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:
Where have I been? Looks like everywhere, except for this blog. August was a blur of 15 hour days for nearly two weeks straight in Arizona trying to get my client project completed, attempting to recover from some health issues, and waiting to snap a photo with Cate Blanchett at the stage door of the Kennedy Center after a matinee performance of Uncle Vanya. I’ve just come back from Boston to see what the big hoo-hah was about on the updated Porgy and Bess at the American Repertory Theater (more on that in a succeeding blog post). I’ll be in town, hopefully, for the next couple of weeks so I’ve been perusing my weeks of unread email from theater companies to figure out what to tell my avid blog readers about the upcoming Chicago fall theater season. The season, unfortunately, in one word, is underwhelming. In more than one word: there’s a lot of your usual dead white male playwrights this season. Oh and then there’s Sarah Ruhl, whose plays always make me run screaming back to the dead white male playwrights; at least they knew how to write. Thank goodness, then, for the following shows, my picks for the Chicago fall theater season:
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.
It is that time of year again when I’m making lists – from things I’m going to give up in the new year (eating pork belly being one of them) to places I’m going to visit in 2011 (return trips to Hong Kong and Vancouver and a first trip to Rio de Janeiro on top of that list) to the various ways I can meet hot chefs in the city (oops, ok, that’s a secret list). I’ve also compiled my annual ten best theatrical experiences for 2010, a list, as always, compiled from the point of view of a passionate audience member. It was another strong year in Chicago theater, and I saw plays everywhere in the city, from the major houses like the Goodman and Steppenwolf, to most of the storefronts, to the basement of an apartment building in Uptown where folding seats were set up in front of washers and dryers. Fantastic!
I’m not really ready to let the summer go just yet (although I could definitely live without the sweat baths I take nearly every week while interminably waiting in the ORD taxi line to get home on travel-frenzied Thursday late nights). But I’ve already began to plan my theater schedule for the upcoming six to eight weeks as Chicago theater companies unveil their fall seasons; I’m also taking several trips during this time period to see some of the more hotly-anticipated productions in other theater-mad cities like ours. My plate will be quite full, but what a satisfying, bountiful harvest it will contain!
There’s a whole lot of shaking going on at Steppenwolf’s Garage Theater with three of Chicago’s up-and-coming theater companies being given Steppenwolf’s formidable resources to stage their plays in rotating repertory. It’s a very generous, very admirable move from one of the stalwart arts organizations in the city, and overall I can recommend all three, to varying degrees of enthusiasm. I think this is a terrific shot in the arm for Chicago’s storefront theater scene and all three theater companies stepped up to plate. Here’s what I think:
Recently Attended Events
- 2/02/2012: Disgraced (American Theater Company)
- 1/29/2012: Time Stands Still (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 1/28/2012: Ameriville (Victory Gardens Theater)
- 1/22/2012: Enron (Timeline Theatre Company)
- 12/21/2011: Penelope (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 12/17/2011: Spring Awakening (Griffin Theatre Company)
- 11/12/2011: Red Light Winter (Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co.)
- 10/16/2011: The Ugly One (Sideshow Theatre Company)
- 10/15/2011: Overweight, Unimportant: Misshape - A European Supper (Trap Door Theatre)
- 10/08/2011: Follies (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre)
- 10/02/2011: Elling (Redtwist Theatre)
- 10/01/2011: Becky Shaw (A Red Orchid Theatre)
- 9/25/2011: Violet (Bailiwick Chicago)
- 9/18/2011: Clybourne Park (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 9/16/2011: The Kid Thing (About Face Theater and Chicago Dramatists)
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