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Articles by Lawrence B. Johnson

Role Playing: Chaon Cross turned Court stage into a romper room finding answers in ‘Proof’

Apr 5, 2013 – 1:11 am
Actor Chaon Cross credit Joe Mazza

Interview: The interpretive quest that led Chaon Cross to her fierce, blazing portrayal of Catherine, the brilliant but unmoored young woman in David Auburn’s “Proof” at Court Theatre, began in rehearsals with a lot of running around, getting under furniture and throwing things.

Conductor Oramo, bringing Nielsen to CSO, sees master builder’s hand in 5th Symphony

Apr 2, 2013 – 6:20 am
Sakari Oramo please credit Heikki Tuuli and Octavia

Preview: When Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo steps in front of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for concerts April 4-6, he will put the spotlight on Danish composer Carl Nielsen, a figure that has waxed and waned in the hearts of audiences and conductors alike over the last half century.

Fresh out of college, Stephen Anthony slides into ‘Catch Me If You Can’ — and it’s no con

Mar 31, 2013 – 4:37 pm
Stephen Anthony as an airplane pilot in the Catch Me if You Can Broadway in Chicago 2013 tour company credit Carol Rosegg

Preview: There’s a connection you can’t miss between actor Stephen Anthony, recently graduated from Florida State University, and the con artist Frank Abagnale, Jr., whom he plays in the national touring production of “Catch Me If You Can” that opens April 3 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. They both bounce around the country, never staying long in one place, pretending to be somebody they aren’t and oozing charm all the way.

In contrasting Mozart concertos with the CSO, pianist Mitsuko Uchida blends depth, charm

Mar 29, 2013 – 1:29 pm
Pianist Mitsuko Uchida credit Jean Radel

Review: While it wasn’t quite the alpha and omega of Mozart’s numerous ventures into the piano concerto, the two works pianist Mitsuko Uchida performed March 28 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra did offer a telling perspective on a composer on top of the world and one who had seen all too much of it. ★★★★

Cuban troupe’s ghostly ‘Pedro Páramo’ opens Goodman’s Latino Festival with mystic grace

Mar 25, 2013 – 2:56 pm
Sandra Delgado and Carlos Cruz in Pedro Paramo at Goodman Theatre credit Liz Lauren

Review: ★★★★

Conductor Tugan Sokhiev, in CSO debut, sets Russian stamp on Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony

Mar 23, 2013 – 5:57 pm
Ossetian conductor Tugan Sokhiev makes Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut March 2013 credit Todd Rosenberg

Review: While the Tchaikovsky symphonies hardly belong to the exclusive province of Russian conductors, the free-wheeling, hair-raising Fourth Symphony that Tugan Sokhiev led with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on March 21 simply may not be an interpretive option within the DNA of conductors from other parts of the world. ★★★★

‘Measure for Measure’ (read: laugh for laugh), Goodman’s screamer would be hard to top

Mar 21, 2013 – 10:57 pm
9Isabella (Alejandra Escalante) is offered a carnal bargain by Angelo (Jay Whittaker) in "Measure for Measure" at Goodman Theatre 2013 credit Liz Lauren

Review: ★★★★

Role Playing: Dion Johnstone turned outsider Antony to bloody purpose in ‘Julius Caesar’

Mar 19, 2013 – 1:29 pm
Actor Dion Johnstone

Interview: The actor who portrays Marc Antony in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” draws one of the greatest speeches in the Bard’s canon: the dramatically pivotal funeral oration for the slain Caesar. But that opportunity, says Dion Johnstone, whose eloquent and driven Marc Antony fires the current production at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, comes freighted with compact and perilous challenges. “From the moment Marc Antony enters the Senate and sees Caesar’s bloody corpse, with Brutus and the other assassins all still there, he’s in serious danger,” the actor says. “And despite his overwhelming grief, he has to think fast.”

‘Body of Water’ at Redtwist: Life as a circular swim with no clue of current, bottom or bank

Mar 14, 2013 – 11:49 am
Brian Parry as Moss, Stella Martin as Wren, Jan Ellen Graves as Avis in A Body of Water by Lee Blessing at Redtwist 2013 credit Kimberly Loughlin

Review: ★★★

Role Playing: Noir films gave Justine Turner model for shadowy dame in ‘Dreadful Night’

Mar 13, 2013 – 10:43 am
Justine C. Turner credit Donald Cardiff

Interview: Funny thing about film noir, says Justine C. Turner, who plays a sultry, sexy 1940s type in Don Nigro’s play “City of Dreadful Night” at The Den Theatre: It brought women out of the shadows, and made them multi-dimensional. “That’s the really great thing about my character. Anna is complicated. She’s both Madonna and whore, not just one or the other but good and bad at the same time,” says Turner, who tuned up for the defining noir style of “Dreadful Night” by watching Ida Lupino films from the 1940s.

Teal Wicks, who’s done a green witch, happy to show other colors in musical ‘Jekyll & Hyde’

Mar 11, 2013 – 5:21 pm
Teal Wicks as Emma Carew, Constantine Maroulis as Henry Jekyll in JEKYLL & HYDE Broadway in Chicago 2013 credit Chris Bennion

Preview: Teal Wicks made a name for herself as the misunderstood but resilient green girl Elphaba in “Wicked.” Shed of the body paint, she’s again playing a young woman who marches to her own drum as Emma, the fiancée (against all prudent counsel) of the mysterious Dr. Jekyll in the musical “Jekyll & Hyde.” Where Wicks is marching with it is right back to Broadway.

Subbing for Boulez again, Cristian Macelaru looks like conducting star on rise with CSO

Mar 8, 2013 – 6:02 pm
Cristian Macelaru

Review: Twice in the last two seasons the young Romanian-born conductor Cristian Macelaru has stepped into the same big shoes, replacing an indisposed Pierre Boulez on the podium of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. After the second look, on March 7, one can only join the applauding CSO musicians in saluting Macelaru as a star in the making. ★★★★

Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter will celebrate Lutosławski at heart of diverse duo recital

Mar 6, 2013 – 7:30 pm
Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter credit Harald Hoffmann DG

Preview: For German violin virtuoso Anne-Sophie Mutter, the observance of Polish composer Witold Lutosławski’s birth centennial this year is a personal celebration of music she calls “elevating, too poetic for me to put into words.” Mutter’s far-ranging recital with pianist Lambert Orkis, in the Symphony Center Presents series March 10 at Orchestra Hall, will include Lutosławski’s Partita, a five-movement work composed in 1984 for violinist Pinchas Zukerman but which also has a personal history for Mutter.

Role Playing: Anish Jethmalani plumbs agony of good man battling demons in ‘Bengal Tiger’

Mar 5, 2013 – 4:10 pm
Anish Jethmalani

Interview: The play is called “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” and while there is indeed a tiger in it – dead for most of the story, wafting in and out of view as an existential ghost – our sympathies are not with the spectral creature but with a real man, an Iraqi gardener brought to heartbreaking life by Anish Jethmalani at Lookingglass Theatre.

‘The City & The City’: Politics, murder occupy the same space in a surreal thriller at Lifeline

Mar 3, 2013 – 8:07 am
Novelist China Mieville

Review: ★★★

Lyric Opera’s throwback ‘Rigoletto’ is rescued by stellar debuts of Dobber, Shagimuratova

Mar 1, 2013 – 1:14 am
Andrzej Dobber is Rigoletto at the Lyric Opera of Chicago 2013 credit Dan Rest

Review: Verdi’s “Rigoletto” is about a man’s tormented soul, and about his sheltered daughter, a young woman utterly innocent of the world – and the inexorable calamity that befalls them both. In all that, in the voices of baritone Andrzej Dobber and soprano Albina Shagimuratova and their moving rapport as protective father and enraptured daughter, the Lyric Opera of Chicago offers a “Rigoletto” deeply rewarding at its heart. Draw the circle larger, however, and the problems with this production become evident. ★★★

Amid the shadows and fast talk, a murderer lurks in The Den’s stylish ‘Dreadful Night’

Feb 27, 2013 – 4:54 pm
Justine-C.-Turner-and-Sam-Guinan-Nyhart-in-City-of-Dreadful-Night-by-Don-Nigro-at-The-Den-Theatre-credit-Joe-Mazza

Review: ★★★★

‘A Soldier’s Play’ at Raven: Sifting through racial prejudice and rage to find a murderer

Feb 22, 2013 – 12:03 am
From left, Tamarus Harvell, Eric Walker, Rashawn Thompson, Antoine Pierre Whitfield and Kory Pullam in A Soldier's Play at Raven credit  Dean LaPrairie

Review: In an obvious sense, Charles Fuller’s 1982 drama “A Soldier’s Play,” recently opened in a sharply detailed production at Raven Theatre, is about the virulent ugliness of racism as it persisted in the mid-20th century deep South. But more than that, Fuller’s story grapples with the despair and self-loathing that can infect the soul of an oppressed people. ★★★

Role Playing: Gary Perez channels his Harlem youth as quiet, unflinching Julio in ‘The Hat’

Feb 20, 2013 – 6:21 pm
Gary Perez feature image

Interview: One of the most appealing, indeed endearing, performances to be seen on Chicago theater stages this season is Gary Perez’s quietly philosophical, yet vaguely dangerous turn as Julio, the gay cousin and one true friend in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play “The ______ With the Hat” at Steppenwolf. Perez credits director Anna D. Shapiro with framing Julio as worldly-wise and possessed of a Zen-like calm, the one really centered character in a collection of loose cannons.

‘Boy Gets Girl’ at Raven: She says sayonara, his bouquets turn to blood-curdling threats

Feb 18, 2013 – 3:53 pm
Kristin-Collins-in-Boy-Gets-Girl-by-Rebecca-Gilman-at-Raven-2013-credit-Dean-LaPrairie

Review: ★★★★

Chicago Shakespeare Theater texts ‘Caesar,’ modernized and picture-perfectly true to Bard

Feb 15, 2013 – 7:35 pm
David Darlow as Caesar's ghost in Julius Caesar at Chicago Shakespeare 2013 credit Liz Lauren

Review: ★★★★

‘Bengal Tiger’ at Lookingglass: Man, beast change stripes, and God’s not in the details

Feb 12, 2013 – 4:15 pm
JJ Phillips as Kev and Anish Jethmalani as Musa in Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by Rajiv Joseph at Lookingglass 2013 credit Liz Lauren

Review: To be engulfed by the despair that sweeps over “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” is to be reminded of the spiritual nausea that seized Jean-Paul Sartre and other French existentialist playwrights who watched their own world getting blown to pieces in the 1940s. Lookingglass Theatre and director Heidi Stillman have turned Rajiv Joseph’s play into one of the peak stage experiences of this season. ★★★★★

CSO in Asia: At tour’s end, sense of triumph magnified by journey of maestro, musicians

Feb 7, 2013 – 3:00 am
Lorin Maazel conducts Brahms' Symphony No. 2 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Beijing on 2013 Asia tour - credit Todd Rosenberg

Report: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra had come a long way, in every sense and under trying circumstances, to hear the Seoul Arts Center rocked by applause on the final stop of its Asia tour. In the quiet of an interview before the closing concerts, conductor Lorin Maazel, who had joined the fraught tour in Hong Kong to lead the CSO across China to this conclusion, its first ever visit to Seoul, described his thrown-together effort with the orchestra not merely as a challenge met, but as “an impossible task.” That the mission was accomplished as impressively as it was, Maazel said, bore witness not only to the Chicagoans’ musicianship but also to their collective professionalism.

CSO, Muti plan tributes to Verdi and Schubert in 2013-14 season, with two world premieres

Feb 6, 2013 – 3:24 pm
Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti takes a bow with the CSO credit Todd Rosenberg

Report: We offer our hot picks.

CSO in Asia: That purring sound is Muti’s ‘Ferrari,’ driven by Maazel, cruising China

Feb 5, 2013 – 5:07 am
Conductor Lorin Maazel smiles at the audience as he takes his final bow in Shanghai on Chicago Symphony 2013 Asia tour credit Todd Rosenberg

Report: TIANJIN – Conductor Lorin Maazel has pretty much peaked out in his appreciation of the Chicago Symphony, even topping music director Riccardo Muti’s proud comparison of the orchestra to a Ferrari. Shortly after he caught up with the CSO to take over its Asia tour conducting duties from Edo de Waart, in Hong Kong, the grey eminence Maazel summed up the impression he drew from his first rehearsal with the orchestra: “About an hour into it, I thought to myself, ‘My God, what a sound!’”

CSO in Asia: With a colossal effort, orchestra and Osmo Vänskä score Beethoven triumph

Jan 27, 2013 – 9:39 pm

Review: Like an army advancing from a victorious engagement, a weary Chicago Symphony Orchestra arrived in Hong Kong Sunday after gaining a success against long odds at the Chiang Kai-shek National Concert Hall in Taipei. The CSO closed out the first leg of its Asia tour in Taiwan by doing Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) the hard way: playing this indeed “heroic” work in a single late-afternoon rehearsal with conductor Osmo Vänskä, then coming right back to it for an intensely concentrated, razor-sharp performance before a packed concert audience.

CSO in Asia: Grace, true grit and Robert Chen prevail as star-crossed tour opens in Taipei

Jan 25, 2013 – 11:09 pm

Review: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra presented the first concert in its troubled Asia tour here Jan. 25 with a performance that flew on a wing and a prayer. Make that one rehearsal and the grace of some sterling musicianship. Under the baton of Osmo Vänskä, an 11th-hour replacement for ailing CSO music director Riccardo Muti, the orchestra offered the well-filled Chiang Kai-shek National Concert Hall a generous program that made a big splash even if it didn’t entirely sparkle.

CSO adds Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov, concertmaster Chen, maestro Vänskä for Asia

Jan 20, 2013 – 1:35 am
Violinist Maxim Vengerov, who recently returned to concert performance after a prolonged absence, will headline a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert in Taipei January 2013 credit Naim Chidiac – Abu Dhabi Festival 2012

Report: Pressed to find a conductor for concerts in Taiwan on Jan. 25 and 26 that will open its Asia tour, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra late Saturday announced both a maestro and a double bonus for audiences in Taipei. Joining Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä in solo appearances will be the celebrated violin virtuoso Maxim Vengerov and CSO concertmaster Robert Chen, a native of Taiwan.

Report: Riccardo Muti, facing surgery, drops out of CSO’s Asian tour; Maazel steps in

Jan 18, 2013 – 12:35 am
Lorin Maazel will replace Riccardo Muti for most concerts in  Chicago Symphony 2013 Asian tour Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and Seoul credit Chris Lee

Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing on sked

Writers’ chilling edition of ‘The Letters’ paints grim picture of a boss’s friendly summons

Jan 17, 2013 – 6:14 pm
The Letters political thriller at Writers' Theatre Mark L. Montgomery as The Director and Kate Fry as Anna credit Michael Brosilow

Review: ★★★★