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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Hound of the Baskervilles

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I started this blog partially to revisit old favorite places in the Chicago storefront theatre scene and one of those is definitely City Lit, a modest little theater located in a beautiful church in the Edgewater neighborhood not far from where I grew up. City Lit, now celebrating its 40th season, specializes in literary adaptation, one of its most frequent sources being the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They kick off their season with a revival of their production of The Hound of the Baskervilles , perhaps the most famous of the Holmes novels, adapted and directed by Artistic Director Terry McCabe. The indefatigable and uncannily brilliant crimefighter whose adventures are assisted and dryly chronicled by his best friend and sidekick (and audience stand in) Dr. John Watson, has been a staple of popular culture for over a century, enjoying a recent TV and film renaissance, it's always great to see him on stage as well. The story begins when Holmes (Jame...
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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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   Changing Channels   Like a sleeping Elder God I have once again been roused to write a blog review. This past weekend I saw a preview performance of City Lit's production of John Reeger's Red Scare drama Changing Channels .   The usual disclaimers about my utter lack of objectivity: it's a preview which typically is not reviewed, and the show's star, Kat Evans, is my good friend and comfortably on my Favorite Humans of All Time list (currently accepting applications, the fee is a reasonable $35)    It's 1952, the dressing room of rising comedy star Maggie Carlin (Evans) on the set of a sketch comedy TV series that's about to be propelled to major success with an acquisition by CBS. Major praise goes to scenic designer Joe Larkin and costumer Emily McConnell for making the play's one setting period appropriate and fun to look at.    Evans is (objectivity be damned) absolutely glorious in how she captures Carlin's essence, the bold, brassy hilari...
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