“Not that it matters, but most of what follows is true,” reads the supertitle projected over a stage sparsely set with stools. Enter a small conference of artists tasked with establishing a school to nurture and transmit their craft. Amid the heady debate over whether history and technique are still relevant in a new world of abstract emotion comes a pressing question: “Marc, when do we get paid?”

Chagall in School Through 10/8: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, grippostagecompany.com, $38-$42

Marc (John Drea) is Marc Chagall, who has the privilege and the pain of leading the school in Vitebsk, which is, for better or for worse, not Moscow, in the years after the Bolshevik Revolution. The others are traditional Yuri Pen (Fred A. Wellisch), the only one with any teaching experience; strong-willed Cubist Vera Ermolaeva (Daniella Rukin); Alexander Romm (Peter Ferneding), a dandy and a flirt; and fiery, pretentious El Lissitzky (Myles Schwarz). (“I paint what I feel, and what I feel does not exist in nature,” he declares.) The revolutionary spirit permeates their discussions on the nature and substance of proletarian art, the value of life studies postrevolution, or whether they ought to have among their numbers Kazimir Malevich, pioneer in the Suprematist movement, which is characterized either by pure feeling or pure geometry, depending on whom you ask. (Don’t ask David Yackerson, played by David Lipschutz, who also teaches at the school for reasons unknown to even himself.)

Chagall’s dreamy assemblages, saturated blues, with goats and hens as sentient as fiancées and brides all drifting in an alternate gravity, are no longer the fashion. “I should have been a lawyer”—or a farmer—or a soldier, he laments to Berta, his encouraging wife, who loves him more than diamonds. (As played by Yourtana Sulaiman, Berta is charming, sensual, saucy, and devoted to Moshka the man and Marc Chagall the artist with a conviction that is an extension of her own self-assurance. No man deserves such a woman—except Berta is not wrong: he is Marc Chagall.)

“I’m filled with the spirit of nonobjective feeling,” announces Malevich (Garvin Wolfe van Dernoot) when he finally arrives at the school with an angular modern dance break that puts Suprematism on a level with empathicalism as a philosophy of life and art. The intrusion of this tall blond Gentile in this dubiously utopian Jewish art commune amplifies the squabbles about whether or not artists should still paint fruit. But does a banana represent enthrallment to a defunct past or the right to freedom of expression?James Sherman’s Chagall in School, directed by Georgette Verdin for Grippo Stage Company, keeps these blood matters light yet loving. Projections of the artworks ground the evening in enough realism to remind us that art persists in spite of whatever humans suffer or say about it.

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If you didn’t know that Noël Coward was an actor as well as a playwright, you’d figure it out within minutes of seeing any of his plays: how else to account for the nearly limitless opportunities they provide for chewing the scenery? Entering fully into the Cowardly spirit, director Terry McCabe frees his Hay Fever cast to emote, pose, posture, and indicate to their hearts’ content. The result is precisely what Coward envisioned when he subtitled the piece “a comedy of bad manners”: a perfectly-wrought piece of early 20th-century snobbish entertainment.

Hay Fever Through 10/9: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 9/26 and 10/3, 7:30 PM; City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit.org, $34 ($29 seniors, $12 students and military)

Coward plays also pit Cool Kids breezily indifferent to convention against hapless Normies, and Hay Fever is no exception. Stephen Sondheim’s “Weekend in the Country” from A Little Night Music has nothing on the one at chez Bliss, where every member of the artsy family has invited a potential romantic partner without warning to each other or to Clara, the senescent maid riotously embodied by marssie Mencotti. On Ray Toler’s splendidly overstuffed set dripping with interwar tchotchkes, including a stuffed boar’s head with tassels, these nine people change partners and dance at the speed of the Charleston, as befits 1925. Despite the tiny playing space, McCabe manages to supply each member of the cast with room to roam, doors to slam, and couches to pretend to faint on. He also balances the sympathies expertly, so we’re simultaneously under the Cool Kids’ spell and rooting for the Normies to escape with what’s left of their dignity.

The show is silly fluff—nothing more. But consider how woefully short of fun we’ve been, and for how long, and go enjoy!  

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Six years ago, Lifeline Theatre unveiled the world premiere of Christopher M. Walsh’s Miss Holmes—a cunning gender-bent take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Baker Street polymath that predated the film Enola Holmes by several years (though not the young-adult series of novels by Nancy Springer). Now Katie McLean Hainsworth’s Sherlock and Mandy Walsh’s Dr. Dorothy Watson are back to solve more crimes and stir more shit in the patriarchal colonialist cesspool of Victorian London. 

As in the first outing, Sherlock and Watson are focused on helping wronged women while risking the wrath of Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft (Christopher Hainsworth), who is some sort of fixer for the deep state of the British empire. While Sherlock isn’t imprisoned in a mental institution at her brother’s behest this time, Mycroft still haunts the edges of the story, and sets in motion a couple of key plot developments.

Miss Holmes Returns Through 10/16: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; open captioning Sat 9/17, 2:30 PM and Fri 10/7, 7:30 PM; touch tour and audio description Sun 10/2, 2:30 PM (tour begins 1 PM); Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, 773-761-4477, ext. 703, lifelinetheatre.com, $45 ($35 seniors and active/retired military with ID, $15 students with ID)

At the heart of the story, though, is the burgeoning women’s rights movement in England, embodied in the push to overturn the Contagious Diseases Act, which empowered the government to detain and examine any woman accused of prostitution. Were men who frequented sex workers similarly detained? Surely you jest. Did people use the act to wreak vengeance on those women they deemed enemies? Yes—and that also provides a key plot point in Walsh’s somewhat convoluted narrative.

Josephine Butler (Julie Partyka), the head of the Ladies’ National Association, which leads the campaign to repeal the law, seeks out Sherlock’s assistance when one of her nurses, Priya Singh (Vinithra Raj), is suspected of killing Daniel Burke (Tommy Malouf). Burke is a conservative behind-the-scenes man of power and a money launderer (think Steve Bannon) who opposes the repeal of the act while also apparently availing himself of sex workers. Since Priya is Indian, it’s even less likely that she’ll get a fair shake from the deeply racist establishment if she comes forward than a white woman would. 

Sherlock and Watson have already examined the crime scene, thanks to long-suffering Scotland Yard Inspector Lestrade (Linsey Falls), whose soft spot for Sherlock leads him to cut a few official corners from time to time. Sherlock has concluded it was an act of self-defense, and gets her “knitting circle” of women (her version of the Baker Street Irregulars) out looking after the on-the-run Priya, while the Mycroft-devised noose (or what his sister calls “the great grinding machine”) of extralegal state power around Sherlock, Watson, and Lestrade grows tighter. The bookish tutor, Mr. Worthington (Malouf), who is alleged by Priya’s pal, Olive (Hilary Williams), to have had a thing for Priya, also seems awfully sweet on Sherlock—which confounds the aloof detective (who is also mistrustful of men for good reason). 

The story feels a little overly expositional at times, especially in the first act (by contrast, the revelations in the second act come on at a rat-a-tat pace in Elise Kauzlaric’s staging), but the chemistry between Hainsworth’s Sherlock and Walsh’s Watson, as in the first outing, remains delightful—particularly as the latter tries to explain to her usually perspicacious pal that the men who are seeking her attention may actually be attracted to her for more than her investigative insights. Hainsworth’s habit of nervously flicking her index finger against her corseted midsection suggests not just a constantly roving mind, but also a woman who is, in her own way, trying to tap into her tightly wound emotional core.

Not all the climactic moments felt organically connected at the performance I attended, but I suspect that the rhythms will become more assured over the run. As it is, Miss Holmes Returns offers a blend of fan-service Sherlockiana with a healthy dose of sisterhood.

Read More

In partnership with the University of Illinois Chicago’s Disability Cultural Center, Babes With Blades’s interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s darkest plays is exciting and subversive. From overt to subtle, disturbing to laughable, the production empowers a cast of female and nonbinary actors, some with disabilities seen and unseen, to portray the breadth of human experience in a way that’s visceral, violent, and most importantly, honest. Under the direction of Richard Costes, a deaf artist of color and disability advocate, the performance exudes open arms that are felt down to the diversity of audience members comfortable attending live theater that’s intentional in its accommodations and inclusion. At two and a half hours, the two-act is long but engaging, with open captioning a plus for all audience members, given the density of Shakespeare’s prose, and action-packed fight sequences a palate cleanser between soliloquies. 

Richard III Through 10/15: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; open captioning all performances 10/15, sensory friendly Sun 9/11-9/17, ASL Sat 9/24, audio description and touch tour Sat 10/1, ASL/audio description/touch tour/talkback Sun 10/9, livestreaming Sat 9/10 and Fri-Sat 9/23-9/24; Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway, babeswithblades.org; $20-$35

Instead of presenting an ableist story at face value, BWBTC centers two actors with lived disability experiences as foils—Richard III (Aszkara Gilchrist) and Queen Elizabeth (Lauren Paige). While it’s easy to label who is good and evil here, these actors bring depth and gray areas, and the fact that they have disabilities is centered without making their subsequent choices feel like foregone conclusions. Gilchrist is positively Machiavellian while articulating, “I can smile and murder whilst I smile.” Her performance ranges from chilling to quite funny, well complemented by Paige’s passion and fury. Both actors’ canes ultimately exude more power than the swords that surround them, deliberately opening new, emotional entry points into a long-told story. Additional standouts: Pat Roache as a raging Queen Margaret and Kayla Marie Klammer, finding winning physical comedy among the tragedy as Lovell.

Read More

“Not that it matters, but most of what follows is true,” reads the supertitle projected over a stage sparsely set with stools. Enter a small conference of artists tasked with establishing a school to nurture and transmit their craft. Amid the heady debate over whether history and technique are still relevant in a new world of abstract emotion comes a pressing question: “Marc, when do we get paid?”

Chagall in School Through 10/8: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, grippostagecompany.com, $38-$42

Marc (John Drea) is Marc Chagall, who has the privilege and the pain of leading the school in Vitebsk, which is, for better or for worse, not Moscow, in the years after the Bolshevik Revolution. The others are traditional Yuri Pen (Fred A. Wellisch), the only one with any teaching experience; strong-willed Cubist Vera Ermolaeva (Daniella Rukin); Alexander Romm (Peter Ferneding), a dandy and a flirt; and fiery, pretentious El Lissitzky (Myles Schwarz). (“I paint what I feel, and what I feel does not exist in nature,” he declares.) The revolutionary spirit permeates their discussions on the nature and substance of proletarian art, the value of life studies postrevolution, or whether they ought to have among their numbers Kazimir Malevich, pioneer in the Suprematist movement, which is characterized either by pure feeling or pure geometry, depending on whom you ask. (Don’t ask David Yackerson, played by David Lipschutz, who also teaches at the school for reasons unknown to even himself.)

Chagall’s dreamy assemblages, saturated blues, with goats and hens as sentient as fiancées and brides all drifting in an alternate gravity, are no longer the fashion. “I should have been a lawyer”—or a farmer—or a soldier, he laments to Berta, his encouraging wife, who loves him more than diamonds. (As played by Yourtana Sulaiman, Berta is charming, sensual, saucy, and devoted to Moshka the man and Marc Chagall the artist with a conviction that is an extension of her own self-assurance. No man deserves such a woman—except Berta is not wrong: he is Marc Chagall.)

“I’m filled with the spirit of nonobjective feeling,” announces Malevich (Garvin Wolfe van Dernoot) when he finally arrives at the school with an angular modern dance break that puts Suprematism on a level with empathicalism as a philosophy of life and art. The intrusion of this tall blond Gentile in this dubiously utopian Jewish art commune amplifies the squabbles about whether or not artists should still paint fruit. But does a banana represent enthrallment to a defunct past or the right to freedom of expression?James Sherman’s Chagall in School, directed by Georgette Verdin for Grippo Stage Company, keeps these blood matters light yet loving. Projections of the artworks ground the evening in enough realism to remind us that art persists in spite of whatever humans suffer or say about it.

Read More

If you didn’t know that Noël Coward was an actor as well as a playwright, you’d figure it out within minutes of seeing any of his plays: how else to account for the nearly limitless opportunities they provide for chewing the scenery? Entering fully into the Cowardly spirit, director Terry McCabe frees his Hay Fever cast to emote, pose, posture, and indicate to their hearts’ content. The result is precisely what Coward envisioned when he subtitled the piece “a comedy of bad manners”: a perfectly-wrought piece of early 20th-century snobbish entertainment.

Hay Fever Through 10/9: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 9/26 and 10/3, 7:30 PM; City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit.org, $34 ($29 seniors, $12 students and military)

Coward plays also pit Cool Kids breezily indifferent to convention against hapless Normies, and Hay Fever is no exception. Stephen Sondheim’s “Weekend in the Country” from A Little Night Music has nothing on the one at chez Bliss, where every member of the artsy family has invited a potential romantic partner without warning to each other or to Clara, the senescent maid riotously embodied by marssie Mencotti. On Ray Toler’s splendidly overstuffed set dripping with interwar tchotchkes, including a stuffed boar’s head with tassels, these nine people change partners and dance at the speed of the Charleston, as befits 1925. Despite the tiny playing space, McCabe manages to supply each member of the cast with room to roam, doors to slam, and couches to pretend to faint on. He also balances the sympathies expertly, so we’re simultaneously under the Cool Kids’ spell and rooting for the Normies to escape with what’s left of their dignity.

The show is silly fluff—nothing more. But consider how woefully short of fun we’ve been, and for how long, and go enjoy!  

Read More

Six years ago, Lifeline Theatre unveiled the world premiere of Christopher M. Walsh’s Miss Holmes—a cunning gender-bent take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Baker Street polymath that predated the film Enola Holmes by several years (though not the young-adult series of novels by Nancy Springer). Now Katie McLean Hainsworth’s Sherlock and Mandy Walsh’s Dr. Dorothy Watson are back to solve more crimes and stir more shit in the patriarchal colonialist cesspool of Victorian London. 

As in the first outing, Sherlock and Watson are focused on helping wronged women while risking the wrath of Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft (Christopher Hainsworth), who is some sort of fixer for the deep state of the British empire. While Sherlock isn’t imprisoned in a mental institution at her brother’s behest this time, Mycroft still haunts the edges of the story, and sets in motion a couple of key plot developments.

Miss Holmes Returns Through 10/16: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; open captioning Sat 9/17, 2:30 PM and Fri 10/7, 7:30 PM; touch tour and audio description Sun 10/2, 2:30 PM (tour begins 1 PM); Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, 773-761-4477, ext. 703, lifelinetheatre.com, $45 ($35 seniors and active/retired military with ID, $15 students with ID)

At the heart of the story, though, is the burgeoning women’s rights movement in England, embodied in the push to overturn the Contagious Diseases Act, which empowered the government to detain and examine any woman accused of prostitution. Were men who frequented sex workers similarly detained? Surely you jest. Did people use the act to wreak vengeance on those women they deemed enemies? Yes—and that also provides a key plot point in Walsh’s somewhat convoluted narrative.

Josephine Butler (Julie Partyka), the head of the Ladies’ National Association, which leads the campaign to repeal the law, seeks out Sherlock’s assistance when one of her nurses, Priya Singh (Vinithra Raj), is suspected of killing Daniel Burke (Tommy Malouf). Burke is a conservative behind-the-scenes man of power and a money launderer (think Steve Bannon) who opposes the repeal of the act while also apparently availing himself of sex workers. Since Priya is Indian, it’s even less likely that she’ll get a fair shake from the deeply racist establishment if she comes forward than a white woman would. 

Sherlock and Watson have already examined the crime scene, thanks to long-suffering Scotland Yard Inspector Lestrade (Linsey Falls), whose soft spot for Sherlock leads him to cut a few official corners from time to time. Sherlock has concluded it was an act of self-defense, and gets her “knitting circle” of women (her version of the Baker Street Irregulars) out looking after the on-the-run Priya, while the Mycroft-devised noose (or what his sister calls “the great grinding machine”) of extralegal state power around Sherlock, Watson, and Lestrade grows tighter. The bookish tutor, Mr. Worthington (Malouf), who is alleged by Priya’s pal, Olive (Hilary Williams), to have had a thing for Priya, also seems awfully sweet on Sherlock—which confounds the aloof detective (who is also mistrustful of men for good reason). 

The story feels a little overly expositional at times, especially in the first act (by contrast, the revelations in the second act come on at a rat-a-tat pace in Elise Kauzlaric’s staging), but the chemistry between Hainsworth’s Sherlock and Walsh’s Watson, as in the first outing, remains delightful—particularly as the latter tries to explain to her usually perspicacious pal that the men who are seeking her attention may actually be attracted to her for more than her investigative insights. Hainsworth’s habit of nervously flicking her index finger against her corseted midsection suggests not just a constantly roving mind, but also a woman who is, in her own way, trying to tap into her tightly wound emotional core.

Not all the climactic moments felt organically connected at the performance I attended, but I suspect that the rhythms will become more assured over the run. As it is, Miss Holmes Returns offers a blend of fan-service Sherlockiana with a healthy dose of sisterhood.

Read More

In partnership with the University of Illinois Chicago’s Disability Cultural Center, Babes With Blades’s interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s darkest plays is exciting and subversive. From overt to subtle, disturbing to laughable, the production empowers a cast of female and nonbinary actors, some with disabilities seen and unseen, to portray the breadth of human experience in a way that’s visceral, violent, and most importantly, honest. Under the direction of Richard Costes, a deaf artist of color and disability advocate, the performance exudes open arms that are felt down to the diversity of audience members comfortable attending live theater that’s intentional in its accommodations and inclusion. At two and a half hours, the two-act is long but engaging, with open captioning a plus for all audience members, given the density of Shakespeare’s prose, and action-packed fight sequences a palate cleanser between soliloquies. 

Richard III Through 10/15: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; open captioning all performances 10/15, sensory friendly Sun 9/11-9/17, ASL Sat 9/24, audio description and touch tour Sat 10/1, ASL/audio description/touch tour/talkback Sun 10/9, livestreaming Sat 9/10 and Fri-Sat 9/23-9/24; Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway, babeswithblades.org; $20-$35

Instead of presenting an ableist story at face value, BWBTC centers two actors with lived disability experiences as foils—Richard III (Aszkara Gilchrist) and Queen Elizabeth (Lauren Paige). While it’s easy to label who is good and evil here, these actors bring depth and gray areas, and the fact that they have disabilities is centered without making their subsequent choices feel like foregone conclusions. Gilchrist is positively Machiavellian while articulating, “I can smile and murder whilst I smile.” Her performance ranges from chilling to quite funny, well complemented by Paige’s passion and fury. Both actors’ canes ultimately exude more power than the swords that surround them, deliberately opening new, emotional entry points into a long-told story. Additional standouts: Pat Roache as a raging Queen Margaret and Kayla Marie Klammer, finding winning physical comedy among the tragedy as Lovell.

Read More