as well as Shakespeare’s delight in teasing out the complexities of life and opposites in his characters.
There isn’t a weak actor in the corps of 16, even more impressive given that most play multiple roles with talented élan. Their work is by improved by many other talents. Charles Askenaizar’s sure-handed direction marries this play’s two worlds and styles. Jessie Gowen’s modern-yet-classic court costumes and silly outfits for the forest crowd differentiate the distinct groups and enhance the action. Jen Cupani’s choreography lets all strut their best stuff. Kevin M. Rolfs’ flexible wooden set with a circle surrounded by openings, a castle-like door and the suggestion of a drawbridge with a ramp for the court scenes is inspired. That ramp becomes the gateway to the forest where, under the trees that flank the stage, form a perfect canopy and surround for the cavorting shepherds and their friends. Randy Rozler’s props include the striking use of candles carried in by the royals and their courtiers, who set them down around the edges of the stage in a manner that both redefines the space as a quiet nunnery, in which stands a statue of the queen, and adds dignity to her regal presence. Petter Wahlbäck’s original score is brimming with luscious music, expertly performed by the actors and a five-piece instrumental ensemble.
It all adds up to an ideal Shakespearian experience, not to mention a seasonally appropriate one that travels from the grim cold of Winter, with its economical and serious emotions, to the fulsome unfolding of Spring, replete with its joy that welcomes new life. Treat yourself to this resplendent awakening while you have the chance. It will lift your spirits.