Love’s Labor’s Lost has held a mythical place in my memory for the past 25 years—in large part because it was the first Shakespearean play I saw produced professionally.

I was 13, and my family drove to Stratford, Canada, to take in three shows at the annual theater festival. Our docket included Romeo and Juliet and HMS Pinafore, but the show I was most excited about was Love’s Labor’s Lost. The plot line (as described in festival’s brochure) was so intriguing. Four friends (including a King) swear off women and all other pleasures of life for three years so they can isolate themselves in study… only to have four women (including the Princess of France) show up at their door on the first night of their pact.

Continue reading “Love’s Labor’s Lost—Chicago Shakespeare (2/18/17)” →

We can all scratch “Get a job in the publishing industry” off of our list of life goals.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria begins at an unnamed New York magazine, and as usual the Goodman sets tell a story of their own. A pod of four cubicles sits center stage surrounded by offices isolated by closed doors and fogged glass. The offices belong to the editors; the cubicles belong to their assistants. The message is clear—privacy is one component of status.

Continue reading “Gloria—Goodman (1/25/17)” →

Before seeing Mr. and Mrs. Pennyworth at the Lookingglass, I assumed that my tendency to mourn out-of-print books was unique. Take, for example, Sweet Pickles. This series of children’s books focused on a town populated by 26 animal characters—Angry Alligator, Bashful Bear, Creative Camel, and so on—each with his/her own book. My father ordered these books through a subscription, and we received one in the mail every two months. I learned to read with Sweet Pickles. I attribute my love of maps to the hours I spent studying the town map attached to the back endpaper of each book.* What has happened to Doubtful Dog, Enormous Elephant, and Fearless Fish? They live on in my memory, but they become a little more translucent each time one of their few-remaining books is discarded. Someday, I realize, they will simply disappear.

Continue reading “Mr. and Mrs. Pennyworth — Lookingglass (12/28/16)” →

Almost every scene in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time inspires a variety of deep emotional reactions, so choosing just one to introduce the brilliance of this script is a challenge. If forced to choose, I would decide upon a relatively quiet scene. Christopher (Adam Jones Langdon), a 15-year-old, has discovered a box of letters addressed to him from his mother Judy (Felicity Jones Latta). Christopher believed that Judy was dead, but her letters reveal that she is alive and residing in London.

Judy dictates the letter from backstage while Christopher pieces together a model train set center stage: “I was not a good Mother, Christopher. Maybe if things had been different, maybe if you’d been different, I might have been better at it. But that’s just the way things turned out.”

Continue reading “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Oriental) — 12/21/16” →

Experiencing Nick Dear’s adaptation of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is like viewing a perfect negative imagine of the 1818 novel.  The playwright shifts point of view and reworks the plot’s chronological structure, yet his script remains authentic to Shelley’s vision, highlighting the psychological tortures inflicted and endured by the two main characters while recreating the images most pertinent to novel’s horror and science fiction roots.

Continue reading “Frankenstein—National Theater Live (10/25/16)” →

Man in the Ring is not a musical, but while walking out of the theater I was not the only one humming “Brown Boy in the Ring.”  This children’s Calypso song provides a rhythmic thread that holds together the meandering thoughts of the dementia-suffering protagonist.

Michael Cristoffer’s world-premiere play at the Court Theater explores the tortured life of Emile Griffith, a boxer born in St. Thomas and blessed with the strength and speed to become international welterweight and middleweight champions in the early 1960’s.  He amassed a record of 85-24 before retiring in 1977.

Continue reading “Man in the Ring (Court Theater) — 10/5/16” →

The Merchant of Venice as produced by Shakespeare’s Globe hits a bullseye with every artistic nuance, every original interpretation, every actor’s performance.  It remains true to its genre as a Shakespearean comedy and to the time period in which Shakespeare wrote the play while exploring modern connotations of the characters’ actions.  And, perhaps most rewarding, it allows Jonathon Pryce’s Shylock to be the loathsome antagonist while treating his predicament with sympathy.

Continue reading “The Merchant of Venice — Chicago Shakespeare (8/10/16)” →

“Never put it past anybody to vote against his own best interest.”

This quote from JoAnne (Ann Whitney), an elderly pessimist who gets many of the best lines in Rebecca Gilman’s Soups, Stews, and Casseroles: 1976, embodies much of Gilman’s message about changes America willingly accepted in the era when big business played its trump card against private labor unions.

Continue reading “Soups, Stews, and Casseroles: 1976 — Goodman Theater (6/15/2016 & 6/19/2016)” →