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Articles tagged with: Lance Baker

‘The Mutilated’ at A Red Orchid: Two lonely souls touched by Tennessee Williams’ grace

Feb 6, 2016 – 1:01 pm
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Review: Life, Tennessee Williams’ plays insist again and again, is a painful passage. Bitter, sweet, paradoxical, farcical. Never mind that other business about sound and fury and nothingness. Williams views the world through a lens of dark existential comedy, and it is on display in all its sad glory in A Red Orchid Theatre’s trenchant take on “The Mutilated.” ★★★★

Role Playing: Lance Baker embodies the ennui, despair of fugitive Jews in ‘Diary of Anne Frank’

Aug 12, 2015 – 12:16 pm
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Interview: Of the eight Jewish characters huddled together against the Nazi terror just beyond the door of their little room, in “The Diary of Anne Frank,” one of them arguably feels the confinement, the boredom, the uselessness more than the others. He is Mr. van Daan, a business associate of Anne’s father; and Lance Baker, who portrays this restive soul at Writers Theatre, sees him as a man marginalized in his own heart.

‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ at Writers: Innocence and experience backed into last corner of hope

Mar 8, 2015 – 9:48 pm
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Review: What makes Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s 1955 play “The Diary of Anne Frank” so compelling – and it is nothing less in the current production at Writers Theatre – fills a large frame of human drama. It is a complex profile of hope shadowed by terror and despair, and finally crushed under the boot of hatred. But still, first, there is innocent hope, a luminous vision of life abounding in wonder, possibility and good. ★★★★★

‘The Humans’ at American Theater Company: Family as vortex of love and the unspeakable

Jan 21, 2015 – 11:30 am
Boyfriend Richard (Lance Baker, foreground) learns a family tradition from the Blakes, from left, Erik (Keith Kupferer), Deirdre (Hanna Dworkin), Aime

Review: As a slice of life play, Stephen Karam’s “The Humans,” taps deep into the real and complicated meaning of family values, and it leaves a stunning impression. In American Theater Company’s close-knit ensemble production, it is so casually articulate, genuinely empathic, starkly true. ★★★

‘Henry VIII’ at Chicago Shakespeare: Depicting the king in kindly tint, as Elizabeth’s forebear

May 22, 2013 – 3:08 pm
As Cardinal Wolsey (Scott Jaeck) and Cardinal Campeius (David Darlow) look on, Queen Katherine (Ora Jones) pleads her case to King Henry VIII (Gregory Wooddell) in "Henry VIII" at Chicago Shakespeare Theater 2013 credit Liz Lauren

Review: ★★★★

Faith and human frailty prove volatile mixture in ATC pairing of ‘Doubt’ and ‘Agnes of God’

Oct 9, 2012 – 6:11 pm

Review: ★★★★ and ★★★