Articles by Lawrence B. Johnson
Joffrey Ballet and Mariinsky Orchestra recall wonder of Stravinsky’s ‘Sacre du printemps’
Review: Parisians first experienced “Le sacre du printemps” as dance, in Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography for the Ballets Russes in 1913, then shortly after came back to Stravinsky’s stunning music as concert fare. Now Chicagoans have encountered the same sequence — in the Joffrey Ballet’s splendid re-creation of the work two weeks ago at the Auditorium Theatre, followed Oct. 2 by the Mariinsky Orchestra’s supercharged performance at Orchestra Hall with conductor Valery Gergiev.
On grand new stage, ‘To Master the Art’ still whips up Julia Child’s zeal for French cuisine
Review: It is like properly prepared scrambled eggs, this rebuilt production of “To Master the Art,” the story of how a tall, kitchen-clueless Californian became the famous Julia Child: basic, sumptuous, irresistible. If this lovely play, written by William Brown and Doug Frew, possessed an intimate charm in its original 2010 staging at TimeLine Theatre that cannot be replicated in the Broadway Playhouse’s grander proscenium venue, its essential warmth and honesty remain undiminished. ★★★★
To corporate raider, the blood is just business in ‘Other People’s Money’ at Shattered Globe
Review: Larry Garfinkle lives by the numbers, as in quarterly profits and losses. He’s a practical guy, all business, with a nose for blood. When he sees a company in trouble, he moves in, goes for the kill, let the working stiffs fall where they may. And Larry Garfinkle is thoroughly inhabited, from his three-piece suits to his vulgar charm, in Ben Werling’s portrayal at the center of Jerry Sterner’s wry comedy “Other People’s Money” for Shattered Globe Theatre. ★★★★
‘Raisin in the Sun’ at TimeLine: Family dreams confront reality in a journey back to the future
Review: The disturbing thing about Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun,” a sharply drawn portrait of America’s racial divide and one black family’s resolve to cross that chasm, is how current it still feels in the season-opening production at TimeLine Theatre, potently and humanely crafted by director Ron OJ Parson. ★★★★
Muti finally presiding, CSO delivers Brahms Second Symphony the Asia tour didn’t get
Review: Ah, so that was the Brahms Second Symphony the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had planned to share with audiences in Asia last winter — on the tour music director Riccardo Muti had to skip because of emergency surgery. With stand-in conductors Osmo Vänskä and Lorin Maazel, the CSO had delivered authoritative, even commanding performances of the Brahms Second on that troubled tour. But to put it plainly, those efforts bore no relation to the exquisite account the CSO summoned Thursday night in its season opener at Orchestra Hall with Muti once again on the podium.
In Verdi’s rarely staged ‘Giovanna d’Arco,’ director sees image of modern fanaticism
Preview: Chicago Opera Theater jumps into the Verdi bicentennial observance this weekend with its season opener, a relatively rare staging of the composer’s early “Giovanna d’Arco.” The stage has not generously embraced this odd riff on Joan of Arc’s life – and death. “It’s one of history’s most extraordinary, mind-bending true stories,” says stage director David Schweizer, “and the audience knows that. But the work is filled with rapturous music.”
‘The Mountaintop’ at Court: In Dr. King’s final hours, coffee served from a cup of revelation
Review: On his last night on earth, exhausted from his civil rights campaign, the threat of assassination constantly before him, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., perhaps hinted at a premonition of his own end when he declared that he had “been to the mountaintop” and “seen the Promised Land.” Playwright Katori Hall spins that intimation into luminous fantasy in “The Mountaintop,” a transmigrational arabesque for two players that now irradiates the stage at Court Theatre. ★★★★
Theater 2013-14: Redtwist bundles premieres and extends hand to young actors, directors
14th in a series of season previews: What Redtwist Theatre artistic director Michael Colucci calls “the storefront premiere” of Bruce Norris’ “Clybourne Park” and the world premiere of ensemble member Tommy Lee Johnston’s “Geezers” will bookend the company’s 2013-14 season. Redtwist also will embark on a two-fold expansion program designed to create new opportunities for directors and actors just out of theater school.
Theater 2013-14: Lookingglass will populate stage with people in off-balance moments
12th in a series of season previews: When theatrical characters step out of their comfort zones, you have the makings of keen-edged drama. That’s the essence of a Lookingglass’ Theatre 2013-14 season that boasts two world premieres among three productions.
Theater 2013-14: The lure of a different life links Raven trips to ‘Bountiful’ and beyond
Tenth in a series of season previews: From the season opener, Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful” to the finale with Tennessee Williams’s “The Vieux Carré,” the 2013-14 lineup of plays at Raven Theatre centers on what artistic director Michael Menendian calls “that little ache in our heart, the secret longing for a different life.”
Theater 2013-14: Joan Allen’s return and five premieres will light marquee at Steppenwolf
Eighth in series of season previews: In a 2013-14 season that artistic director Martha Lavey promises will “make you laugh out loud and think deeply about how we live and love,” Steppenwolf Theatre offers two world premieres and two Chicago premieres – and to open the season an American premiere featuring the long-deferred homecoming of company co-founder Joan Allen.
Theater 2013-14: Irish world premiere tops lineup of 5 shows in Northlight’s 39th year
Seventh in season preview series: Northlight Theatre’s marquee for 2013-14 promises a world premiere turn by actor John Mahoney, the company directing debut of Ron OJ Parson in a Midwest premiere and director Kimberly Senior’s inauguration in her new role as the 39-year-old company’s first artistic associate.
Theater 2013-14: The few, the proud (actors) will fight and fight again in Lifeline war zones
Sixth in a series of season previews: Lifeline Theatre’s 2013-14 season, bannered as “War and Redemption,” will be played out on large canvases indeed – with opening salvos from the Civil War and the French Revolution. The season boasts two world premiere adaptations and a major component of staged tumult.
Theater 2013-14: Shattered Globe puts deposit on edgy season with ‘Other People’s Money’
Fifth in a series of season previews: The stuff of Shattered Globe Theatre’s season planning might be described as polar opposites: The issues that concern us all and the issues that pull as apart. Perfectly matched to that conflicted perspective is the company’s 22nd season opener, the double-edged comedy of Jerry Sterner’s “Other People’s Money.”
Shakespeare rules the playbill as Stratford unveils plans for its 2014 summer festival
Report: While the Stratford Festival has shed its branding association with the Bard of Avon, any concerns that the festival might really be loosening its traditional ties with Shakespeare should be allayed by newly announced plans for the summer of 2014. The Bard abounds. The festival’s five Shakespeare productions will include two takes on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — a full-scale account and a “chamber” version for just four players directed by one of the world’s most innovative masters of stagecraft, Peter Sellars.
Theater 2013-14: Chicago premiere leads off Porchlight’s exploration of musical landscape
Fourth in a series of season previews: Porchlight Music Theatre prides itself on taking a new approach to classic musicals, “as if the script just came across the desk,” says managing artistic director Michael Weber. Opening with the Chicago premiere of the two-hand farce “Double Trouble,” Porchlight’s 2013-14 season reflects that spirit of approaching a show “with an understanding that we can stretch it and explore it in a different way.”
Theater 2013-14: Hank Williams’ life in song and world premiere on American Blues slate
Third in a series of season previews: The spirit and legend of Americana buoys the 2013-14 season at American Blues Theater, from a musical biography of country star Hank Williams to the world premiere of Christina Gorman’s “American Myth,” about a professor of history who has perhaps fudged the details of his own past. The new season also sees storefront American Blues taking up residence at the Greenhouse Theater Center on North Lincoln Avenue.
Theater 2013-14: Charting course back to its earthy roots, Profiles celebrates 25th season
Second in a series of season previews: Profiles Theatre will mark its 25th anniversary this season by getting back to what co-artistic director Joe Jahraus calls the lean, mean style that has set this company apart. That’s lean as in Neil LaBute’s “Wrecks,” a one-actor narrative about the devastation of a man’s life wrought by the death of his wife, and mean as in Rhett Rossi’s “In God’s Hat,” which plays out through the taut, charged reunion of two estranged brothers when one of them is released from prison.
Theater 2013-14: TimeLine will raise curtain with fresh look at classic ‘Raisin in the Sun’
First in a series of season previews: TimeLine Theatre rolls into its 17th season by turning back the clock more than half a century to Lorraine Hansberry’s classic story of racial prejudice in Chicago, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Though two of the Milwaukee Rep leads will appear at TimeLine – Greta Oglesby as Mama, who’s bent on seeing her family better situated, and Mildred Marie Langford as her daughter Beneatha, who dreams of a medical career – this production will be a complete rethinking of the work, from sets to concept.
‘Molly Sweeney’ at American Players Theatre: From gentle darkness, a voyage to rough light
Review: She is a perfectly happy lady, Molly Sweeney. Though blind since early childhood, she’s content in her soul, and wondrously in touch with the world, which she views – through the tactile, auditory and aromatic senses – as very much hers. Then her husband and a once-celebrated eye surgeon convince her that an operation could open up unimagined vistas of bliss. That’s the harrowing thrust of Brian Friel’s intimate tragedy “Molly Sweeney,” delivered with equal parts of sensitivity and irony and shattering impact at American Players Theatre.. ★★★★
‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ lights the open sky with crisp mirth at American Players
Review: Traditional criticism hasn’t been altogether kind to Shakespeare’s early comedy “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” which is often portrayed as a workshop effort that set the stage for the Bard’s later, more sophisticated riffs on the madness of love. But this summer’s sharply drawn, energetic and sly production at American Players Theatre makes a savvy, satisfying case for a comedy worth catching. ★★★★
Chicago Shakespeare returns Bard to parks with merry madness of ‘Comedy of Errors’
Preview: What could be funnier, or crazier, a more riotous lark than Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s touring production of the Bard’s “Taming of the Shrew” in parks across Chicago last summer? The answer well may be this summer’s CST encore: 26 free performances in 18 parks of Shakespeare’s madcap farce “The Comedy of Errors.”
‘Million Dollar Quartet’ poised to break record with 2,000th performance of a rockin’ night
Preview: It will hardly come as news to anyone who has seen the show, possibly several times, but “Million Dollar Quartet” – recalling a chance jam session that brought together Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins – has proved to be solid-gold entertainment. The Chicago show will see its 2,000th performance on July 11 at the Apollo Theater, which only extends “The Million Dollar Quartet’s” record as the longest-running Broadway show in Chicago theater history.
Lookingglass ‘Big Lake Big City’ means murder, lethal comedy on dark streets of Chicago
Review: Enter a hurled chair, pursued by a raging detective. Thus begins Chicago playwright Keith Huff’s rambunctious, violently funny police drama “Big Lake Big City,” a slice of Chicago’s underbelly examined from the viewpoint of a rough-cut cop who probably never met a suspect he didn’t punch or a woman he understood. “Big Lake Big City,” in its world-premiere run at Lookingglass Theatre, is slyly skewed, uproarious fun, a spider’s web of interlaced lives and cross-hatched deeds adding up to an open and shut case of sober insanity. ★★★★★
Grant Park Chorus director Christopher Bell, newly lauded, cues troops for ‘War Requiem’
Preview: On a vigorous summer schedule for the Grant Park Chorus and its lately honored director, performances of Benjamin Britten’s monumental “War Requiem” June 28-29 pose the kind of challenges that choristers live for. “A piece of music has to weather the storms of time, and the ‘War Requiem’ has shown its staying power,” says Grant Park Chorus director Christopher Bell, who earlier this month received a lifetime achievement award at Chorus America’s annual convention in Seattle.
‘The Three Musketeers’ at Lifeline: Acrobatics meet melodrama in a one-for-all free-for-all
Review: If Alexandre Dumas’ historical novel “The Three Musketeers” is a romantic adventure of epic proportions, Lifeline Theatre’s adaptation for the stage is a busy amusement, a shrunken likeness that has its appealing features but falls well short of capturing either the bravura spirit or the inherent drama of the original. ★★
Riccardo Muti turns spotlight on CSO Chorus with lustrous account of Verdi ‘Sacred Pieces’
Review: Riccardo Muti, winding up his third season as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this weekend, led the orchestra and Chicago Symphony Chorus on a spiritual voyage Thursday night, from luminous Mozart and rapturous Vivaldi to a transcendental peak in Verdi’s glorious “Four Sacred Pieces.” Performances continue through Sunday. ★★★★★
American Players Theatre offers Shakespeare, Friel, Stoppard in a festival mix in the woods
Preview: What’s in a name? American Players Theatre, which has been filling summers with drama since 1980 in the woods of Spring Green, Wis., doesn’t trade on the Shakespeare brand. But in every aspect of making theater, from staging to vocal delivery to its choice of plays, this ambitious enterprise hews to the Bard as its reference point. In the 2013 mix of eight plays, which opens June 15, APT includes a typical infusion of Shakespeare, a stylistic sweep from “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” and “Hamlet” to “Antony and Cleopatra.”
Role Playing: Ora Jones had to find her way into Katherine’s frayed world in ‘Henry VIII’
Interview: Ora Jones, so assured and imposing as Queen Katherine in “Henry VIII” at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, was just as confident she had blown her audition for the part. And that wasn’t such a bad thing, she thought – because Katherine’s great speech in her trial scene, the very audition piece that Jones would come to deliver with authentic majesty, had left the actor essentially mystified.
Eight hot Chicago plays you should have seen come round again in Theater on the Lake fest
Preview: Theater director Halena Kays is exaggerating only slightly when she refers to the million plays you’d have to see if you hoped to catch every show in a Chicago season. That’s the beauty of Theater on the Lake, the summer reprise of eight top productions that opens June 12 with original casts reassembled. It’s a bonus round for theater-goers who simply ran out of nights.
