Kate Fry, Grace Smith, Casey Morris in Mother of the Maid at Northlight Theatre. (Photo by Michael Brosilow.)
‘Mother of the Maid’
2 1/2 stars
The story of Joan of Arc, spelled in her home country of France as Jeanne d’Arc and also called “The Maid of d’Orléans,” has inspired numerous sculptures, musical works, books and films. Among the best plays is George Bernard Shaw’s classic “Saint Joan” which premiered in 1923, three years after the Roman Catholic Church canonized her.
A age 19, she was burned at the stake for heresy stake in 1431 after continuing to claim visions of Saint Catherine of Alexandria (and other saints). Her successes in leading French troops against the English during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years’ War had worried powerful people in the government and church so when captured by a French faction friendly to the English she was put on trial by Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English bishop.
What playwright Jane Anderson has done in “Mother of the Maid,” now playing at Northlight Theatre in Skokie, is zoom in on Joan’s mother, Isabelle Romée. Born in a peasant family of northeastern France, Joan’s name comes from her father, Jacques d’Arc.
The idea of examining how her family reacted to her visions and particularly how her mother worried and coped with unusual challenges may arguably form the basis of a fine play.
However, the work on stage at Northlight has contrived dialogue infused with current language trends and moves from one stilted scene to another.
DETAILS: “The Mother of the Maid” is at Northlight Theatre in the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd, Skokie, through Oct. 20, 2019. Running time: about 2 hours with one intermission. For tickets and other information call (847) 676-6300 or visit Northlight.
Myrtle (Elizabeth Ledo) and Lionel Logue (James Frain), Left, and Elizabeth (Rebecca Night) and Bertie (Harry Hadden-Paton) in Chicago Shakespeare’s The King’s Speech. (Photo by Liz Lauren.)
4 stars
Although “The King’s Speech” playwright David Seidler’s script about how King George VI overcame his stutter while ascending to the British throne was a 2010 Oscar-winning movie, it started life as a play after Seidler researched the process in the 1970’s.
Seidler had learned that the man who would be king, known as Bertie to family and close friends, worked with Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue, a man who had come with his wife to London with hopes of finding an acting job.
The information revealed in the script came from Lionel’s son, Valentine Logue. But Queen Elizabeth, the King’sGeorge’s wife, didn’t want the play produced until after she died.
Work on the script began again in 2005, a few years after the Queen Mother died in 2002. However, it became the highly acclaimed Academy-Award winner Best Picture of the Year and also Best Director, Best Actor and won Seidler the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Past presidents discuss events and each other in American Blues Theater’s ‘Five Presidents.’ (Photo courtesy of American Blues Theater.)
‘Five Presidents’
3 stars
Rick Cleveland’s fictionalized docudrama, which is generously laced with comic zingers and one-liners that lighten the subject, imagines a 90-minute get-together between past presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and the current “Leader of the Free World”, Bill Clinton.
The year is 1994 and the setting is a gathering room in the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, CA, tastefully designed by Grant Sabin and nicely lit by Alexander Ridgers.
The occasion for this meeting is the funeral of President Richard Nixon. Even though these five men would’ve greeted each other on this occasion, it’s unlikely that they spent an hour and a half talking together about so many different topics.
For most of the play, the five living members of this exclusive club banter about each other’s faults and failings and recite the various foreign and domestic policies that each President passed while in office.
The one plot point that runs throughout the play is that President Ford has decided he no longer wants to deliver his portion of Nixon’s eulogy but the other four try to convince him otherwise.
President Regan keeps offering to come to the rescue by volunteering to speak extemporaneously. However, the other men are aware that Reagan is in the onset of Alzheimer’s and understand how disastrous his eulogy might be.
L to R Norwegians Jan Egeland (Bernard Balbot) .Johan Jørgen Holst (David Parkes), Mona Juul (Bri Sudia) and Terje Rød-Larsen (Scott Parkinson), strategize how to keep secret the negotiations they are helping to facilitate. (Brett Beiner photography)
4 stars
TV viewers saw Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shake hands with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat in 1993. The momentous event took place on the White House lawn in Washington D.C. But what led to that famous meeting were the previous, mostly off-the record, mostly unofficial negotiations taking place earlier that year in Oslo, Norway.
What “Oslo,” the multi-award-winning play by J. T. Rogers does is take audiences into the apartment of husband-wife Mona Juul, a diplomat, and Terje Rod Larsen, a university institute’s social scientist, who together initiated the process, and into Juul’s phone conversations with Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorgen Holst and Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Egeland.
Through somewhat fictionalized conversations of actual meetings, Rogers builds suspense as the process moves from one level to the next with the action continuing in behind-the scenes discussions at an out-of-the public eye Norwegian manor.
Deirdre O’Connell as Dana H at Goodman Theatre. (Photo by Craig Schwartz)
3 ½ stars
Someone on my train ride home asked if I enjoyed the show. After all, some theater is for entertainment. But, this is not a show for a fun evening out.
Go because it is an eye-opener to some of the dictates of not known-to-everyone organizations or societies out there. Go because you will learn even more than probably known now about injustice from people who are supposed to protect you and care about you.
Go also because the play is well acted within a very unusual format.
The entire play takes place in a motel room. Although it is a short, less than 90-minute production, you feel as if you lived through Dana’s incomparable five months of captivity and her pre-and post hostage weeks.
Dana, exquisitely portrayed by Deirdre O’Connell, is Dana Higginbotham, a former psych ward chaplain. She is being interviewed by Steve Cosson on her horrifying experience. You hear, but don’t see, Cosson.
The woman heard is the actual Dana whose interviews were recorded at the request of her son, Lucas Hnath, the award winning playwright of “A Doll’s House Part 2” and “The Christians.”
Hnath has reconstructed the interviews into a “docudrama” for the stage with O’Connell lip-syncing the recorded words and reacting to the experience the way ‘Dana did.
To emphasize the motel room place, actress Molly Bunder enters and cleans the room accompanied by strobe-lit, fast-forwarding, blurred recorded sounds.
Superbly directed by Les Waters, the experience of sitting inside a theater where everything from valet parking and “L” noise is left behind and that familiar world is replaced by a chilling, but actual world of unthinkable violence and betrayal is so disturbing it is likely to change you.
DETAILS: ‘”Dana H.” is a co-production with Center Theatre Group at Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St, Chicago, through Oct. 6, 2019. Running time: Under 90 minutes. For tickets and other information call (312) 443-3800 or visit Goodman Theatre.
(left to right) Patrick Mulvey and Chaon Cross in Greenhouse Theater Center and Proxy Theatre production of Midsummer, a pay with songs. (Photo by Michael Brosilow)
3.5 Stars
Helena (Chaon Cross), an attorney, and Bob (Parick Mulvey), a petty thief, are not exactly a perfect match but they find themselves thrown together out of desperation and convenience.
When confronted with an opportunity to have an exhilarating once-in-a-lifetime night of excess and revelry, they both decide to take a chance. It ultimately leads to a deeper attraction and unforgettable “Midsummer” romance.
Billed as “A Play With Songs” and produced by Proxy Theatre with the Greenhouse Theater Center, the unusual construction of this romantic dramedy has the two actors playing multiple roles.
They do so while periodically performing musical numbers (with guitar, ukulele, and piano) whilst alternately narrating the story-line in third person between spats of dialogue and soliloquy. Continue reading “‘Midsummer’ romance”
Nicole (Tara Bouldrey) in ‘Shadows of Birds’. (Mike Hari @ fadeout foto)
4 stars
Glass Apple Theatre is presenting the world premiere of “Shadows of Birds” written by Richard James Zieman and Joel Z. Cornfield.
It focuses on a young adult woman, Nicole (Tara Bouldrey), who’s been in rehab for months because of her addiction to drugs. But now Nicole’s counselor, Jennifer (Sydney Genco), feels Nicole is ready to return home and live with her mother, Barbara (Elizabeth Rude).
Her mother also has an older adult son, Kyle (Bobby Bowman). Neither Kyle nor Nicole knew their father because he left when their mother was pregnant.
Because of Nicole’s many years of mixed messages from her mother and brother, she was very insecure and became a drug addict. Now Nicole isn’t sure that she could live with her mother again.
The high-flying cast of “Newsies” now playing at Paramount Theatre in Aurora. (Photo by Liz Lauren)
4 stars
The mean streets of New York City at the turn of the 20th Century were dotted with children, mostly poor immigrants and orphans, struggling to eke out a survival living by selling newspapers. They were the “newsies” who sold the “papes.”
When greedy publishers began squeezing them for pennies by raising the wholesale price of their papers, the newsies rebelled–and won.
It’s a serious chapter in labor history, but one transformed into a warmhearted musical, “Newsies,” now playing at Paramount Theatre in Aurora.
The story is based on both the 1992 Disney film of the same name and the real-life Newsboys Strike of 1899 in NYC. The theatrical version culminates with a message of cross-cultural unity that resonates today.
Glenn Obero shines as street basketball player, Manford, in ‘The Great Leap’ at Steppenworlf. (Michael Brosilow photo)
4 stars
‘The Great Leap’
In the first act of playwright Lauren Lee’s “The Great Leap,” James Seol as Wen Chang, interpreter for an American college basketball coach who is visiting China, somewhat humorously observes Charles Dicken’s “It was the best of times” and goes on to say how it was the worst of times.
But as with “Tale of Two Cities” the famed quote was appropriate for the play’s setting, primarily Beijing 1971 and 18 years later Beijing 1989.
Because in 1971 the play’s action starts during China’s Cultural Revolution, basically 1966 to 1976. Chang notes that nothing is done without Party approval.
In Beijing, 18 years later, the American college coach is bringing his team to China. Chang is now coach of an impressive Chinese basketball team and both Chang and China have changed.
But the play isn’t just about China, even though Chang says basketball has forever changed the culture.
“The Great Leap” is a fast-paced, energy-charged, witty play performed by an exceptional cast under the direction of Jesca Prudencio, known internationally for handling shows that incorporate a high-level of physicality.
James Seol (Wen Chang) left and Keith Kupfere (Saul) right, in ‘The Great Leap’ at Steppenworlf. (Michael Brosilow photo)
Based on Lee’s actual family experience with her father, Larry Lee, a legendary San Francisco street basketball player, the play centers on how talented point guard, Manford Lum, played with extraordinary agility and know-how by Glenn Obrero, talked himself onto the 1989 San Francisco college team that was gong to China. , Obrero, a Chicago and TV actor is a former street basketball player.
Connecting all the parts from China in 1971 to San Francisco in May 1989 then China in June 1989 with heart and bravado is veteran film, TV and Chicago (Steppenwolf, Goodman, Rivendellactor Keith Kupfere, actor Keith Kupfere, playing Saul, a San Francisco university basketball coach.
The fourth actor in the well-chosen cast is Deanne Myers, Manford’s “cousin” Connie, who keeps abreast of what is going on in China and worries about Manford. Also a veteran of Chicago stage, Myers is the voice of reason and could arguably be a stand-in for the playwright.
The show is more than a chance to pick up some world-of-basketball knowledge. It is an opportunity to enjoy really fine performances and directing.
DETAILS: “The Great Leap” is at Steppenwolf, 1650 N. Halsted St., Chicago through Oct. 20. Running time: 2 hours with one intermission. For tickets and other information call (312) 335-1650 or visit Steppenwolf.
Cast of George Washington’s Teeth at Peninsula Players. (Photo by Len Villano)
‘George Washington’s Teeth’
3 stars
Certainly while in NYC it’s great to fit in a Broadway production but it can also be interesting, fun and rewarding to see a show while vacationing in other destination towns. In August, I visited Spring Green, WI to see “Book of Will” by the fine contemporary playwright, Lauren Gunderson as performed by American Players Theatre.
Then, while visiting Door County, WI, this past weekend, I went to Peninsula Players, a longtime, professional resident theater, to see “George Washington’s Teeth,” a new comedy by Mark St. Germain who typically chooses historic subjects.
Germain penned “Freud’s Last Session,” a brilliant play I saw at Chicago’s Mercury Theatre in 2012 that depicts what could have been debated on the existence of God and other deep subjects during a visit by C. S. Lewis to Sigmund Freud’s London home.
Although not in the same excellent-play category as Peninsula Players’ August offering of “Silent Sky,” a serious, “Hidden Figures” type of revealing-history play by Gunderson, or the fascinating “Freud’s Last Session” by Germain, “George Washington’s Teeth” worked on a couple of levels – humorous and satirical.
It’s a hilarious spoof about how self-importantly historical societies and town’s founding residents take themselves and the falsehoods that are sometimes believed and promoted.
Because the New Bunion Historical Society’s museum is in financial trouble, it needs an item or couple of exhibits to draw attendance or for use in a tour.
Thus, the desire to obtain a set of G. W’s teeth supposedly owned by a resident. BTW George Washington’s false teeth are a reality. He did have at least four sets of dentures, none of wood as some rumors said, but of ivory, other materials and human teeth.
Directed by Greg Vinkler and performed by equity actors who have often been seen in top Chicago area venues, the action includes Pythonesque absurdities such as historical society member, Edie, delightfully interpreted by the talented Penny Slusher, dressing as the Liberty Bell so she could help hold off the “British” during a re-enactment of the American Revolution’s non-existent, Battle of New Bunion.
Other absurdities include such museum treasures as a giant hairball and the actions of the museum’s newest member, Jess (Emma Rosenthal), a young kleptomaniac who sees the society as a way to do community service according to her probation terms.
Chicago stage veteran Ora Jones plays the serious Louisa, a black resident who not only has the famed teeth, but also corrects the starchy historical society president, Hester Bunion (Carmen Roman), on several points.
Rounding out the cast is Katherine Keberlein as Ann, a trophy wife who used to be an art restorer and ends up helping Louisa with an exhibit supposedly going to the Smithsonian along with the teeth.
The stage is set with a perfect re-creation of a historical museum room by J Branson and believable and comic costuming by Kyle Pingel.
Nice contemporary touches include asking Siri for certain music and information.
About the venue, at age 84, Peninsula Players is the country’s oldest professional summer resident theater. The campus spreads across 16 acres along Green Bay in Wisconsin’s Door County.
DETAILS: “George Washington’s Teeth” is at Peninsula Players, 4351 Peninsula Players Rd., Fish Creek, WI, through Oct. 20, 2019. Running time: 80 minutes. For tickets and other information call (920) 868-3287 or visit Peninsula Players.
