I’ve been to previous Thodos Dance Chicago productions, but I hadn’t seen as big an audience for those shows as I did during the Fall Concert’s first performance at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts a couple of weeks ago (the second performance will be on Saturday, November 28 at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance).  The 867-seat Centre East Theater was packed, and I’m sure many of them were there for the Fosse-Reinking draw.  And that’s a great thing, because the collateral impact was a welcome, impressive introduction to a Chicago performance group that they had possibly never seen before, and which they, hopefully, would like to continue to see more of in the future.  I actually thought the two strongest pieces of the night were in the first part of the show:  Ron de Jesus’ “Departurepoint” performed by six male dancers, was an intriguing take on homoeroticism, with a strong, vigorous, butch, almost competitive masculinity to the male-on-male pairings while Jeremy Blair and Molly Mock’s “Reflect” was a dazzling display of symmetry and athleticism, performed to an energetic composition from ‘ohana and John Nevin called “Hidden”.  Although I liked all the pieces to some extent or another, I wished there were less sprinting around onstage; almost all of the dances included portions when the dancers looked liked they were running 100-meter dashes. 

The Fosse trilogy, which opened the second part of the show, were comprised of three short pieces that were originally performed by Fosse’s third wife Gwen Verdon on the Ed Sullivan and Bob Hope variety shows in the 1960s, with additional choreography from Reinking that allowed the trios dancing each piece to overlap exits and entrances.  Although the dances, “Cool Hand Luke”, “Tijuana Shuffle”, and “Mexican Breakfast”, felt like sketches of bigger dances (but were wholly appropriate for the variety-hour nature of the shows that they were originally created for), Fosse’s singular, unsurpassable genius was still very much apparent.  Oozing with sensuality and insinuations, impressive in their precision, the dances still felt fresh and inspired forty years later and really whetted your appetite for more.  I especially liked “Cool Hand Luke” with its world-weary elegance set to Lalo Schifrin’s marvelous score, and wondered how spectacular it would have been as a longer set-piece (similar to Fosse’s still-startling “Bye Bye Blackbird” number from Liza with a Z).  I thought the Thodos dancers were technically proficient, but a little bit too respectful of the dances.  I wanted a little bit more worldly suppleness, some more playful smolder, a tad more self-awareness which the best Fosse performances brilliantly mix and match.   It was still a huge treat for me though to see these dances, not just as an arts and culture aficionado with a passing interest in dance, but as an incorrigible theater and film geek.  And what made them more resonant were the lovely, inspiring tales that Ann shared about the genius and the man that was Bob Fosse.

I’m pretty confident that Thodos Dance Chicago’s Fall Concert will be the much-needed antidote to the annual Thanksgiving cycle of too much turkey and stuffing, and then too much family drama.  The show runs for one night only on Saturday, November 28, 8 pm, at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph Street.

Anne Collod is a highly-regarded French experimental dance choreographer who co-founded the Quatuor Albrecht Knust, a dance collective which aims to re-perform major early 20^th century dance works.  Anna Halprin (who was born in Winnetka in 1920, by the way), is one of the most influential legends of modern American dance.  She premiered a groundbreaking piece of experimental choreography in 1965 called Parades and Changes, which was promptly banned from performance in the US for 25 years immediately after its New York City debut, ostensibly because of the nudity in its opening sequence, in which the dancers repetitively undress and dress, first mechanically in single file formation, then in pairs, sensually mirroring each other’s movements.  With what we’ve seen onstage and in all other artistic media in the past 25 years, the sequence is hardly shocking now, but it is still powerful – both in concept and performance.   The production, which is more a re-interpretation and re-construction of Parades and Changes, instead of a re-performance, since it incorporates many new ideas from Collod and her collaborators, some of the most acclaimed European choreographers working today, is at times head-hurting, logic-defying, but always hypnotic and surreal.  It also proves that Halprin was so much ahead of her time in meshing dance, theater, and performance art.  I’m not a dance expert, so I’ll refrain from discussing Halprin’s theory and research which plays a significant role in gaining an understanding of some of the intentions of the work (you can read a little more about it here).  But I do have to say that the production has some of the most memorable images I’ve seen this year – the naked dancers tearing the brown wrapping paper enveloping them, at times fiercely, at others playfully and expressively, is mesmerizing.  The hallucinatory, quasi-fashion show, where the dancers put on various pieces of clothing as well as absolutely random objects like metal pipes and a gigantic balloon while robotically walking around on stage, is both funny and perplexing.  French electronica expert Sebatian Roux’s live performance of an updated version of composer Morton Subotnick’s already synthesizer heavy score which accompanied the original Parades and Changes makes the sequence stranger still.  And when the “fashion show” concludes with Pichaud in his bizarre outfit stumbling out of the theater and into the streets around the museum (projected live into the theater via video), you’re so grateful that the MCA Stage is in town to bring us this type of visionary, electric, Midwestern-sensibility-crushing performance art. 

You can only catch Anna Halprin/Anne Collod and guests: parades & changes, replays two more times this weekend:  Saturday, November 7 at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, November 8, 3:00 pm.  The show is on tour in the US, it goes to Los Angeles next in which Halprin will see this re-interpretation of her seminal work for the first time.

In other, related news, there’s a very active discussion on the TimeOut Chicago blog about the fact that many Chicago theater companies keep on staging the same thing (and I agree, how many more Macbeths do I have to sit though? I’ve seen it all, including a naked one).  But one of the commenters got his panties twisted in a bunch over this post by TOC Theater editor and friend of FromtheLedge Kris Vire, lashing out that instead of pointing out the redundancy in many theater companies’ seasons (which IMHO is constructive feedback), TOC and all other critics should be supporting the theaters “drowning” in this tough economy, regardless of what they put on.  Well, I have news for “Lew” – as an educated, savvy, passionate, frequent Chicago theater-goer, I really have no time or patience for theater companies that continue to put on safe, unimaginative seasons.  I, and many of my friends, can’t sit through another Cherry Orchard or Twelve Angry Men or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, regardless of how great they are as texts.  They’ve just been staged ad nauseam.  It’s unfortunate that some theater companies are “drowning”, but the responsibility for CPR doesn’t just lie with the theater critics or the audiences, it’s shared with the Artistic Directors of these companies.  Put on a surprising and interesting season and people will come.  We, the Chicago theater audience, are a sophisticated enough lot.  Put on the same day-old, wonder-bread, and we’ll take our dollars and cents elsewhere.

Chicago theater in April is being dominated by two major, highly-anticipated Shakespeare productions.  I’ve already seen one of them – a surprisingly contemporary, highly engaging take on Twelfth Night at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (three words:  lots of water), directed by the hot, young English director, Josie Rourke, Artistic Director of the highly-acclaimed, new-writing focused Bush Theatre in London.  Watch out for my blog post on that.  The other buzzy Shakespeare is Steppenwolf’s The Tempest, directed by ensemble member Tina Landau, starring ensemble member Frank Galati, the great writer/director/actor, as Prospero, the first Shakespeare play the esteemed ensemble has undertaken in its 35 years.  I’m really excited to see it, since Galati is such a perfect match for the role, and also because the supporting role of Gonzalo, usually played by a man, is being performed by the fabulous Lois Smith.  I’ll be seeing it this week, although initial impressions from others who’ve seen previews and the opening this weekend have been surprisingly mixed.

Speaking of the Bush Theatre, a play that originated there, Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl, will be receiving its Midwest premiere at the Red Orchid Theatre.  It’s supposed to be a wacky Irish road trip (are there any other kinds?) so I’m excited to see what Red Orchid’s no-holds-barred sensibilities do with the material.  Artistic Director Kirsten Fitzgerald and ensemble member Larry Grimm stars.  I’m also hightailing it to the Goodman at some point in the month for the world premiere of Naomi Izuka’s Ghostwritten, a vaguely supernatural-sounding tale of an American woman who makes a deal with a mysterious Asian woman involving personal success and her first born child.  I saw Izuka’s Strike/Slip, a more insightful, Asian version of Crash, at the Humana Festival a couple of years ago, and I think she’s a very impressive writer.  Another notable opening this month is Timeline Theatre’s Midwest premiere of Alan Bennett’s Tony-winning The History Boys, about a year in the life of British schoolboys preparing to enter university.  I saw the Broadway production, which I thought was impeccably acted by an ensemble that include Tony winner Richard Griffiths and a still green but already undeniably magnetic, pre-Mamma Mia Dominic Cooper (could he have been in my past life too?), but was dramatically underwhelming.  I’ll be curious to see what Timeline does to stir this play up.  Finally, despite my inability to follow directions outside a 606xx zip code, I’ll be checking out Northlight Theatre’s production of Martin McDonagh’s well-reviewed The Lieutenant of Inishmore, directed by Artistic Director BJ Jones, IN SKOKIE.

The storefront theater scene is hopping during the month as well.  Collaboraction’s Sketchbook, that always ambitious and intriguing, sometimes disappointing mélange of short plays, art, and music, is being staged from April 16-May 10, instead of the summer, which it usually anchored.  Infamous Commonwealth Theatre is staging Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the play that heralded Steppenwolf’s First Coming on Broadway in the mid-1980s.  Finally, I am very intrigued by a new theater company called Tymphanic Theatre, which is “dedicated to producing unsolicited new work”, and their new play Musing, about a belligerent Muse who starts invading the life of a car salesman.  Now that’s a new work I’d like to see!  It’s going to be at the Side Project in Rogers Park.

On the dance front, I already have tickets for Compagnie Marie Chouinard’s Orpheus and Eurydice which plays the MCA Stage only from April 17-19.  This critically-acclaimed Canadian experimental dance company is well-known for its racy, uber-sexy productions and the MCA website already has a “Recommended for Mature Audiences” advisory.

I’ve previously talked about the Chicago Opera Theater’s Opera Underground program, which I will incessantly and loudly champion, since it aims to bring new, non-traditional audiences to opera.  I’ve put my money where my blog is, and I’ve purchased my Opera Underground subscription for this year, so on April 29, I’ll be seeing their Studio 54-meets-Ancient-Rome production of Mozart’s last opera, La Clemenza de Tito, full of 70s-style togas, gilded mirrors, and the like.  Think there’ll be a Liza Minnelli stand-in?

Steppenwolf Theater opens its 33rd season with Frank Galati’s new adaptation of Haruki Murukami’s incandescent novel Kafka on the Shore (September 18-November 16), which I read a couple of years ago and loved.  It’s a beautiful novel of memory, wish fulfillment, and mastery of one’s destiny – I am very excited to see how Galati translates Murukami’s poetic and haunting images to the stage.  I really liked his last adaptation of a Murukami work, After the Quake, which also premiered at the Steppenwolf a couple of years ago, but which unfortunately received mixed reviews.  It’s either you get Murukami or you don’t, and Galati is a superb interpreter.  Kafka on the Shore also marks the return to Chicago of the excellent ensemble member Francis Guinan after his acclaimed Broadway performance in August:  Osage County.

Some of the most brilliant, blistering, jaw-dropping live performances this fall will be seen at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s performance series.  I think the selections are particularly strong, and in my opinion, should atone for the atrocity the MCA foisted on Chicago audiences last year, Societas Raffaello Sanzio’s Euro-trash corn, Hey Girl!  Renowned African choreographer Hedy Maalem, who works mostly in France, is presenting his unique take on Stravinski’s Le Sacre du Pritemps (The Rite of Spring), running from October 17-19, which has already been well-received at the Spoleto Festival this year.  Maalem has assembled an eclectic group of dancers from West Africa, and given them a dance piece meant to evoke the time he spent in Lagos, Nigeria and his reflections on the cross-cultural clashes and search for identity, set to Stravinsky’s classical masterwork, and incorporating multi-media and film.  My other MCA performance pick is something that will be unrivalled by anything you’ll ever see in Chicago this year:  the acclaimed New York experimental theater group Elevator Repair Company’s Gatz, a seven and a half hour performance that has a full reading (yes, reading, as in read by an actor with a book in hand) of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby at its center.  Yes, I’ll be giving up seven and a half hours of my life, hours that could have been spent on a variety of activities such as napping, playing mahjongg, reading Perez Hilton’s blog, and getting a Brazilian wax, but hey, Gatz could be a once in a lifetime experience (as many of the reviews have pointed out) or the theatrical equivalent of waterboarding. I gotta take risks sometimes! Gatz will be playing from November 14-16.

The Court Theater production that everyone is buzzing about is the season opener, the long-delayed Chicago premiere of Tony Kushner’s Caroline, or Change, currently in previews, but the one play I am eagerly anticipating is Anne Bogart and the SITI company’s Shakespearian take, Radio Macbeth, which marks the cutting-edge New York theater group’s return to Chicago after presenting Hotel Cassiopeia, also at the Court, a couple of years ago. Radio Macbeth, which was shown at the Public Theater’s extremely bleeding (not just cutting)-edge Under the Radar Festival in 2007, is about a group of actors rehearsing the Scottish play who gradually realize that they are being haunted by ghosts of the play’s performers from long past.  Oh, and it’s staged as a radio drama!  Lovely.

The savvy Lyric Opera is aggressively pushing the traditional operas Manon and Madama Butterfly, as well as the Gershwin musical Porgy and Bess in its promotional materials, knowing full well that these would be the ones that would naturally appeal to it’s uhmm, mature, audience.  But for me, the one opera this season that could possibly bring in the new audiences that the Lyric craves and leave us, uhmm, less mature, operagoers, breathless, is Alban Berg’s Lulu, directed by the on-the-ascent Scottish director Paul Curran.  The story of Lulu constantly lends itself to highly stylized concepts (think Pabst’s silent film with Louise Brooks or even Chicago’s own Silent Theater Company’s recent production), so I’m really excited to see what Curran is going to do with the piece- will it be hip, over-the-top, eye-poppingly innovative?  It’s a new Lyric production, so we’ll have to wait until November 7 when it opens (it runs till November 30) to find out.

After his stunning re-imagining of Our Town at the Hypocrites last spring (which is also being remounted this fall), even if OBIE-winner David Cromer is directing the gutting of a three-flat, I’ll be buying a ticket.  He is directing a couple of plays in Chicago this season, but the one I am most intrigued by is the Chicago premiere of Itamar Moses’s Celebrity Row at the American Theater Company, which deals with issues around homeland security, and its impact on individual rights and liberties.  It should be quite the provocative theatrical experience! Celebrity Row runs from October 16-November 9.

Fresh off its Tony Awards win as Best Regional Theater, the Chicago Shakespeare Company raises the bar for all theater groups in the city by putting together a season full of many shows you won’t be able to see anywhere else.  Sean Graney, who is currently wowing the city with his mezmerizing production of Brecht’s The Three Penny Opera, will direct a production of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, staged promenade-style, with limited seats available for those who want to see the play seated (which is an absolute necessity at Chicago Shakes, since the number of canes, walkers, and artificial hips at any given performance there rivals the Lyric Opera).  Jeffrey Carlson, who I saw in the original Broadway production of Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?, is playing the petulant, delusional, super gay lead character.  I am sure this Edward II, which runs from October 1 to November 9, is going to be explosive.  The other Chicago Shakespeare entry I am very much looking forward to is British director Tim Supple’s Indian subcontinent-set A Midsummer Night’s Dream which has already dazzled Europe, India, Australia, and Canada.  It is supposedly quite the unique experience, clarifying and deepening Shakespeare’s text with its use of seven languages (including Tamil and Sanskrit), Bengali music, circus acrobatics, and a dash of Bollywood fervor.  Anyone who calls themselves a theater lover but fails to see this production I will personally banish to theater cluelessness-land (or Wrigley Field).  See this Midsummer from November 25-December 7.

Bonnie Metzgar opens her first season as About Face Theater Artistic Director with a bang:  she is bringing to Chicago for the first time the acclaimed New York theater performance artist, self-described “pastiche artist”, Taylor Mac, who has been sighted performing raunchy, politically-charged songs in drag while strumming a ukulele, in a full-length piece called The Young Ladies of.  According to Mac’s website, this piece about his soldier-father, “bridges the gap between masculinity and femininity, fathers and sons, and red and blue states.”  I’m there!  The Young Ladies of plays from September 26-October 26.

The Chicago storefront theater scene is always electric but it’ll probably reach it’s blinding apex this fall with TUTA Chicago’s The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, onstage from November 20-December 21.  Messrs Piatt and Vire at TimeOut Chicago have already selected this as the one to watch this season in their Fall Preview issue, and I couldn’t agree more.  Director Zeljko Djukich is supposedly focusing on the violence and cruelty, and not the romance and frilly adolescent antics of this Shakespearian classic, which will probably make this less Baz Luhrmann and more Ivo von Hove…terrific!

In other news, I remember snoring out loud when I first read that the Goodman Theatre is going to put on a Eugene O’Neill festival in 2009, with the centerpiece being Desire Under the Elms with Brian Dennehy, directed by Artistic Director Robert Falls.  Another O’Neill theater festival is as welcome in my world as a catheter.  I had two catnaps and a dream involving Ralph Fiennes when sitting through the Goodman’s Moon for the Misbegotten way back when (yeah, and that had my favorite Cherry Jones in it).  Well, banish the cynical and skeptic in me, because the Goodman just announced the rest of the performances comprising the festival, and they are quite the shockers!  (my mouth fell so wide-open, a couple of catheters could have fit in there).  Ivo Von Hove, who has become the object of my theatrical wet dreams after seeing his mind-boggling, wonderfully surprising The Misanthrope at the New York Theatre Workshop is bringing his Toneelgroep Amsterdam and their version of Rouw siert Electra (Mourning Becomes Electra), which is staged with lots of different media and lots of nudity.  Brazil’s Companhia Triptal will present three of the “Sea Plays” in Portugese and in rotating repertory.  The famed Wooster Group (co-founded by Willem Dafoe) is bringing to Chicago it’s controversial version of The Emperor Jones where O’Neill’s African American male lead, is portrayed by a female….in blackface!  (acclaimed actress Kate Valk).  The O’Neill festival is definitely not going to be like the Horton Foote festival, so Goodman audiences be warned!  I, on the other hand, will be hopping and skipping over to the Goodman to be first in line to buy tickets for these amazing, world-class shows (as well as for an iron-clad shield…I’m scared the normally, shall we say, staid Goodman audience might be throwing tomatoes, staplers, wooden boxes, or their walkers on stage!!!)

The Goodman’s O’Neill festival is currently scheduled to run from January to March 2009.

We arrived at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts early so I could claim our complimentary tickets and get settled in our comfortable seats with time to spare before the performance started.  The theater had five box-office ticket windows, with everyone lined up in an orderly fashion (this was the tony North Shore after all), patiently waiting their turn at the ticket windows.  Francis’s bad karma struck again –  I ended up with the nastiest box-office agent among the five, a scowling, droopy-eyed, bun-faced, shrill-voiced chick who looked liked she was miserably missing out on a hot, lusty date on a Friday night (note to chick:  two words before you could even think of hot, lusty date:  major makeover…or, better yet, hot shower!).  Miss Skokie High School 2000 insisted that there were no tickets under my friend Alfie’s name, and there were no tickets under my name.  I said, pleaded, could you check again under my name.  She rustled papers, peered into her computer, sighed loudly, and then bellowed…”there are no tickets!  what do you want me to do?” My delicate Asian sensibility in shell-shock, I ran to the press table looking for my tickets (yeah, that was a brilliant move) to no avail, called my friend on his mobile and told him of my predicament, and then stood in line again hoping that I would get one of the nicer box-office agents.  Yep, no dice.  I found myself facing the antithesis of Little Miss Sunshine again.  She snarled “what now?”.  I said, calm and composed (and looking fab in Hugo Boss), “can you please look for tickets for S-A-D-A-C? My friend says they’re under my name at the box office.”  With eyes rolling and loud sighing, plus some really unglamorous snorting, she finally lifted herself out of her seat and walked to the shelf at her back, as if weighed down by cinder-block, and found…my tickets. 

First the good news about “Frankenstein”, the new ballet.  I loved watching a dance performance with an 18-piece live orchestra instead of recorded music.  I thought the production values were superb, with no-expenses-spared set and costumes (and even a black and white expository video).  I thought some of the dancing was terrific, of course, Alfie, in particular, who looked gracefully sleek as a member of the corps de ballet.  I believed there was a genuine attempt on the part of the creators to de-emphasize the scarier, pulpier aspects of the stereotypical Frankenstein story, and focus on the emotional heart of the piece, the need for human connections.

But I was in a state of bafflement for most of the evening.  It started when the Artistic Director came out and welcomed the crowd.  First I wondered, why was Annie Lennox in Skokie…oh, no, it wasn’t her.  Secondly and with bated breath, I wondered if those spaghetti straps slowly sliding down her muscled arms could continue to hold up that low-cut dress.  The questions continued when Igor, the one character in Frankenstein who was supposedly hideously deformed, hunchbacked, and who ate cockroaches, came out in a solo ballet number wearing…a mesh shirt? And why was he twirling around and high-kicking like a chorus boy auditioning for the road tour of, gulp, “Cats”?  A question when the lighting booth started to emanate blinking white lights in the middle of the first act…was there a poltergeist in the house?  Of course the biggest questions came with the advent of Act Two.  After an Act One of fairly classical ballet, Act Two began (and went on for an interminable 35 minutes) with the whole company dancing the samba.  Samba in Frankenstein? Where did the ballet go?  Then the dreaded conga line appeared.  A conga line in Frankenstein?  where was..Charo?  As I sipped wine at the post-performance reception (where a last baffling question surfaced- what alternative fashion universe did these North Shore women live in, where it was acceptable to wear embroidered floral beige-colored pants?), I thought how admirable it was to start a dance company.  But I also thought about how much hard work and critical, no-holds-barred reflection was ahead of the Alma company to ensure that they overcome these birth pains and emerge as a sustainable organization in Chicago, a city where hundreds of artistic companies in various fields vie intensely for the mindspace, and dollar, of arts consumers.

First stop on Saturday morning was an 11 am performance of “The Elephant Man” at the Steppenwolf Theatre.  For the sake of full disclosure, yes, I am governor of the Steppenwolf Auxiliary Council, so of course I am always about shameless self-promotion of the theatre’s productions.  But even if I wasn’t one, I would still say that this tight, well-acted, beautifully-staged version of Bernard Pomerance’s true-to-life drama of John Merrick, the hideously deformed man who just wanted to lead a normal life, is one of the must-see productions of the early Chicago theatre season.  I loved director Sean Graney’s expressionistic touches and dramatic lighting choices, but I especially loved and admired Michael Patrick Thornton’s emotionally honest and subtly inflected performance as Merrick.  Thornton, who’s in a wheelchair after being paralyzed several years ago, provided a touching relatability to Merrick’s plight and aspirations. 

Saturday evening, I was off to see Thodos Dance Chicago’s Fall Engagement at the Atheneum Theatre.  My friend Debra is a board member of Thodos, so I have been going to some of this young, energetic dance company’s productions and have been quite impressed.  I have to admit that I am not as familiar with dance as I am say with theatre or film, but I do appreciate the fact that among the other performing arts, dance lends itself to theatrical touches.  In founder Melissa Thodos’ piece “Anasa”, dedicated to the victims of fires in Greece, for example, the stunning use of lighting, scrims, and floor-to-ceiling pieces of cloth, made the emotional choreography more dramatically-charged.  I thought all seven pieces that made up the Saturday night program were engaging, but as I was watching the piece entitled “Forget What You Came For?”, I just had to wonder, given the fact that I could see every, ahem, crevice, in the male dancers’ ripped bodies, maybe the budget for the white spandex short shorts they were wearing could have been better used for say…more fog machines?  Just a thought… For more on Saturday’s performance with nary a mention of male spandex short shorts but has a plea for donations, check out Lori’s (another board member and supporter of the arts) blog here.

Sunday started off with a heinously early brunch (one of the things, in addition to cashmere sweaters, hair product, and Stephen Sondheim, that gay men can legitimately claim as our legacy to the advancement of Western civilization), and then it was off to the Victory Garden’s Greenhouse for Shattered Globe’s mezmerizing staging of Tennessee William’s “Suddenly, Last Summer”. This was way-over-the-top Williams, what with all the wacky business involving closeted homosexuality, cannibalism, incest, a truth serum (! yes, this was written in the 50s), threats of a lobotomy, and a dying venus flytrap plant.  Sitting through this, I regretted getting a trucker’s meal of steak and eggs (well, it was an early brunch after all) rather than a petite serving of granola and fruit yogurt. But I was glad I went, because it was a good production, anchored by a riveting performance by the wonderful Chicago actress Linda Reiter.  Playing Violet, the dead man’s mother, a role created for greatness by Katharine Hepburn in the movie version, she sounded like a cross between Liberace and a shopworn Norma Desmond, by way of Anne Rice’s New Orleans – terrifying, magnetic, and ultimately pitiful. 

To cap off my hectic arts weekend, I made it to Piper’s Alley Sunday night for the Chicago Festival of Israeli Cinema and a screening of the prize-winning Israeli documentary “Paper Dolls”, about Filipino immigrant transvestites in Tel Aviv who work as caretakers by day and perform in a drag revue by night.  Whew! I guess “Desperate Housewives” this ain’t.  It was a fantastic film, richly tackling provocative discussions on sexuality, immigration, and race.  I was still reeling from it on Monday morning, just because it affected me on so many levels.  I’ll be posting a blog entry on it soon.