From the Ledge

Dec 21

2011’s Theatrical Dazzlers

As I said in my previous blog post, I flew lots and lots of miles over three continents in the course of 2011. But when I was in Chicago, I made sure I slid my butt into a theater seat (over the objections and recriminations of friends and (ex) lovers who I ended up not seeing during those so few weekends). So I still managed to go to a significant number of shows this year despite feeling as if I lived at O’Hare instead of my Ravenswood loft. No regrets on this end, since Chicago continued to be a dazzling North American capital for live performance, with a bounty of world premieres, Chicago stops of great touring productions, and storefront theatrical treasures. Here, then, is my annual top ten list of Chicago theater:

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Nov 04

European Dis-Union

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Whew! The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind blur of commuting every week to the city of the gateway arch, and pulling in long hours on an intense strategy project. That’s the reason for the MIA, people. This grueling schedule will continue till mid January 2012 so if I’m popping in and out of this blog just keep mind I’m stuck in the middle of Missouri. As I read through the scant arts and culture listings in St. Louis’ equivalent of the Chicago Reader, the Riverfront Times, I’m struck by how culturally emaciated the denizens of this fair-sized Midwestern city seem to be. During the past several weeks, the only things playing in the city has been God of Carnage, the touring production of The Addams Family, Blood Wedding, The Who’s Tommy, and Nuts (which was turned into a movie in the late 1980s and starred Barbra Streisand as a high-class callgirl on trial for murdering one of her clients. Babs as a ‘ho? Seriously, it sounds like a sci-fi film to me). It’s a meager plate that makes me so thankful for our gloriously diverse and vibrant theater scene: on one weekend two weeks ago, I managed to catch two Chicago premieres of the works of contemporary European playwrights – Trapdoor Theatre‘ s expectedly whacked-out production of Werner Schwab’s OVERWEIGHT, unimportant: MISSHAPE – A European Supper, and Sideshow Theater Company’s more restrained staging of a similarly unconventional play, Marius von Mayenburg’s The Ugly One. Although I’m not a big fan of both, I’m still grateful Chicago affords me a look into such idiosyncratic material. I wonder how both will play in St. Louis.

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Mar 16

Robo-femme

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For those of us who closely follow the meandering trails, detours, and full-stops of the vibrant wonder that is Chicago storefront theater, there was no production more highly-anticipated this season than Sideshow Theatre Company’s Heddatron, the Chicago premiere (part of Steppenwolf’s Garage Rep series) of Elizabeth Meriwether’s wacky, genius melding of Ibsen and robots that she wrote for the hot New York experimental theater company, Les Freres Corbusier in 2006. The plotline is a doozy (and generated gasps of wonder when I mentioned it on my Facebook status): a depressed Ypsilanti, Michigan housewife is kidnapped by a band of robots and taken to the Ecuadorian jungle where she is forced to perform with them in Hedda Gabler, while Henrik Ibsen skulks through the vines and interrupts the performance every chance he gets. Then scenes set in Ibsen’s fractious household, including an appearance by his rival August Strindberg, are intercut with the Michigan and Ecuadorian action. And last weekend, during the play’s rousing middle section, when Ibsen, the robots, Ibsen’s wife in lingerie, a mechanized TV set, and a guy in an ammo belt, among others, sang and danced to Bonnie Tyler’s 80s-signpost-now-karaoke-classic, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, I sat gape-mouthed at the inventiveness and originality of it all. I liked a lot of Heddatron, and especially admire Sideshow’s success in producing on the Chicago storefront theater budget a technically impressive production that can rival the best of New York off-Broadway, but I wished there was a little more heart and emotion in Meriwether’s smart, whimsical script.