Articles by Lawrence B. Johnson
‘Gem of the Ocean’ at Court: Setting a spiritual table for Wilson’s canon in a haven of peace
Review: August Wilson’s decade-by-decade portrait gallery of the African-American experience across the 20th century begins just two generations after slavery, indeed with characters who were born into shackles. To grasp the cultural resonance and progression of the last nine plays in the sequence, it’s essential to know the first one, “Gem of the Ocean,” which now unfolds in a perceptive and finely textured production directed by Ron OJ Parson at Court Theatre. ★★★★
Theater 2015-16: Victory Gardens comes out swinging with season of punches, premieres
15th in a series of season previews: The play first up for Victory Gardens Theater this season, Roy Williams’ “Sucker Punch,” might be seen as a summary statement of what fifth-year artistic director Chay Yew has tried to bring to this company. It’s a story steeped in gritty realism about two young black boxers in rundown London struggling to find meaning in life.
Shakespeare director Barbara Gaines modulates to Mozart at Lyric Opera, and sees second Bard
Interview: The first venture for the Lyric Opera of Chicago this season is also the first Mozart ever taken on by Barbara Gaines, artistic director at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. And in the poignancy – and the comedy – of “The Marriage of Figaro,” Gaines finds the Bard’s own sensibility, his empathy and his compassion.
‘The Tempest’ at Chicago Shakespeare: Magic rules on Prospero’s island, by wand and word
Review: In double magic that beguiles ear and eye with levity and levitation, Chicago Shakespeare Theater has invoked a rare vision of the Bard’s lyrical play of vengeance transcended by forgiveness, “The Tempest.” Co-directed with no slight imagination and great sleight of hand by Adam Posner and the magician Teller (he of Penn and Teller fame), CST’s season opener is pure enchantment – as credibly human and affecting as it is vibrant, fanciful and fresh. ★★★★★
Theater 2015-16: Raven expands to five plays, kicks off season with three Midwest premieres
14th in a series of season previews: Opening with a run of Midwest premieres, Raven Theatre expands from four plays to five this season to capitalize on the opportunity offered by its dual performing spaces. And first up is a Mark Stein’s searing “entertainment” with the long, ironically evocative title of “Direct from Death Row: The Scottsboro Boys (An Evening of Vaudeville and Sorrow).”
Theater 2015-16: Steppenwolf 40th anniversary boasts premieres by Frank Galati, Tracy Letts
13th in a series of season previews: Two world premieres and three first-time Chicago stagings form a doubly celebratory season at Steppenwolf Theatre – marking the company’s 40th anniversary and honoring the legacy of its longtime artistic director, Martha Lavey, who stepped down at the end of last season. Steppenwolf opens with the world premiere of Frank Galati’s adaptation of “East of Eden,” John Steinbeck’s sweeping, tumultuous epic novel about family dynamics and fortunes set mainly in California early in the 20th century.
‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ at Redtwist: Friendly fire at close range, brutal and brilliant
Review: Seeing a play at tiny Redtwist Theatre, where a full house of 30 or 40 viewers often encircles the unfolding drama, can be an experience of in-your-face intensity. But the company’s electric burn through Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” takes intensity to a harrowing new place. ★★★★★
Theater 2015-16: Lifeline plots two comedies, with a gritty digression to ‘Midnight Cowboy’
12th in a series of season previews
Theater 2015-16: ‘Disgraced,’ 4 world premieres accent a many-splendored season at Goodman
11th in a series of season previews
Theater 2015-16: The binding threads are classic in Court’s pursuit of Greek and modern
10th in a series of season previews
Theater 2015-16: Northlight swings its beacon toward gay community and family redefined
9th in a series of season previews
Theater 2015-16: Presto! Chicago Shakespeare season blows in with super-magical ‘Tempest’
8th in a series of season previews
Theater 2015-16: Porchlight, in its Chicago style, jumps into season of musicals with ‘Side Show’
Seventh in a series of season previews: Michael Weber, the artistic director at Porchlight Music Theatre, makes no bones about his company being a brash urban Chicago enterprise. That, he says, is why Porchlight’s 2015-16 season opener, a revamped version of the 1997 musical “Side Show,” is going to be special. Then, as if to underscore this true grit, it’s on to another earthy evening with an encore of the company’s Jefferson Award-winning Fats Waller revue “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”
Role Playing: Tracy Michelle Arnold debunks madness as force that drives Blanche DuBois
Interview: Tracy Michelle Arnold, who portrays a feisty and resourceful Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” at American Players Theatre, doesn’t buy the common perception of this embattled woman as “a crazy person.” Arnold sees Blanche as a scarred fighter who never gives up her struggle to survive, even at the end.
Theater 2015-16: In farewell to Lakeview home, Strawdog maps season with 3 world premieres
Sixth in a series of season previews: Strawdog Theatre’s 2015-16 season is the last hurrah at its old home up the well-worn stairs on Broadway in the Lakeview neighborhood. While redevelopment will force Strawdog to relocate next year, the season at hand finds the 28-year-old company in peak vigor with plans for seven shows in two full-fledged series. Three world premieres highlight a 2015-16 season that will include four productions on the main stage and three in the company’s intimate Hugen Hall series.
Theater 2015-16: Fearless Redtwist confronts ‘Virginia Woolf’ and takes on a world premiere
Fifth in a series of season previews: Seven seasons ago, Michael Colucci and Jan Ellen Graves, the married founders and still co-artistic directors of Redtwist Theatre, went at each other as George and Martha, the warring gamers in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” This season they hand over those rhetorical 8-ounce gloves to new sparring mates as Redtwist opens its 2015-16 series with another go at Albee’s dark comedy about love and marriage.
Theater 2015-16: Ever-changeable Hypocrites plan two intense musicals, three dark dramas
Fourth in a series of season previews: The Chicago theater company that now appears to be one thing, then slyly becomes completely different (and hence calls itself The Hypocrites), will serve up a typically careening season for 2015-16: two existential musicals framing three plays that peer deeply into the abyss of fate.
Theater 2015-16: American Blues will trumpet three decades with gritty anthem of ‘Rainmaker’
Third in a series of season previews: Gwendolyn Whiteside, the producing artistic director of American Blues Theater, sees a cosmic – or perhaps the better word is earthly — connection between her company and N. Richard Nash’s play “The Rainmaker,” which opens ABT’s season. “What draws us to ‘The Rainmaker,’” she says, “is its expression of incredible human resilience and the human need for hope.”
Theater 2015-16: It’s an energy surge at TimeLine as timeless Mike Nussbaum opens in ‘The Price’
Second in a series of season previews: Surveying the scheme of plays, actors and directors for TimeLine Theatre’s 2015-16 season, its 19th, artist director PJ Powers’ voice fills with palpable excitement. The company’s opener, Arthur Miller’s “The Price,” observes the playwright’s 100th birth year – and it stars Chicago’s living legend, Mike Nussbaum, who’s not far behind Miller on that time line.
Theater 2015-16: Reveling in discomfort zone, Profiles leads off with the off-beat ‘Jacksonian’
First in a series of season previews: Profiles Theatre opens its 27th season with an off-the-wall, grimly humorous, borderline surreal gem of a play fraught with wacky characters and murder, Beth Henley’s “The Jacksonian,” that might have been tailored expressly for this devoutly edgy company. It launches a lineup that finds Profiles in its high-intensity groove.
Role Playing: Christopher Donahue, as Ahab, finds sea’s depth in sadness of a vengeful soul
Interview: Christopher Donahue contemplates the weathered, craggy, doggedly vengeful figure of Captain Ahab, the iconic central character of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” whose cosmic persona Donahue brings into vivid focus on the stage at Lookingglass Theatre. And in the driven whale hunter, the actor finds a paradox. “Ahab abides far away from humanity,” Donahue says. “He is as much a creature of the sea as the creature he’s trying to kill. The sea lives in him. I think he believes himself to be as strong and tumultuous as the sea itself.”
‘Pride and Prejudice’ at American Players: Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, with charm and brevity
Review: You can’t blame an audience for lapping it up: Skilled and familiar actors playing beloved characters in a story so cherished that everyone can pretty much recite along. But that doesn’t necessarily make for memorable theater. Witness the American Players Theatre stage version of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice” at Spring Green, Wis. ★★★
‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ at American Players: Shakespeare’s fat Falstaff and some lusty LOL
Review: If the delight of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” lies in the sparring between that fat, delusional romantic Sir John Falstaff and a raft of characters determined to rub his nose in reality, this broad comedy ultimately hangs on two hooks, and the rollicking production at American Players Theatre delivers them both at Spring Green, Wis. ★★★★
Role Playing: Lance Baker embodies the ennui, despair of fugitive Jews in ‘Diary of Anne Frank’
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.
‘An Iliad’ at American Players Theatre: Of rage, ruin and the cherished legacy of endless wars
Review: Rage, beyond expression or reason or appeasement, rips through the timeless modernity of “An Iliad,” the dramatic distillation of Homer’s epic by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare that now echoes against the near walls of an intimate space at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis. This fraught opus of glory and gore bristles in the one voice but many personas of Jim DeVita, playing the Poet who frames the perpetual folly of war in the single appalling, ever repeating travesty that was Troy. ★★★★★
Musical ‘Pippin’ shines as a high-energy revue, but circus atmosphere covers a meager plot
Review: The musical “Pippin” is an eye-popping crazy-quilt of commedia dell’ arte, dazzling choreography and Cirque du Soleil acrobatics draped over a thin plot about finding the meaning of one’s life. The show’s most appealing qualities come together in the national tour now playing the Cadillac Palace Theatre. But as a musical drama that aspires to something more than glitzy revue, this once-forgotten venture wanders well wide of the mark. ★★★
Grant Park Orchestra lets virtuoso banners fly with (quiet) indoor Bruckner Sixth Symphony
Review: Knowing that Bruckner outdoors at the Pritzker Pavilion stood no chance against the sonic assault from nearby Lollapalooza, the Grant Park Music Festival moved its July 31 and Aug. 1 performances into the Harris Theater. The festival orchestra’s account of Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony, conducted by Christoph König, allowed the audience to appreciate just how good this ensemble really is.
‘Grand Concourse’ at Steppenwolf: Soup’s on, but it’s boiling over with angst, anger and evil
Review: The fascination of Heidi Schreck’s play “Grand Concourse,” now at Steppenwolf Theatre, lies not so much in the personal crisis of a nun whose faith is wavering as it is in the human response of a good person directly affected by unmitigated evil. That moral dilemma keeps us hanging on through the last syllable, or rather sigh, of this well-made drama. ★★★
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ at American Players: Estwhile beauty meets beast, and he’s not kind
Review: She is a fascinating character, indeed one of the iconic personas in all of theater, Blanche DuBois, the fallen Southern belle of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The undying question is, Why? What’s so intriguing about this dame with the checkered past? Perhaps it’s her vulnerability, or her delusion, or her sheer refusal to go quietly into middle-aged oblivion. I think that’s the thing, her feisty pluck, that makes Tracy Michelle Arnold’s Blanche so compelling at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis. ★★★★★
‘All Our Tragic’ at The Hypocrites: In a fresh spin on Greek tragedy, laughter and pause for dessert
Review: A hit with audiences last season, “All Our Tragic,” adapted by Hypocrites artistic director Sean Graney, is a marathon retelling of all the surviving Greek plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. It has been reworked and remounted at The Den Theatre, running full-length on Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to just past 10:30 p.m. – in eight acts with seven intermissions and food breaks (included with ticket). It’s a sweeping immersion: prodigious, clever, insightful and riveting. ★★★★
