Sun-Times theater critic Hedy Weiss chats live with suntimes.com readers each Thursday afternoon — and this week she’s not alone.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Chicago Dancing Festival celebrated at Harris Hedy Weiss: It was quite the feast. For close to three hours Monday night, an audience of 1,500 lucky dance lovers filled the Harris Theater for Music and Dance and gorged themselves on the first of the three free events that comprise this summer's second Chicago Dancing Festival.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A fresh twist on Victorian satire Hedy Weiss: Contemporary audiences tend to roll their eyes at the mention of Gilbert & Sullivan, quickly consigning that bristlingly sardonic team to the dustbin of quaint British Victorian music hall history. A big mistake, for just think of it this way: Librettist William S. Gilbert was really the Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert of his day. And frankly, it's too bad neither Stewart nor Colbert have the services of a composer as droll and playfully mocking as Arthur Sullivan.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Joffrey dancers mingle well, even if pieces don't Hedy Weiss: At their best, mixed bill programs should do far more than simply showcase a ballet company's stylistic versatility. They should reveal something intriguing and interesting about each of the pieces on the program -- illuminating aspects of the choreography that might not have been noticed in another context.
When "CSI: Crime Scene Investgation" star William L. Petersen returns to the stage of the Victory Gardens Theatre this season, he will be starring in British playwright David Harrower's "Blackbird," a hit in London's West End during the 2006 season and the following year at New York's Manhattan Theater Club.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
'Boys' gets lively incarnation at Drury Lane Hedy Weiss: 'The Comedy of Errors" -- that zany and at times annoying tale of two sets of identical twins who were separated in infancy and reunited, after much chaos and confusion, in adulthood -- is among the most frequently performed (and reworked) of Shakespeare's madcap dramas.
Last summer at just about this time a small miracle was about to happen. A new producing group dubbed the Chicago Dancing Company -- led by choreographer Lar Lubovitch and dancer Jay Franke -- decided to put together the first Chicago Dancing Festival. A free evening showcasing the work of ballet, contemporary and ethnic companies both large and small, this unprecedented event was staged in the Pritzker Pavilion of Millennium Park with little sense of what the potential audience might turn out to be, and no rain date.
Think of it as an unofficial North Shore kickoff event for the Chicago Dancing Festival (though tickets are not free), as the Joffrey Ballet comes to the stage of the Ravinia Festival Pavilion at 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
'Dinosaurs' charms, eventually gets old Hedy Weiss: Frankly, I'd rather see Dumbo the elephant fly. But for the more wide-eyed Darwinians among you, there is "Walking with Dinosaurs," the Australian-bred spectacle that opened Thursday night at the United Center -- the latest stop on a yearlong North American tour.
State of diversity
Six decades after its birth, the state of Israel remains a geopolitical pressure cooker. It also happens to be a society that lives for discussion and debate, is among the most wildly multicultural nations in the world, and has such a dramatic mixture of the ancient and ultra-modern that you sometimes feel you can travel five millennia simply by crossing a street.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Dinosaurs walk the walk at United Center Hedy Weiss: By now, the 15 life-size prehistoric creatures in the animatronic spectacle "Walking with Dinosaurs -- The Live Experience" have arrived at Chicago's United Center in a convoy of trucks, and their chaperones -- a far larger assemblage of homo sapiens -- have begun setting up shop.
Master musical director Doug Peck is theater critic Hedy Weiss' guest for her weekly Webcast at 12:30 this afternoon.
'The Birthday Party' celebrates a perfect moment
It is not at all difficult to see why director Aaron Snook and the
Signal Ensemble Theatre decided to stage a revival of Harold Pinter’s
“The Birthday Party” at this particular moment.
Do the dinosaurs ever run amok? And how do you get them back under control?
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
'Average Day' builds tension till we're ready to explode Hedy Weiss: It is pretty much common knowledge now: When fathers flee from home while their sons are still growing up, those sons frequently do not fare well in the long run. Even in the best-case scenarios, those "abandoned" sons end up struggling for years before coming to terms with their loss. And more often than not, family history has a terrible way of repeating itself.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
'Beauty' is deep and breathtaking as musical theater Hedy Weiss: Beyond sumptuous in the richness of its sound, language and overall design, "Dangerous Beauty" is a production truly worthy of a doge, one of those hugely powerful chief magistrates who ruled the dazzling city-state of Venice throughout the Renaissance. And yet this new musical has not arrived at some ornate palace on the Grand Canal, but on the campus of Evanston's Northwestern University, just a stone's throw from Lake Michigan.
Chicago's 14th annual Black Theater Alliance/Ira Aldridge Awards nominations have been announced, and they serve as a potent reminder of the breadth and depth of the African-American performing arts talent now at work in this city.
The biggest hit of the summer theater season in Chicago may just turn out to be Theo Ubique Theatre Company's production of "Jacques Brel's Lonesome Losers in the Night," the intimate, supremely atmospheric musical revue now extended for the umpteenth time through Oct. 26.
Monday, August 4, 2008
New Steppenwolf plays cover array of subject matter Hedy Weiss: A midlife mating dance that just about dives off the deep end. A sharp meditation on the nature of truth and lies in the post 9-11 world. And a lesbian romantic comedy laced with a brainy look at the issue of creative artists and intellectual property.
Joffrey adds dance school to growing Chicago empire Hedy Weiss: As the Joffrey Ballet prepares for the mid-September inauguration of its three-floor complex of seven studios, offices, a box office and more at 20 E. Randolph, it also is about to announce plans for a school. The Academy of Dance will be subtitled "the official school of the Joffrey Ballet," to differentiate it from the Joffrey school in New York, an independent entity.
No question about it: Chicago is considered the preeminent "theater town" both in this country and beyond, and for at least the past decade it has begun to grow into an important dance center as well. So why is there no performing arts museum and archive in this city, a place awash in museums on every subject from art and natural history to photography and ethnic cultures?
Northlight Theatre's upcoming production of Kenneth Lin's "Po Boy Tango" has received the Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award. The prestigious $10,000 grant will support the development of the world premiere, a tale of Chinese-meets-soul food cooking and friendship to be staged Jan. 7-Feb. 15 at Northlight in Skokie. Tickets: (847) 673-6300.
The second Chicago Dancing Festival has announced its complete lineup for the two free programs to be presented Aug. 18 and 20 -- a Chicago Dancing Festival production in association with the Museum of Contemporary Art and the City of Chicago-Millennium Park.
The show contains enough standards to sustain several Broadway musicals ("Sing for Your Supper," "Falling in Love with Love," "This Can't Be Love" and "What Can You Do With a Man?" among them). And its storyline is the work of that guy named William Shakespeare (though only a single line of the original made it into the script). Yet for some reason, "The Boys from Syracuse" -- with its delicious score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart -- has received precious few revivals since its Broadway debut in 1938.
Fully loaded 'Monty' is a sheer delight Hedy Weiss: True, you might describe "The Full Monty" as one of the most extended male striptease routines ever devised -- a show both literally and figuratively cheeky. But there is so much more to it than that. The irresistible appeal of this alternately raucously comic and heartbreaking hit musical lies in just how much meat it's got on its bones.
PROFILES SETS SEASON: Profiles Theatre, the exceptionally successful storefront operation at 447 N. Broadway, recently wound up a complete season devoted to plays by Neil LaBute. Now it is gearing up to celebrate the 2008-2009 season -- its 20th anniversary -- with five new plays by contemporary writers. Included will be:
GIORDANO AT THE HARRIS: When the Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago company makes its annual visit to the Harris Theatre for Music and Dance this fall (Oct. 24 and 25), it will pay tribute to its founder and guiding light, Gus Giordano, who died this past March. A program of new and revived works by choreographers who were mentored or inspired by Giordano will fill the bill, including: A revised staging of Billy Siegenfeld's "Getting There"; Giordano's own "Wings," a solo being recreated by Susan Quinn; Nan Giordano's "Taal," a blend of Indian and jazz rhythms; "Giordano Moves," the Nan Giordano-Jon Lehrer piece for 10 dancers that captures Gus Giordano's movement style over the decades, with an original jazz score by George McRae; Sherry Zunker's "The Man That Got Away," a comic "duet for one"; and Lehrer's "Ritual Dynamic," an ensemble piece. Tickets: (312) 334-7777.
The 19 performers who comprise the cast of About Face Youth Theatre's new show, "Fast Forward," are not professional actors, yet they seem utterly at home onstage. And because they fearlessly wear their hearts on their sleeves, they manage to generate the kind of genuine emotion you might expect from far more seasoned performers.
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