When it took the Tony triumvirate of best musical, original score, and original book in 2004, Avenue Q (music and lyrics by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, book by Jeff Whitty, and based on an original concept by Lopez and Marx) had a satirical edge that seemed sharp enough to slice floating silk. That’s no longer the case in the musical famously featuring puppets that look like they belong on Sesame Street but talk in a profane vernacular and have vigorously noisy puppet sex on occasion.

Avenue QThrough 8/7: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Skokie Theatre, 7924 N. Lincoln, Skokie, 847-677-7761, skokietheatre.org, $45 ($38 students/seniors)

The show’s edge has dulled over the years. In an era where violent white supremacists have been emboldened by the highest levels of government, tunes such as “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist” no longer feel shocking so much as quaint—at best. And given the increasing attacks on people of Asian descent, the character of Christmas Eve—who the script has speaking with an accent straight out of a Charlie Chan movie—simply isn’t funny anymore (if it ever was). 

That said, veteran director-choreographer Ty Perry’s ensemble for MadKap Productions sells the material with charm, comic panache, and an impressive ability to create a seemingly seamless whole from a great many puppet/human moving parts. The plot follows 23-year-old Princeton (Zach Moore, brandishing a tenor that makes the ears sit up and pay attention) as he moves to Avenue Q and joins a diverse building that includes Lucy the Slut and Kate Monster, (both played by Natalie Rae) and the Ernie-and-Bert-like roommates Rod (Moore) and Nicky (Rami Halabi). The trash-talking Trekkie Monster (Halabi) is the monstrous curmudgeon upstairs. The building’s landlords are humans Christmas Eve (Shea Lee) and her husband Brian (Dennis Schnell). The (human) super is Gary Coleman (Sabrina Edwards, whose down-to-earth charisma makes her an ideal Coleman)

The cast’s amiable vocals are backed by conductor Sachio Nang’s seven-person live chamber orchestra, an ensemble meshed as tightly as the performers onstage. It’s not enough to redeem the show’s dated elements. And while a kumbaya happy-ending where monsters and humans learn to live together in peace feels good, it’s also condescending and simplistic. 

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that it’s actually harder to write a rave review than it is to write a pan. How to communicate the thrill of seeing a show that’s just exactly what it should be without simply saying GO SEE THIS SHOW?

Fences Through 8/6: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; Sat 8/6, 2:30 PM only, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, americanbluestheater.com, $25-$45

This is my happy dilemma in reviewing Monty Cole’s stellar production of August Wilson’s Fences at American Blues Theater. With the brilliant Kamal Angelo Bolden in the lead as Troy Maxon, an embittered man determined to keep his sons from outshining him, Fences manages to portray both universal father-son tension and the specifics of that tension as enacted in the Black community of Pittsburgh in the early 1950s. Bolden toggles effortlessly among Troy’s constantly changing moods, capturing in full the terror of his unpredictability.

The play also sketches out the tension between notions of masculine freedom and the requirements of a stable family, as it pivots sharply in act two to examine Troy’s relationship with his second wife Rose (the excellent Shanésia Davis, holding up more than her half of the sky). The pivot works because Cory, whose struggles to emulate his father and secure his approval occupy most of act one, is Rose’s son. As he learns of his father’s betrayal of his mother, boyish disappointment (“How come you don’t like me?”) becomes implacable rage, a transition Ajax Dontavius handles with a combination of actor’s aplomb and son’s fury.

Each of the performances is given the opportunity to blossom through Cole’s staging device of placing all the actors onstage even when they’re offstage. Seated at the side of the playing area, they continue to perform and deepen their characters, consoling each other sometimes, giggling and exchanging nudges at others—commenting on the action in the very best sense of that word. The only exception to this is Rose, as director Cole and scenic designer Yeaji Kim keep the only woman in the play apart from (and perhaps above) the man’s world in which she is compelled to operate. And her meltdown when informed of her husband’s infidelity is sufficient unto itself, no commentary required.

One of the wonderful things about Fences—perhaps Wilson’s most tightly-constructed play—is the way it riffs on Death of a Salesman. The final scenes are deliberately parallel, as Rose insists that Cory pay respect to Troy, for all his failings, just as Linda Loman insists, “Attention must be paid!” There could be families less similar on the surface than the Lomans and the Maxons (as their equal-and-opposite names suggest); but if all happy families are alike, so are all families whose sons break down when they discover that Dad is not a hero after all but just someone struggling to get by. The stories seem to be about the rise and fall of the father, but they’re just as much about the coming of age of the son—learning not to worship or reject but just to accept.

The men who surround Troy—his feckless elder son Lyons (William Anthony Sebastian Rose II), his best friend Jim Bono (Martel Manning), and his brother Gabriel (Manny Buckley, in a performance of remarkable delicacy and power)—give the production its verisimilitude while maintaining its almost mythic account of humankind battling with the impenetrable gods. As I say: SEE THIS PLAY.

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“When people die, they move from the first person to the third person. They also move from the present tense to the past tense.” These words are spoken by Christine (Kendra Thulin), who opens Simon Stephens’s Light Falls, directed by Robin Witt, by narrating her own death—sudden, solitary, and mundane in a liquor store in the north of England in the act of lapsing from nine months of sobriety—in exquisite detail. These words are also spoken about Christine, who in their speaking transforms from an anxious overdressed impolite alcoholic to a form of omniscience, a type of weather, and an actor under a special speaking a monologue on a stage set with armoires and lamps and curling leaves of sheet music suspended from the walls and in the air (designed by Sotirios Livaditis). “Time does not move forward . . . Everything we have ever done we are doing now” applies as well to the general dimension of our existence as it does to addiction.

Light FallsThrough 8/14: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; audio description and touch tour Sun 7/24, open captioning Sun 7/31, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-975-8150, steeptheatre.com, $30 general admission ($40 reserved, $10 access tickets)

In the long moment of her death, her family is scattered in mind and space, getting and rejecting other loves. Her daughter Jess (Stephanie Mattos) wakes from a blackout drunk night next to Michael (Nate Faust), a man she does not yet know. Her husband, Bernard (Peter Moore), is embroiled in an infidelity no one seems to enjoy, symbolically buttressed by the awkward consumption of excessive amounts of food. Her son, Steven (Brandon Rivera), is flunking his law degree and clinging to his dashing and immensely understanding boyfriend, Andy (Omer Abbas Salem). And her other daughter, Ashe (Ashlyn Lozano), is recovering from a suicide attempt and a relationship with another addict, Joe (Debo Balogun), deadbeat dad to her son Leighon. 

Light Falls, on the imperfection of the living and the idealization of the dead, is rambling, sentimental, and laden with wish fulfillment: our desire to love our mothers, our desire, despite our worst failures, to be loved, and our desire to speak with those who have departed. In the role of Ashe, Lozano is especially effective, a living conduit of a grief others lack the courage to express.

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The Chicago Bears have added many new faces to the team this offseason. Whether it be the entirely new coaching staff or the abundance of new players, there has been a lot of turnover to the roster this offseason.

With a lot of turnover comes question marks. Even more so with the completely new coaching staff and scheme. There is already a lot of speculation going around about multiple positions and playing times due to the new schemes.

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The free agency period opens up for the Chicago Blackhawks and the rest of the National Hockey League at 11 AM central. It is going to be a wild time as things have already started to heat up across the league.

There have been some big trades and some big names have already declared that they are staying with their current teams. Now, there is a chance that we see more big trades and huge free agency signings as early as that 11 AM time on Wednesday.

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Tuesday night, the Chicago Bears made a move that could end up being one of the best by new general manager Ryan Poles.

In a trade with the New England Patriots, the Bears sent a 2024 seventh-round pick to acquire former first-round talent N’Keal Harry, a wide receiver who never quite caught on in New England.

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What do Cesar Chavez, Ayn Rand, and Harold Washington have in common? They are among the 69 people featured in Adam Brooks’s public art project Freedom Wall, which has been installed on the building at 325 W. Huron since 1994. The text-based installation, which is viewable from the Brown Line’s Chicago stop, has undoubtedly been viewed by many thousands of people over the years—but not for much longer. The parking lot in front of the wall is being developed, which means the project will soon be hidden by another building.

In the lead up to the 1992 U.S. presidential election, Brooks, a longtime professor at Columbia College Chicago and one-half of the collaborative conceptual art duo Industry of the Ordinary, began thinking about putting together a project around the idea of freedom. “Obviously in America in particular, it’s the land of the free,” he says. “The word ‘freedom’ gets bandied around so much, you know, who’s going to be against freedom? But the idea of what freedom was was really interesting to me, because obviously there are as many interpretations of that as there are people.”

He was inspired by the work of conceptual artists like Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer, who often make text-based, public works. He was especially drawn to the way Holzer’s use of text seemed to have multiple voices. “I was interested in that notion of not taking one particular stance, but actually opening up a project to multiple participants with multiple viewpoints,” he says.

Bob Morales from the Indiana company Billboards Inc. painted the lettering by hand, as seen in this process documentation from the early 90s. Credit: Adam Brooks

The presentation of the work is in tune with the straightforward text pieces of both Kruger and Holzer. The names appear in list form, in white enamel letters on a massive black vinyl sheet—72 feet high by 15 feet 6 inches wide—all capitalized in the simple sans-serif font Helvetica. The lettering was done by hand by painter Bob Morales of the Indiana company Billboards Inc. There’s no artist signature or title or explanation—there was once a description at the base but it’s long since disappeared. If a viewer is interested in learning more about the work, they have to Google or otherwise research it.

To come up with the names, Brooks surveyed a politically broad range of people, asking them to provide the names of up to three people, from throughout history, that they felt embodied the idea of freedom. He asked friends and colleagues, solicited responses at Rhona Hoffman Gallery (where he showed at the time) and used the then-burgeoning Internet. He got connected to middle and high school students across the country through the Electric Schoolhouse, a network of teachers who were early adopters of the Web, and messaged random strangers through America Online, where users had public profiles that listed their political affiliation.

“I felt that it was critically important for the project to be viewed as not just another piece of liberal activism, to include as many voices from across the political spectrum as possible,” he says. “It may not be fair and balanced, but it certainly was broad enough and eclectic enough ultimately, in order to ask some important questions about what freedom is, what it means to be free, who decides how we define that.”

That’s how the list ended up with names like Rush Limbaugh—whose radio show was widely popular at the time, juxtaposed against Anita Hill. Or photographer Robert Mapplethorpe following Ronald Reagan. Some names make the project hyperspecific to that moment in time. If it were made today, it’s unlikely that there would be many nominations for comedian Lenny Bruce or Czech politician and dissident writer Václav Havel or Dr. Death himself, Jack Kevorkian. The names appear in the order of how many votes they received, with one blank line representing those who couldn’t choose, and potentially allowing viewers to insert their own choice. 

The piece has been installed on the side of 325 W. Huron since 1994, and is viewable from the Chicago stop on the Brown Line. Credit: Adam Brooks

The site of the project, in River North, was around the corner from Hoffman’s gallery at the time; she helped facilitate securing the spot, which was then owned by developer and philanthropist David Ruttenberg. (It is now owned by RiverNorth Capital Management.)

I took the el to the site on a recent Sunday. It’s still viewable from the Chicago Brown Line platform, though the lot in front is fenced off and filled with huge blue cranes and other construction equipment. It’s harder to see from street level, though you can spy the work through gaps in the fencing. Brooks isn’t entirely sure when construction of the new building will begin, though it seems imminent. “I love the idea of it slowly disappearing rather than being removed,” he says. The work, still in excellent condition after 28 years, will technically remain on the wall. And if the new developer leaves a gap between the buildings, it’s possible that motivated viewers will still be able to catch a glimpse of it with a flashlight.

That potential future is exciting to Brooks—who has always liked that the project takes a little bit of work to understand. “It’s about asking questions, not answering,” he says. “Certainly, with my work with Industry of the Ordinary for the last couple of decades, that’s always been our approach: to leave things open-ended, to ask questions, to not insult the intelligence of the audience by spoon-feeding them, to ask the audience to do some work on their own. That for me has always been critically important and I think this piece has always functioned in that way.”

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What do Cesar Chavez, Ayn Rand, and Harold Washington have in common? They are among the 69 people featured in Adam Brooks’s public art project Freedom Wall, which has been installed on the building at 325 W. Huron since 1994. The text-based installation, which is viewable from the Brown Line’s Chicago stop, has undoubtedly been viewed by many thousands of people over the years—but not for much longer. The parking lot in front of the wall is being developed, which means the project will soon be hidden by another building.

In the lead up to the 1992 U.S. presidential election, Brooks, a longtime professor at Columbia College Chicago and one-half of the collaborative conceptual art duo Industry of the Ordinary, began thinking about putting together a project around the idea of freedom. “Obviously in America in particular, it’s the land of the free,” he says. “The word ‘freedom’ gets bandied around so much, you know, who’s going to be against freedom? But the idea of what freedom was was really interesting to me, because obviously there are as many interpretations of that as there are people.”

He was inspired by the work of conceptual artists like Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer, who often make text-based, public works. He was especially drawn to the way Holzer’s use of text seemed to have multiple voices. “I was interested in that notion of not taking one particular stance, but actually opening up a project to multiple participants with multiple viewpoints,” he says.

Bob Morales from the Indiana company Billboards Inc. painted the lettering by hand, as seen in this process documentation from the early 90s. Credit: Adam Brooks

The presentation of the work is in tune with the straightforward text pieces of both Kruger and Holzer. The names appear in list form, in white enamel letters on a massive black vinyl sheet—72 feet high by 15 feet 6 inches wide—all capitalized in the simple sans-serif font Helvetica. The lettering was done by hand by painter Bob Morales of the Indiana company Billboards Inc. There’s no artist signature or title or explanation—there was once a description at the base but it’s long since disappeared. If a viewer is interested in learning more about the work, they have to Google or otherwise research it.

To come up with the names, Brooks surveyed a politically broad range of people, asking them to provide the names of up to three people, from throughout history, that they felt embodied the idea of freedom. He asked friends and colleagues, solicited responses at Rhona Hoffman Gallery (where he showed at the time) and used the then-burgeoning Internet. He got connected to middle and high school students across the country through the Electric Schoolhouse, a network of teachers who were early adopters of the Web, and messaged random strangers through America Online, where users had public profiles that listed their political affiliation.

“I felt that it was critically important for the project to be viewed as not just another piece of liberal activism, to include as many voices from across the political spectrum as possible,” he says. “It may not be fair and balanced, but it certainly was broad enough and eclectic enough ultimately, in order to ask some important questions about what freedom is, what it means to be free, who decides how we define that.”

That’s how the list ended up with names like Rush Limbaugh—whose radio show was widely popular at the time, juxtaposed against Anita Hill. Or photographer Robert Mapplethorpe following Ronald Reagan. Some names make the project hyperspecific to that moment in time. If it were made today, it’s unlikely that there would be many nominations for comedian Lenny Bruce or Czech politician and dissident writer Václav Havel or Dr. Death himself, Jack Kevorkian. The names appear in the order of how many votes they received, with one blank line representing those who couldn’t choose, and potentially allowing viewers to insert their own choice. 

The piece has been installed on the side of 325 W. Huron since 1994, and is viewable from the Chicago stop on the Brown Line. Credit: Adam Brooks

The site of the project, in River North, was around the corner from Hoffman’s gallery at the time; she helped facilitate securing the spot, which was then owned by developer and philanthropist David Ruttenberg. (It is now owned by RiverNorth Capital Management.)

I took the el to the site on a recent Sunday. It’s still viewable from the Chicago Brown Line platform, though the lot in front is fenced off and filled with huge blue cranes and other construction equipment. It’s harder to see from street level, though you can spy the work through gaps in the fencing. Brooks isn’t entirely sure when construction of the new building will begin, though it seems imminent. “I love the idea of it slowly disappearing rather than being removed,” he says. The work, still in excellent condition after 28 years, will technically remain on the wall. And if the new developer leaves a gap between the buildings, it’s possible that motivated viewers will still be able to catch a glimpse of it with a flashlight.

That potential future is exciting to Brooks—who has always liked that the project takes a little bit of work to understand. “It’s about asking questions, not answering,” he says. “Certainly, with my work with Industry of the Ordinary for the last couple of decades, that’s always been our approach: to leave things open-ended, to ask questions, to not insult the intelligence of the audience by spoon-feeding them, to ask the audience to do some work on their own. That for me has always been critically important and I think this piece has always functioned in that way.”

Read More