Theater 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.

Musical Magic Update

Pierre Boulez’s Centenary Performance on March 23rd at Orchestra Hall

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Clarinetist John Bruce Yeh moved around the semicircle of music stands in a Roosevelt University art gallery Tuesday evening as he rehearsed the late French Composer Pierre Boulez’ Domaines. The audience was comprised of the students he shares with his wife, Clarinetist Teresa Reilly, and a couple invited friends, of whom I am fortunate to be one. The mix of tonal lyricism and dissonant sound was expertly conveyed by Yeh, who is performing this piece for the first time. Boulez would have loved the rumble of the passing El and the blaring car horns that punctuated this rare treat of a preview.

Yeh, the CSO’s Assistant Principal Clarinet and E-flat Clarinet, will play Domaines as part of an international celebration of the 100th birthday of Maestro Boulez on March 23^rd at Orchestra Hall. He and Boulez worked together when Boulez was a regular and popular CSO conductor.

Domaines started as a clarinet solo and, over the seven years Boulez worked on it, he decided to include an ensemble of musicians whose playing is dictated by the perambulatory clarinetist. It is a piece in which the musicians make the choices of what to play, Yeh explained. However, he is performing it as a soloist at the CSO MusicNOW concert. It is one of the few Chicago performances for the Boulez Centenary, and tickets are at the reasonable MusicNOW rates, so don’t miss this chance to a see a brilliant clarinetist honor the great Boulez.

Raves

Guys and Dolls

Music Theater Works through March 30

Highly Recommended

From the first lyric until the last, the gentleman in front of me mouthed every word to every song. He made no noise so as not to disturb those sitting around him, but, like so many of us, he was unable to resist participating as Frank Loesser’s music and lyrics sped by. Shortly into the first act, his wife of 57 years put her hand on top of his. He covered it with his other hand and, together, they delighted in Music Theater Works’ snappy, exuberant production of Guys and Dolls, giving an unofficial review that rang truer that any words I might offer.

For those yet to be infected by its charms, Guys and Dolls is based on popular short stories by Newspaper man Damon Runyon that chronicled and captured the personalities in New York’s underground criminal world of the 1920s and 1930s. Songwriter Frank Loesser’s lyrics and music won the show a Tony. The central storyline follows Nathan Detroit, a gambler who needs cash to finance the “oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York,” and Miss Adelaide, his fiancé of 14 years who earns her living as the lead singer and dancer at the dubiously named Hot Box Club. Another major storyline emerges when Sky Masterson, the cooler-than-cool wandering gambler just back in town, bets Detroit that he can get the all-business head of the Save A Soul Mission to Cuba.

Sasha Gerritson directs this Guys and Dolls with verve, and the ability to summon up the softer sides of her top-drawer actors. The result is a marvel in every way, starting with the way it honors the iconic original, and continues the fine tradition of this most magical of musicals. One of the great pleasures of Guys and Dolls is that it is a musical with many excellent, juicy roles from the romantic leads to the gaggle of gamblers to the Hot Box chorus.

Kristin Brintnall is the ideal Adelaide, loving and loyal to her man, sweet and dyed blonde-pretty but tougher than a $2 steak. Don’t let the cherry costume she inhabits for “A Bushel and a Peck” fool you. Who could resist a song with lines like “The cows and chickens are going to the dickens! / ‘Cause I love you, / A bushel and a peck, / You bet your pretty neck I do.” I could never have imagined the song’s origin when my dear mother crooned it to me during my childhood years. And that’s not even Adelaide’s best number. It’s a toss-up between “Adelaide’s Lament,” in which she lists the sickly symptoms the psychology book she’s reading suggests could be a result of waiting 14 years to marry her beloved Nathan, and “Take Back Your Mink,” a vehicle for Adelaide’s feistiness, delivered with relish by Brintnall. The latter is a song about a woman who thought gifts from the man courting her were authentic emblems of his love, only to discover that they were a means of employing his carnal desires. “So take back your mink / To from whence it came,” Adelaide sings with delicious grammatical class mistakes that would have enraged Samuel Johnson, the esteemed English writer and lexicographical grump bucket who despised those unaware that “whence” means “from where.”

The choreography was so spot on in this number with it’s ironic, riotous semi-striptease by Adelaide and her chorus that forgiveness is possible for all but Mr. Johnson and perhaps one person in the opening-night audience. A teenager, there with a man presumably his father, put his head down in the particularly intimate moment when Adelaide and her dancers’ attire began to disappear. What a period-perfect reaction for a young man, and more proof of the magic of this musical. Behold: It can even transport teens back to an age of greater modesty.  

Guys and Dolls is deliciously infectious. It was my late husband’s favorite musical, and it soon became our children’s. When our youngest was five, they stood up in their chair at dinner, threw out their arms and belted out “Take Back Your Mink.” We were sticklers for table manners so my husband inquired, “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Our youngest responded, “Performing ‘Take Back Your Mink’ in a perfect New York accent.” We couldn’t disagree so the performance was permitted at table.

Back to this show though: Callan Roberts nails Nathan Detroit, Adelaide’s evasive lovebug, with his energetic shifts from adoring his allegedly intended to keeping ahead of her demands, and those of the gambling gaggle, plus avoiding the Irish cop trying to bust up the craps game. Though neither Nathan nor Adelaide are tall, this power couple possesses enviable energy and wiry athleticism whether it’s in Nathan’s close calls or Adelaide’s dancing.

The other love match is easily their equal and their mirror image. The two women are do-gooders lamentably in love with gamblers; the men return that love but have trouble embracing their women’s picket-fence dreams. Missionary Sarah Brown starts a bit stiff but Cecilia Iole comes into her own with definitive assurance about the moral state of the universe before her delicious derailing due to love and spirits. As her corrupter, Jeffrey Charles is an almost baby-faced Sky Masterson, but that cute face registers an impressive range of emotions that chip away at the cool façade Sky Masterson must possess.  

Then there are the not-so-minor characters with fabulous names like Liver Lips, Angie the Ox and Rusty Charlie. Cary Lovett conveys the not-as-dumb-as-he-seems clumsiness of Nathan’s sidekick Nicely-Nicely, especially when he leads the gamblers posing as Christian converts in a rousing version of “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat.” When Bob Sanders, Sarah’s sensible grandfather, sings the “More I Cannot Wish You,” his gorgeous voice enhances his heartfelt counsel to his granddaughter about love.

There isn’t a weak link in this dramatic corps. The actor/dancers sing like angels despite their devilish sides and dance with gusto and grace. Clayton Cross’s precise, ebullient, often elegant choreography shows them off to full advantage in both bring-down-the-house numbers and gentler love songs. Bob Kuhn’s costumes provide the right flash for the Hot Box Club dancers, the primness necessary for the missionaries and the duds gangsters dream about.

For the long-time fans, like the accomplished actor friends who accompanied me, this is an ideal Guys and Dolls. But not to worry if you are not an aficionado because you will leave this show elated and converted, much like the modest teen who smiled and applauded at curtain call. Our 57-years-married couple get the last word: They really enjoyed it! Follow their lead and make sure to see this gem before it closes.

Musical Magic Preview

Pierre Boulez’s Centenary Performance by Chicago Symphony Clarinetist John Bruce Yeh on March 23rd at Orchestra Hall

“You start in darkness,” French Composer Pierre Boulez told American Composer Augusta Reed Thomas when she asked about the creative process for his work. Then, he continued, “you move into light.” When the composition is finished, he said, you return to darkness because you have many questions and more pieces to create. Boulez’s encapsulation of his creative process, for me, captures it perfectly, not only for artists but for any of us who make something. I quote him whenever possible. These two worked together when Boulez was a beloved regular conductor at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Thomas was its resident composer and the first director of CSO MusicNOW, its still-popular contemporary classical series. That series helped cement Chicago’s reputation as a star in contemporary classical music universe.

Boulez, a leader in the French and International classical music worlds both traditional and contemporary, lives on through his music, which is getting greater visibility internationally in this centennial year of his birth. John Bruce Yeh, the CSO’s Assistant Principal Clarinet and E-flat Clarinet, will play Boulez’s Domaines in the next MusicNOW performance. It’s a piece that started as a clarinet solo and, over the seven years Boulez worked on it, expanded to include an ensemble of musicians whose performance is dictated by the perambulatory clarinetist.

Yeh, who joined the CSO at 19, recently reminisced about his long professional collaboration with the Maestro. You can read about how his audacious request kicked that off at https://cso.org/experience/article/22271/john-bruce-yeh-remembers-pierre-boulez. You can find out more about Yeh – Full disclosure: Yeh is a close friend of many years but my regard for his musical brilliance predates our friendship, and I concur with and defer to music critics’ raves about his skills before and since our friendship – at https://cso.org/about/performers/cso-musicians/woodwinds/e-flat-clarinet/john-bruce-yeh. If you want to hear a bit of his playing and experience his teaching talents, go to Orchestral Excerpt Insights: Yeh Plays Berlioz.

Most important, make sure to hear and see John Bruce Yeh honor Pierre Boulez on March 23 at Orchestra Hall. Tickets are available at MusicNOW’s usual bargain rate. I can’t imagine a more perfect way to mark Maestro Boulez’s 100th birthday and to celebrate all that gave us.

Raves

Dummy in Diaspora

Jackalope Theatre through March 23

Highly Recommended

Much has been uttered and written about the experiences of immigrants to America and their first-generation children so it’s a pleasure to see Esho Rasho make it fresh in Dummy in Diaspora.

Not that each story of people who came to our shores isn’t unique but it seems essential to be reminded of the commonalities across centuries and cultures in these times when anti-immigrant sentiments are at a frenzied level of fear and hate.

Rasho adeptly and elegantly accomplishes that and more in his one-man show, deftly directed by Karina Patel, herself originally from London. His Essa comes of age in this semi-autobiographical piece, moving easily between stand-up comedy, familial tragedy and a search for his identity as a gay Middle Eastern man whose father is a refugee. The grace of Rasho’s physical agility matches the poignant lyrical moments he delivers with beautiful language.

“My English is so very perfect now, you wouldn’t have even guessed it was my second language,” he says, “[t]hese words and their scars in my mouth. The worst scar is losing my mother tongue.” Essa’s mother is an important presence in Dummy in Diaspora. A Chicago-based actor and writer, Rasho knows whereof he speaks. His mother is an Assyrian-Lebanese immigrant and his father is an Assyrian-Iraq refugee. Familiar with our city’s emotional and physical landscape, he builds a worthy bridge between mother and motherland, conflating his maternal attachment and his attachment to his imagined homeland as seen through his parents’ eyes. As one of the friends with me opening night put it, “He never really knew his homeland and he felt it through his mother.”

And yet there are those most American moments, played with adolescent agility and humor, as Essa comically navigates teen life in a manner that reminds us how universal the pull of friends is and what a tug-of-war it can lead to with parents. “What is so hard about your life? Please tell me,” Essa’s mother repeatedly asks him, along with other parental queries that will ring familiar to parents and guardians around the world. “This country, I don’t understand what it do to you,” she often comments in her English, about which she says, “Still it doesn’t fit in my mouth.” Such an utterance brings home the struggle to learn another language with clarity but without any preachiness. 

I won’t steal all Rasho’s thunder lest it dampen a desire to see this thoughtful, funny show, but I will note that his insights and humor about nicotine addiction, ESL classes and his body – the latter perhaps part of his identifying as gay but also, no doubt, a bow to the American obsession with aging – are further evidence of how expertly Essa crosses cultural, emotional and physical borders. Dummy in Diaspora is the second one-man show I’ve seen featuring a first-generation gay man navigating multiple cultures. Like Michael Shayan’s Avaaz, this is a piece worth adding to your dramatic life.

Desirable Dance Rave

Golden Hour

Joffrey Ballet Chicago

It’s about time someone decided to update Hans Christian Andersen’s The Princess and the Pea!

How fortunate I was to be able to delight in the Joffrey Ballet Chicago’s new version, a wacky morality tale for our times. I have a soft spot for art that illuminates politics, and this is a fine example of same. Mind you I don’t like the word “woke” not only because it is now at the center of an ugly political battle but because I believe we should always operate with equity for all on a truly level playing field. I’m no Pollyanna but I’ve never had any problem finding brilliant art that crosses centuries and countries, as well as race, class and generational divides. To me, it’s simply engaging and often beautiful art that touches our heads and our hearts. Problem solved. 

Now back to Princess and the Pea, this new imagining that a Chicago Symphony Orchestra clarinetist friend told me I couldn’t miss. Australian choreographer Dani Rowe collaborated with American Composer Jim Stephenson to create the story of Penelopea, who lives with her two loving dads in the Pea Town. It is ruled by an evil self-appointed princess, who insists that everything be green, and maintains her power by winning a rigged annual mattress contest. In a moment of adolescent angst that turns into a revolution, Penelopea refuses to eat any more peas   and her dads produce a forbidden carrot. They run into trouble with the authorities and what follows is a riotous riot of dance and music perfectly matched to this tale that features dancing cans and mattresses and a swoon-worthy carrot who helps Penelopea be brave and bring color back to Pea Town. The metaphors are deliciously obvious in this truly family friendly show with so much to say, and it’s hard to resist remembering Kermit the Frog, who showed us that “It’s Not Easy Being Green,” let along the more adult Freudian male carrot and female pea, but that’s all part of the fun. It goes without saying that every section is ideally danced because, after all, this IS the Joffrey. As I was smiling in the dark, I realized that it is the balletic version of the CSO, a corps of artists so exquisitely excellent that they always make everything as it should be and can get away with anything.  

While this tragicomic offering was my favorite part of the Joffrey’s “Golden Hour” program, there were other dazzlers to behold. Under the Trees’ Voices, choreographed by Nicolas Blanc who put the stunning dancers in semi-sheer leafy costumes, with music by Ezio Bosso, is a seasonal piece of particular beauty. Jack Mehler’s ever-changing and larger-than-life leaves are the overhead canopy as the dancers’ limbs unfurl, and they move in and out of configurations and seasons. This piece took me back to a long-ago Joffrey performance to Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, which my late husband, daughter and I adored. My husband’s favorite season was Fall, which is how Under the Trees’ Voices ends, but mine is Spring, which is where this piece begins, because it offers the opportunity for renewal and is a time when our flora and fauna start to shake off the winter chill and burst into bloom.

Heimat also offered a political message. Choreographed by Cathy Marston to the music of German favorite Richard Wagner, it presented a family that differed from what the Nazis’ or their favored composer might have prescribed. In German, “Heimat” means “home” or “homeland,” according to Wikipedia. “The word has connotations specific to German culture, German society and specifically German Romanticism, German nationalism, German statehood and regionalism so that it has no exact English equivalent.” This dance puts the stress on home and “German Romanticism” rather than nationalism, statehood and regionalism, which seems a decidedly political choice in these times. The result is a lovely lyrical ode to a more traditional hetero vision of a multiracial family and familial love, gorgeously danced by two adoring parents and their three children who move through their familial connections and stages of life. It is an ideal complement to Princess and the Pea, offering a different view of family for our diverse world.

This collection of pieces proves, once again, how lucky our city was when the Joffrey Ballet decided to make Chicago its home 30 years ago. I kept remembering a wild cab ride with its late founder Gerald Arpino and the late inimitable Culture Queen Lois Weisberg, both of whom who did so much for our culture. Their vision that embraced and honored both tradition and breaking edge art endures thanks to Joffrey Ballet Chicago.  

Desirable Dance Preview

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, The Auditorium, March 7 through 9

The statuesque Judith Jamison, extending her expressive limbs, her face regal and held high like an Ethiopian queen, her supple body clad in white conveying pain and joy, still fills my mind and heart every time I see it. March delights me because it brings Spring, so full of new beginnings and the blooming flowers and plants that replenish us, and Spring marks the return of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater to Chicago.

I first saw the Ailey company perform in 1969. Though I’d been dancing since 1960, and adored almost all the companies of the pioneering Chicago Spring dance series, something about Ailey’s choreography and dancers was different. Those performances hit me hard with their beauty and content.

The punch was directly to my heart when Jamison took the stage in Cry. It was Ailey’s birthday present for his mother and he dedicated it “to all Black women everywhere—especially our mothers.” Jamison, who succeeded Ailey as the company’s artistic director, originated Cry, now a classic in both the Ailey repertoire and the world of art.  

“Exactly where the woman is going through the ballet’s three sections was never explained to me by Alvin,” Jamison wrote in Dancing Spirit, her autobiography. “In my interpretation, she represented those women before her who came from the hardships of slavery, through the pain of losing loved ones, through overcoming extraordinary depressions and tribulations. Coming out of a world of pain and trouble, she has found her way—and triumphed.” I was beyond fortunate to be able to interview Jamison in my public radio days about that autobiography, and hear about this piece that had touched me so deeply – and still does.

Like Ailey’s equally iconic and brilliant Revelations, I can – and have – see Cry again and again. It does not age, refreshed by new dancers, and their refusal to let the experiences expressed disappear from our artistic and human lexicon.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will be in Chicago at the Auditorium Theatre, an architectural gem envisioned as a palace of the people rather than the exclusive domain of the elite, from March 7 through 9. Don’t miss the chance to see this stellar dance company and its newest iteration of Cry. It might make you cry but it might also be a revelation. Whatever you experience, I can confirm that it will be a celebration of the endurance of art. 

Raves

Hedda Gabler

Artistic Home through March 30

Recommended

There’s a heartless new Hedda Gabler in town and she’s throwing her eponymous play on its head.

Controversy is nothing new for Henrick Ibsen’s play, which was interpreted for decades as a Feminist cautionary tale of what happens when strong, smart women are trapped by societal restraints, and, more recently, as a tale of mental illness with a woman who has borderline personality disorder. Whatever one’s take, we can agree that this is the story of a smart, strong and privileged woman married to an adoring husband whom she does not love, and facing a life of smalltown boredom.

In Mark O’Rowe’s adaptation, Hedda is less a Feminist hero or victim than a Gorgon. This is not easy to pull off but Brookelyn Hébert is maliciously icy and manipulative as the beautiful but bored new wife realizing how her tedious life will unfold. Todd Wojcik plays Jorge Tesman, her besotted but clueless husband, with a well-tuned mix of solicitous kindness and naivete about who his wife really is. John Mossman nearly steals the show as the smart but sly Judge Brack. He understands Hedda better than her spouse, and is delighted to play dangerous games with her. Dan Evashevski mimics Hedda’s mood swings expertly as Ejlert Lovborg, her passionate equal of interest.

Despite the talents of these four – and the rest of the fine actors who benefit from Monica Payne’s sure-handed but sensitive direction – this new modern-language adaptation presents a challenge: It’s hard to like Hedda, which makes empathizing with her tough. At intermission, my well-read and deeply intelligent companion and I found ourselves comparing O’Rowe’s new version to some literary and dramatic classics. My friend was reminded of Jane Austen’s Emma, to which I was compelled to annotate as Emma gone wrong. My companion was also struck by the similarity of Hedda and Ejlert’s relationship to that of Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby, the main couple in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. “They’retwo stupid, selfish people who had ways to make their lives better,” she remarked of Hedda and Ejlert, “but they chose not to do that and to take an easy cheap way out.” As someone new to this Norwegian classic, she brought fresh and expert eyes, opened by her literary knowledge and free of past interpretations or biases. This new read makes Hedda Gabler into “a story that’s very much one about privilege and what happens when that privilege can no longer serve you,” my friend argued. “Hedda falls apart at the end. It doesn’t work for her anymore.”

O’Rowe’s reinterpretation is striking and fares better in the second act. He’s to be commended for refreshing Hedda Gabler for modern audiences, as one should with great art. No doubt that Hedda is still trapped, a smart woman held back by her femaleness in a male era, but this new interpretation shines a different and much brighter light on Thea Elvsted, Hedda’s former schoolmate and a friend of her husband’s. A former maid, she, too, is trapped in a marriage to a man she does not love but, unlike Hedda, Thea’s husband also does not love her. She shows more courage than Hedda, and an ability to transform herself to create her own salvation, a feat Hedda cannot manage. Ariana Lopez’s Thea is equal parts deferential child and realistic, decisive woman. Perhaps she is the new Feminist hero of this play.

It would be unforgiveable not to praise Kevin Hagan’s ingenious set, brilliantly conceived as three rooms. The parlor is at the front, the piano and Tesman’s desk in the room in the middle and the dining room is at the back of the stage. It resembles three picture frames rethought as a Russian nesting doll. The actors easily own each room as they move through them in Rachel Lambert’s dreamy period-perfect costumes. 

Without revealing what happens, I will note that the ending to this Hedda Gabler is more chilling than usual. It’s not so much the words as the movements that accompany them, a collaboration of the director and actors. It was reminiscent of William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, another classic that has been improved with modern reads, and that made me wonder if Ibsen or this artistic corps were influenced by the Bard’s examination of the abuse of power in government that, in recent productions, has been given a #Me Too edge.

Take the time to experience this reinterpretation of Ibsen’s arresting play and see where you come out. If nothing else, it will pull you in, and get you talking and thinking.

Betrayal

Goodman Theatre through March 30

Recommended

Chicago’s winter chill didn’t stop the cast of Betrayal from spilling heated secrets in British Playwright Harold Pinter’s classic now onstage at the Goodman Theatre. 

Part of the sizzle was that this was the second play directed by Susan V. Booth, who succeeded Robert Falls as Goodman’s artistic director. It is markedly different from her directorial debut last season with The Penelopiad, Booth’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s retelling of The Odyssey from the perspective of Homer’s wife, Penelope. Interestingly Booth chose women best known for their film and television work as the female leads in both productions, and she ably directs her top-notch cast in this intimate British drama.

Helen Hunt is a cool and low-key Emma, the woman at the center of a love triangle comprised of her husband, a high-end publisher, and his best friend, a literary agent. Despite the reserve she brings to her character, Hunt is quite good at reverse aging in this play that starts in 1977 and ends in 1968. Betrayal’s men are more passionate offering optimistic and pessimistic perspectives on life. Robert Sean Leonard’s Jerry is amorous towards Emma from the start, and equally intense in his friendship with her husband. His reminiscences about their shared past, full of gatherings with their children and spouses, are particularly touching. Ian Barford is the more pessimistic, sometimes even whiny, Robert, Emma’s husband and Jerry’s best friend. His portrayal is full of resigned knowledge, delivered with a sad-sack assurance. This makes his rage at discovering the betrayal that much more believable. Barford has often played clueless men caught in problematic relationships so this older version of such a creature comes naturally.

Pinter’s words in the mouths of these three actors are delivered with perfect timing, each line pregnant with meaning – pun intended. That top-notch acting nearly eliminates the apt critique from a musician I encountered after the show. He argued that the delivery of the lines was too much in the same, never-changing tone even though the actors are nine years younger at the play’s end. It’s an intriguing critique, one that made me go back and reexamine my assessment. While there’s a truth to his criticism, there also is a very proper British feel about the play, which makes sense for a piece set in London and written by an English man. The more important question for me is how we connect to the lives of these three people in a time when much of what’s on Chicago stages is more political or epic. Pinter fans will relish this; others may not.

As always, Goodman’s production is a star. Neil Patel’s set with its double-duty living room, bedroom and office, is ideal for the dramas that play out on it. Kudos to Rasean Davonté Johnson for his gorgeous use of black-and-white clips from family movies that connect the scenes from different years.

For a more intimate look at the dynamics of interpersonal betrayals, go to the Goodman Theatre and spend an evening with Pinter’s trio of lovers as they sort through the joys and the wreckage of their lives.

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.

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.