Henry V The nominal purpose of my blog is to celebrate Chicago’s storefront theatre, the low budget, independent theatre of the streets made by and for working class joes like me. With exceptions I generally don’t review “the big ones” like Goodman and Steppenwolf, but Chicago Shaespeare Theater is an exception for me, because it’s meant a lot to me since a high school field trip to see Othello in the mid-90s, before they secured their now famous Navy Pier space. Under the leadership of founding Artistic Director Barbara Gaines and her recently crowned successor Edward Hall, this production’s director, CST has always provided its audience with productions of Shakespeare’s canon that feel both faithful and innovative. Much of Henry V is just that. The production centers on the charismatic performance of Elijah Jones, who perfectly captures the essence of the formerly wild and wanton Prince Hal, now transformed into the mature, fearsome warrior king. Jones is the solid anchor arou...

If anyone has actually read more than one of these reviews they may note I have a pretty strong tendency to be positive. This doesn’t mean I love every show in the world or would if I saw them but rather the shows I see are entirely self selected. I see what I think I’m going to like and I have a pretty good sense of what I’m going to like. And I also make no pretence of objectivity. If I am familiar with the work of the playwright and cast and if I “go to a cocktail bar with them after the show” I make no apologies. I would occasionally throw in a “full disclosure” when I wrote for Centerstage but these days I’m my own master, ain’t nobody paying me, ain’t nobody I owe anything to. So that said believe me when I say I loved Mark Pracht’s House of Ideas , directed by Terry McCabe. If there’s one medium I love at least as much as theatre it’s comic books, and Pracht’s “Four Color trilogy” has been a compelling, well researched exploration of the history (and tragedy) behind the creative...

Corn Productions/Cornservatory is a favorite of mine. Best comedy theater in Chicago? Not a chance while Second City, IO and even Annoyance are around but they’ve always been a charming underdog capable of producing the occasional gem. They’re also a great, affordable venue for original works like Deana Velandra’s We Should Kill Him . The show centers on Candace (Kaleigh Stoller) whose heart has just been broken by philandering standup comic Chris (Shannon Burke) a rogueish, faithless cad and the archetypal artsy dirtbag every woman seems to have dated somewhere around 27. Burk does a fine job with the unenviable task of embodying a character designed to be loathed, with an endless stream of lame excuses and prevarications. Candace seeks comfort in a fine supporting cast as her circle of friends, Allison Ristaino as quintessential bestie Ellie, Lily Cox as her badass lesbian sister Jen, and Anna Dorian, her newfound friend who was also jerked around by the nefarious Chris. Despite ...

   Black Button Eyes Productions, under the leadership of producer/director Ed Rutherford, is now celebrating a decade of bringing lush, beautiful works of dark fantasy to Chicago stages.    Their latest, an adaptation of Jessica Cluess' 2016 YA fantasy novel, A Shadow Bright and Burning , showcases the company's talents at their height.    The story is set in an alternate vision of Victorian English where magic is real and commonplace, divided into a strict hierarchy. The Sorcerers (all male, respectable, scholarly upper crust gentlemen, stiff upper lip, Rule Brittania and all that) the Magicians (co-ed, dashing rogues and con artists) and Witches (well, you can guess, and as of this installment they've all been burned to death)    The surviving Magicians are subjects of disdain because some time back, they and the Witches accidentally released the Ancients, (essentially Lovecraft's Old Ones, otherdimensional beasties that want to drive you mad, ...

  Richard III by William Shakespeare (William Shakespeare's Hellraiser, photo credit: Liz Lauren)   Ah Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, King by his own bloody hand…Whether he deserves it or not, (and a lot of historians say he doesn’t but who asked them?) he has become one of Anglo American culture’s most wicked, and most gleeful villains.   It’s a personal favorite of mine in Shakespeare’s canon, a play about a bad guy doing bad things and getting his comeuppance. Sure maybe Richard III is a profound meditation on the nature of power and evil and malicious ambition, on the other hand maybe that’s actually Macbeth and Richard III is just pure fun. What better play to launch the regime of the great Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s new Artistic Director, Edward Hall, taking over from the great Barbara Gaines by giving us a show with innovative, appropriate and absolutely magical staging and pacing.   All of this is seco...

Do you guys remember Hope? It may be an Elder Millennial thing. In 2008, after enduring years of The Absolute Lowest Point Of Modern America After Which It Can’t Possibly Get Any Worse, we put our faith in a man who would lead us out of the desert and it became a movement and it felt good. Who could have possibly known America’s reactionary elements would not only fail to shrivel away in the face of the blinding light of love after a single election cycle, but would only grow stronger? Probably lots of smart people but no one wanted to listen at the time. Aurin Squire’s Obama-Ology takes us back to the rising tides of this time centering on Warren, (David Guiden) a passionate, idealistic young African American fresh out of an elite university who wants to be part of the historical moment of Obama’s presidential campaign so he relocates to poor and working class East Cleveland. He is met with immediate skepticism by experienced African American organizer Barbara (Tuesdai B. Pe...