Hello! I'm Rory, an actor, playwright and general theatre maven. I was a reviewer for many years for publications like New City, and the late Centerstage Chicago. I've decided to launch this blog like it's 2005 or something so that I can review Chicago plays and say hopefully interesting things about them. Hope you enjoy!

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Alabama Story

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   I paid to see this show and it was a preview, therefore my post on Alabama Story  will be more blurb than review but let's say it's a positive blurb.    Kenneth Jones' 2013 play, presented by the GhostLight theatre ensemble, is a somewhat gentler, less intense chapter of the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement than we may be used to but those smaller stories are worth telling as well. The plot takes place in Montgomery, Alabama, 1959 and concerns an ambitious State Senator's (Tom Goodwin) efforts to ban a children's book The Rabbit's Wedding  about a black rabbit and a white one finding love, from the public library, and the vigorous defense mounted by library director Emily Wheelock Reed. (Maria Burnham) Parallel to this story is the occasionally tense, sexual and otherwise, adult reunion between childhood friends, African American Joshua (Khnemu Menu-Ra) and white Lilly (Haley Basil) As I said, it's a story worth telling, particularly as the right wing im...
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House of Ideas

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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...
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We Should Kill Him

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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 ...
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