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Formed in 2017, art-rock ensemble Je’raf arrange bits of hip-hop, jazz, funk, and postpunk into whimsical, progressive jams. All seven members (they’re split between New York and Chicago) play in similarly animated, eccentric bands outside the group too–bassist and vocalist PT Bell is in art-punk unit Blacker Face, for instance, and vocalist Brianna Tong fronts jazz-fusion group Cordoba. On Saturday, February 29, local labels Amalgam and No Index release Je’raf’s rambunctious and politically charged debut album, Throw Neck. That night they celebrate with a headlining set at Hungry Brain; Udababy opens, and tickets are $10.

Morrissey’s swerve into reprehensible political gibberish, mediocre albums, and lackluster live shows over the past 20 years has left many sweet and tender hooligans reaching for their Smiths albums far less often than they used to. Local electronic musician Nicky Flowers has a solution: a covers project called the Smynths, which recently dropped the charming EP The Smynths Return. It seems bound to offend the famously synth-averse Mozzer: Flowers turbocharges Johnny Marr’s melodies with a raft of ringing keyboards and glorious vocoder-assisted crooning. Giving offense is the point–the Smynths are “dedicated to psychically destroying Morrissey,” Flowers says. “Johnny Marr was the Smiths, 100 percent.” Shots fired! Due to prohibitive licensing costs, the Smynths aren’t on any streaming services, but the EP (and a 2018 self-titled full-length) are available via Flowers’s Bandcamp.

Justin Samuel Martin (of indie-rock group Automata) makes stylistically loose indie-pop as Otherly, with occasional help from his friends–Automata front woman Rachel Sarah Thomas, for example, adds luscious vocals to recent singles “Nadia” and “Leave.” Both those tracks appear on Otherly’s debut album, Darkling, which drops Friday, February 28. Otherly plays a free release party that night at the Whistler. v

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It’s not often that a writer will make me see Chicago in a new way, but with his debut collection of interlocking stories, set primarily in Bronzeville’s now-demolished Stateway Gardens housing project for which the book is named, Jasmon Drain has done just that. A young boy named Tracy is our primary guide and narrator, but by the end even the high-rises themselves become fully fleshed-out characters. Though sometimes dreamy with longing for the comforts of a childhood, which, from the outside, appears filled with privation, Drain–who grew up in Englewood and now lives in Kenwood–has fashioned an indelible portrait of this city.

The looming presence over much of Stateway’s Garden (Random House) is Tracy’s mother. She haphazardly raises Tracy and his older half brother, Jacob, while focusing much of her attention on keeping her looks and finding a man who will stay. The lessons she imparts to her children are blunt and unsentimental. “Life isn’t about fun. It’s about money,” she spits out at Jacob when the boy tries to refuse to go with her to a short-lived job at a store back on the west side, where she’d grown up. To Tracy, who visits this store only once, it is a world of wonder, but to his mother it is but a tiresome means to an end. The chasm between an adult’s perception and that of a child has rarely been evoked so precisely and heartbreakingly.

Tracy’s overriding wish is for his mother to love him and pay him attention, but he observes her with a mixture of fascination and fear: “Mother stood slowly and put both hands to her knees to guide her legs straight. She released a groan while standing, then walked into the hall, past my bedroom, and made the left turn to the bathroom. She didn’t shut the door. She hardly ever shut the door while in there.” Here and through many other moments throughout these stories, Drain nails how strange, even foreign, those closest to us can be.

When Tracy and the other boys want to visit other parts of the city, they jump the fence and run across the Dan Ryan Expressway, dodging speeding cars, then vault over the barrier, taking care not to touch the third rail, onto the 35th Street CTA platform. It’s a harrowing way to catch a public train, but these boys have no other means to experience places outside their immediate environment. Everyone in these stories is striving to find a better life, to get out of the projects, to live out their dreams. But it’s not so easy to forget where you come from; nor do you necessarily want to, when being honest with yourself.

In the second-to-last story, “Love-Able Lip Gloss,” Jacob, a beautiful cipher for much of the book, tells his story. Now an overweight, middle-aged man, he can’t let go of his past as a youthful heartthrob. He carries on an on-again, off-again masochistic affair with his childhood sweetheart, a woman who managed to leave Stateway Gardens behind. But Jacob couldn’t take the leap when given the opportunity and is stuck instead romanticizing the past and ruing what might have been. Jacob is but the last of the people Drain describes in all their complexity. He is not a writer who traffics in caricature or simplification.

I’ve known of the streets and buildings in this book for decades, but now feel like I’ve been there. Through slyly poetic language and an absolute grasp on place and description, Drain has added to the canon of Chicago literature. He belongs on the shelf next to Algren, Brooks, Dybek, and Wright–writers who know and love this city in all its magnificent contradictions, its unique, ugly beauty. v

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This musical version of the 1987 Michael J. Fox vehicle, receiving its world premiere at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora, tells a sweet, lighthearted story–plucky young man climbs the ladder of success from mail room to executive suite–that feels a lot like an updated version of Frank Loesser’s 1961 Broadway hit How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, only without the bite or wit or heart. Where How to Succeed at least attempted to satirize American corporate culture (and largely fell short), The Secret of My Success is content to tell a story that would barely sustain one episode in a sitcom. Even though the story touches on some of the more devastating aspects of contemporary business (layoffs, plant closings, kleptocratic leadership), the show remains relatively toothless.

Part of the problem is the show’s bland, cliche-filled book by Gordon Greenberg (who also directs) and Steve Rosen. You just can’t tell an interesting story if you are content to give us, without irony, a show full of stock characters and predictable plot twists. The show’s forgettable score, by Michael Mahler and Alan Schmuckler, is less shallow than the book, though at times the songs often feel like pastiches of better-known pop tunes of the last 50 years. Still, the tunes are ear pleasing, and the lyrics are frequently playful and witty.

A larger problem though is that the show’s story and message–the vanity of success, the importance of integrity and love–is too intimate for the big stage, and gets lost in all the singing and dancing and general Broadway glitz. Heidi Kettenring and Sydney Morton, as the two major female characters in the show, do a great job bringing heart and fire to the show. But Billy Harrigan Tighe brings no heat to his portrayal of the lead; again and again we found ourselves yearning for Michael J. Fox’s sly Alex Keatonish charm. v

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Ruby (Brooke Reams) and Wilson (Kevin Tre’Von Patterson) seem to have a picture-book marriage. While their daughter is away at summer camp, they plan on trying for another baby. But when Ruby’s best friend, Claire (Deveon Bromby), comes to stay a few weeks while recovering from the loss of a husband shot by a white cop, the couple’s seemingly blissful existence is shattered.

Christopher Burris directs this midwest Redtwist premiere of Rabbit Summer, Tracey Conyer Lee’s tense, funny, and angry 2018 relationship drama, which, rather than shying away from facing some of the most complex and systemic issues plaguing this country, takes them all head-on. When it’s not dealing with gun violence, it’s addressing racism; then, for a breather, it tackles infidelity, abortion, and absent fathers. In less-capable hands, this material would have sunk under its own weight, but Lee has fashioned three characters who can pick it up, lift it, and keep going. It is a testament to these three talented actors that no matter how heavy the message they’re tasked with delivering, I never felt for a moment that they were less than fully-formed human beings rather than conduits for information.

Wilson’s prized chifforobe–passed down for generations and used at one time to shelter runaway slaves in its false backing–is the central metaphor and physical manifestation of the warring forces facing African Americans in this country. It conceals as much as it reveals. It carries a weighty load, but with its doors flung open is ready to take on whatever comes. v

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In 2013, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Blum wrote an article for Wired magazine titled “The Imperfect Myth of the Female Poisoner” that dispelled the persistent cultural assumption that, as far as murder methods go, homicides-by-poisoning are inherently ladylike. “It’s not, you see, that poison is a woman’s weapon,” says Blum. “It’s that it is an evil one.” And yet, dubiously sourced in historical criminology as they may be, there’s something wickedly satisfying and elegantly badass about artistic depictions of women dispensing revenge with perfume-like vials of death.

In that respect, in this 90-minute dark dramedy set in 17th century Paris, playwright Dusty Wilson has his cake and eats it too, indulging in a fantasy of outlaw women paving their own way while also wrestling with the gender and class-based roles that permit justice for some while dooming others. A talented chemist (Carina Lastimosa) and her tarot-card-reading lover (Lynnette Li) create a cottage industry helping wealthy women murder their plutocrat husbands. Christina Casano’s production for The Plagiarists keeps the grisly consequences of its protagonists’ actions at arm’s length for the most part, focusing instead on their justifications and nights spent spritzing toxic plants in a sparse but romantic hamlet tucked on the outskirts of society. A framing device featuring an interrogator (Bryan Breau) doesn’t quite reach the emotional contrasts Casano and company seem to be aiming for, but there’s some decent fun to be had with a flamboyant rival poisoner (Julia Stemper) and a naive woman of leisure (Brittani Yawn). v

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This Lynn Nottage drama is pure kinetic energy, exploring the illicit ivory trade through the haunting death of Mlima, an African elephant. Griffin Theatre Company’s production, a midwest premiere directed by Jerrell L. Henderson, thrives on its use of movement, sound, and staging to illustrate our shared complicity in the poaching of a vulnerable species. Mlima, whose name means “mountain” in Swahili, is played by a mostly silent David Goodloe, who looms large, literally, over the entire 90 minutes. He’s the show’s emotional canvas, employing ethereal, athletic movements and an intense, textured gaze that as reads both accusatory and mournful. As Mlima’s tusks become increasingly objectified, Goodloe turns his body into a floppy piece of meat, resigned and exhausted.

A tight, propulsive story, this production leverages a capable ensemble of six to bring to life the entire chain of events from Mlima’s death in Kenya to the unveiling of an ivory carving in the home of a wealthy collector across the world. By bringing so many people and geographies under the tent of this shameful practice, from police to park rangers to government officials to pilots, Nottage makes the world a bit smaller and the tragedy less abstract. As does her insertion of well-researched and disturbing facts, like poachers using tourists’ safari photos on social media to locate their prey. After absorbing the question an ivory dealer asks a collector–What price are you willing to pay for beauty?–you’ll walk away questioning the provenance and unknown costs of any rare valuables you possess. v

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“I would let [insert name here] ruin my life” is a phrase that anyone who’s radiated their eyes with thirsty comments online over the past few years will recognize as a hallmark of the genre. What does it mean? If Dex (Michael Vizzi) and Shellie (Allison Plott) feel that way about each other in Leslye Headland’s The Layover–a total masterpiece, ultimately just as devastating as it is hot–presented by The Comrades under Drew Shirley’s direction, as I contend they do, what does that feeling entail? Is it a disease? Is that, heaven help us, what love is now?

If I would let you ruin my life, I’m obviously looking for trouble already. Dex’s engagement to Andrea (Emma Jo Boyden) is over the second he sits down with Shellie at the bar in O’Hare after their Thanksgiving flight gets cancelled. You get the sense he would have let anyone ruin his life, given half the chance. Shellie’s life is practically in ruins already–she’s the full-time caregiver to an epileptic father (the amazing Jim Morley), unhappily married, tied down in every sense. She’s got a fair bit of one of Headland’s other protagonists in her: Natasha Lyonne’s character in the Netflix series Russian Doll, which Headland cocreated with Lyonne and Amy Poehler.

Dex, Shellie, and Lyonne’s Nadia Vulvokov are all alike–deacons in the church of “ruin my life.” But crack that pained thought open, and you see what it really is saying: I would let you kindle these dead nerve endings again. I would let you see if I’m still here. v

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I guess a bad play could be written about the hostile overthrow of a Cleveland Heights karaoke bar at the hands of a hard-cider magnate named Ethan, whose business card says, “purveyor of fine spirits and sophisticated settings.” I don’t see how, though. Some ideas are just too good. Regardless, Mike Beyer and Kirk Pynchon haven’t written that bad play. Factory Theater’s Last Night in Karaoke Town, directed by Kim Boler, is a fantastic play, one that gets to the heart of so many issues that matter, such as what varieties of taxidermy should be allowed in bars (squirrels? buffalo?), who gets to sing Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” when both Audrey and Lily claim it as “mine, bitch,” and whether the rusted-out factory your dad used to work in getting rebuilt as an REI is OK if you happen to like shopping at REI. You know, the important stuff.

The rainbow of die-hards hanging out at owner Diana’s joint could carry a production by themselves, so rife are they with quirks and infighting and opinions about Van Halen. And then you have Ethan, played by Tommy Bullington, who saunters in one fine day with his crates of pear cider and long black shawl to inform Diana (Wendy Hayne) that he’s bought the building and intends to refine its spirits and sophisticate its settings. What follows is a raucous showdown between the dual opposing forces of innovation and authenticity. I can’t say who wins. I can say that I laughed so hard at everything Bullington did that I thought I would be asked to leave the theater. v

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Actors Gymnasium primarily functions as a training school in the circus arts, but they put on a full-length show for an extended run every winter. And in the case of The Ghost in Gadsden’s Garden, you’d be a fool to miss it. A reclusive gardener, Gadsden (Adrian Danzig) spends his days tending the beautiful flowers on the grounds of an old (and allegedly haunted) mansion. And indeed, his interactions with the lovely ghost Vivian (Hayley Larson) provide the only semi-human contact he enjoys. But when Kid (Grace Sherman) creeps past the gate on a dare from classmates, they discover that Vivian may not be what Gadsden thinks.

With echoes of Oscar Wilde’s fable “The Selfish Giant” mixed with ecology lessons (Lucy Carapetyan plays Kid’s supportive science teacher), writers Chris Mathews (who also directs) and Sully Ratke incorporate the natural and supernatural with seamless aplomb.

Larson’s aerial work on the silks is particularly breathtaking, and Carapetyan joins with acrobatics creating clever physical metaphors for various scientific relationships, from symbiotic to parasitic. (Sylvia
Hernandez-DiStasi created the circus interludes, with Kasey Foster choreographing dances to Kevin O’Donnell’s original sound and music.) The teen ensemble plays various impish garden flora and Kid’s Scooby Gang of tormentors-turned-allies with assured wit and charm. Danzig, cofounder of the beloved 500 Clown troupe, brings poignant charm to his lonely aging Gadsden. The entire show is a treat for the eyes and heart from beginning to end. v

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