Articles tagged with: Cliff Chamberlain
‘The Minutes’ at Steppenwolf: At a small-town council meeting, comedy takes shattering turn
Review: The individual agendas of the Big Cherry village council members, in Tracy Letts’ comedy-chiller of a new play “The Minutes,” are credibly various and amusingly personal. What really resonates, however, is the one thing they all hold in common — the raw, elemental conviction that safeguards and perpetuates Big Cherry as a community. ★★★★
Role Playing: Francis Guinan embraces conflict of father who fled from grim truth in ‘The Herd’
Interview: The alienated, indeed despised husband and father Francis Guinan portrays in Rory Kinnear’s marvelous first play “The Herd,” at Steppenwolf Theatre, elicits deeply ambivalent feelings, and not just from the audience. Guinan admits he also sees the guy in decidedly conflicted terms.
‘The Herd’ at Steppenwolf: It’s Dad at the door, but it could be the wolf – he’s so not welcome
Review: Ah, family values. Mom, Dad, the kids. The dysfunction, the divorce, the alienation, the animosity. All the things that make a house a home are piled into “The Herd,” a smashing first play by Rory Kinnear now fuming through its U.S. premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre. No need to equivocate. It is simply not to be missed. ★★★★★
Role Playing: Eva Barr explored two personas of Alzheimer’s victim to find center of ‘Alice’
Interview: To watch Eva Barr play out the progressive, early-onset dementia of the woman at the center of “Still Alice” at Lookingglass Theatre is to forget you’re looking at the subtle, skillful work of an actor. Yet hardly less remarkable is the way Barr arrived at the role: She began, in first readings with playwright-director Christine Mary Dunford, by taking a different part, an alternate Alice – a separate character Dunford identifies simply as Herself.
‘Still Alice’ at Lookingglass: When dementia seizes a woman’s life, a family is measured
Review: In her play “Still Alice,” author and director Christine Mary Dunford employs a graphic metaphor to illustrate the disintegrating world of Alice, a victim of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Throughout the play, now in its world premiere run at Lookingglass Theatre, Alice’s kitchen appliances disappear one by one, until nothing remains – until the locus, the defining “here,” of this woman’s life is no longer there. ★★★★
