The Receptionist (Steep Theatre Company) – For most of The Receptionist’s 90 minute running time, the play comes off as a slightly off-kilter yet still innocuous episode of The Office. The office receptionist Beverly and her co-worker Lorraine, two thirds of the “Northeast Office” of an unnamed corporation, gossip about Lorraine’s lovelife, thumb through People magazine, dodge unwanted voicemails, and speculate when their boss Mr. Raymond, who is out doing field calls, will be coming back.  Then the charming Mr. Dart from the Central office of the unnamed corporation arrives looking for Mr. Raymond, and it becomes easily apparent that the work of the Northeast Office is so much more morally ambiguous than the Dundler Mifflin Paper Company. Adam Bock’s writing starts off strong, with the early scenes when Lorraine is complaining to Beverly about seeing her ex in a bar the night before realistically lively.  But the scenes go on and on until Mr. Raymond comes back to the office and the dark nature of the piece becomes more pronounced.  I don’t think Bock fully develops some of the intriguing themes he raises:  why do these seemingly normal people work for this company when they know exactly what its business is?  What kind of ideology binds them together?  Are they in the office by choice or by social intimidation or by a combination of both? How can they read People magazine and collect teacups and still do the work that they do? What is behind Mr. Raymond’s crisis of conscience? And I think it’s because ultimately the characters are superficially written, with a lack of clear motivations. Which is a shame because the performances of Cheryl Roy as Beverly, warm yet removed, approachable yet stern, and especially Caroline Neff, as Lorraine, an initially ditsy blonde who regularly misses her bus to work but turns out to have reserves of steely nerves, are so much more exceptionally layered than the writing.  Peter Moore as Dart and Peter Esposito as Raymond deliver shaded work as well, and Joannie Schultz’s direction is appropriately sardonic, but I wished they have more fully-formed material to work with.  The Receptionist closes on Sunday, May 19, at Steep Theatre Company, 1115 W. Berwyn Avenue.

Timon of Athens (Chicago Shakespeare Theater) – I guess if Shakespeare can have a frustratingly-written play in his canon, than I shouldn’t begrudge Adam Bock too much for The Receptionist. Most Shakespearian scholars acknowledge, however, that Timon of Athens was jointly written by Shakespeare and the satirist Thomas Middleton, which makes it even more surprising that the play feels so fragmented and, well, superficial.  Timon is a wealthy Athenian businessman/philanthropist who turns out to be heavily in debt.  When his so-called friends and hangers-on find out that he has lost all his money, they abandon him. He ends up in an island as a crotchety, slightly insane recluse, and discovers a stash of gold bullions.  He then shares the gold with his loyal estate manager Flavius and the military commander Alcibiades, before he strips off his clothes and disappears into what could only be conjectured as the ether. I’m not really sure I understand completely Timon’s role in his social circle, and why the abandonment of his friends drive him nearly insane; having not read the play, I’m not sure if this is Shakespeare and Middleton’s doing, or that of star Ian McDiarmid (usually of the Royal Shakespeare Company, most famously of the Star Wars prequels as Sen. Palpatine) and director Barbara Gaines, who “adapted” and “clarified” the play for the 21^st century (this production has Timon as the CEO of a Wall Street trading company).  And other than Timon, the other characters are pretty broadly depicted – thus no one really comes off as a menacing, dishonest, Iago-level betrayer, and Timon’s relationships and the massive effect of their loss on him seem very obtuse.

Gaines’ production doesn’t really help clarify matters.  The show is fast-paced, impressively designed in a contemporary minimalist fashion by Kevin Depinet, and uses an incidental rock music score – definitely Shakespeare for the Twitter generation.  But Timon of Athens also has some pretty dubious elements: a train-wreck of an unnecessary dance number, which comes off as Black Swan meets Orlando strip club; an abbreviated subplot involving Alcibiades (a watchable Danforth Comins who unfortunately doesn’t have a lot to do) and his banishment from Athens; and, most frustratingly, a performance from McDiarmid that Chicago critics have labeled, uhmm, “idiosyncratic” and “unexpected”.  For me, it’s an odd performance – in Act One, flirty, shallow, small emotions, an older Andy Cohen lacking the gravitas of a CEO and famous philanthropist; in Act Two, scenery-chewing divo, big emotions but more Patti LuPone as Norma Desmond than Laurence Olivier as Hamlet (the what I think should have been an powerfully emotional exchange between Timon and the philosopher Apemanthus, played in a similarly fey fashion by James Newcomb, comes off like a bitchy catfight).  And unfortunately, I can’t figure out how that transition in the character happened. Timon of Athens runs till June 10 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand on Navy Pier.

 Kin (Griffin Theatre Company) -  After seeing Griffin’s production of Bathsheba Doran’s Kin, about two New York twentysomethings who meet cute and fall in love, I’m ready to take a break from plays about two New York twentysomethings who meet cute and fall in love.  I guess I was optimistic to think that Doran, a playwright on the ascent, will say something new and fresh about a topic that has been done to death in numerous Off-Broadway plays (not to mention Katherine Heigl movies). But the situations and relationships in Kin are so stock and trite (they’re from different worlds, he is an immigrant Irish personal trainer, she’s an English grad student, both of them with volatile family histories), the play is wearying, and feels longer than The Iceman Cometh. And Griffin’s production is saddled with a perplexing set design by Scott Davis (which tries to evoke the bucolic Irish hometown of the guy and the hip, artsy New York milieu of the girl on one stage without scene changes and succeeds in neither – I mean if a treadmill is surrounded by fake grass and weeds, I don’t think you can say it is anything other than a treadmill surrounded by fake grass and weeds); listless performances from the leads (Shane Kenyon and Stacie Beth Green); and outsized performances from the supporting cast (the usually interesting Susan Monts-Bologna as Kenyon’s Irish mom, and Ann Sonneville as Green’s insecure best friend, need some dialing down).  Jess McLeod’s direction is unassuming, but I’m not sure what new insights she can draw from tired writing. Kin is at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, until June 10.

Even I, who pride myself on being open-minded to all the crazy, incongruous possibilities in theater, had to do a double-take when I first read that Lane would play Hickey to Brian Dennehy’s Larry Slade in a new Iceman production to be directed by Falls.  I thought it was the set-up for a Funny or Die webisode. Then I remembered that although Lane is a national musical theater treasure, he also cut his teeth on all those Terence McNally plays such as The Lisbon Traviata and Love! Valour! Compassion!  Still, doing McNally is about as similar to doing O’Neill as swimming a relay is to diving off a 10 meter platform. They both involve water, but the skillsets and level of mastery, not to mention degree of difficulty, are different.  So admittedly, I came with a little bit of trepidation to the Goodman.

Well, I shouldn’t have worried because this Iceman production is magnificent.  O’Neill’s play is not for everyone: it’s very lengthy, very talky, very depressing, and very insistent on the oversell of the word “pipe dream” to describe illusions and dishonesty (after the 1,345^th mention of the phrase, I seriously wanted to down a can of petrol). But Falls directs the play tightly so that the four acts go trotting by (believe me, I have seen some recent 90 minute productions in Chicago that felt like they were longer than this nearly five hour staging).  And he brings out the humor in the piece.  Falls also creates stunning stage pictures such as the opening sequence which starts in darkness and slowly turns into daylight as the characters are introduced, or the final act in which most of the characters are seated by themselves in bar tables, lit in piercing melancholy like an F.W. Murnau silent film. Natasha Katz’s lighting, a great combination of dreamy daylight and enveloping shadows, is marvelous, and Kevin Depinet’s breathtaking set design (especially in a perspective-heightened Act Three) is at that intriguing middleground between stylized and naturalism (I love the placement of the window high up on the wall in Act 4 which almost functions as a visual metaphor for the characters’ inability to escape their heartbreaking stupor).

The great achievement of this production though, for me, is the incomparable performances that Falls creates together with his ensemble.  The key to survive Iceman’s length for an audience member is to get invested in the characters, some of the most complex ones written by an American playwright. The 18 person cast, comprised mostly of Chicago-based actors, perfect down to the last expressively articulate gesture and emotion-packed inflection, will return that investment a thousandfold. The most indelible for me though include Stephen Ouimette as Harry Hope, the owner of the boarding-house/bar that the characters all live in, painfully, angrily delusional and grasping at false memories of his dead wife; the stunning, heart-stopping John Douglas Thompson as the former casino owner Joe Mott, in a performance that blows everyone out of the theater and deposits us north of Montrose avenue, showcasing the complicated existence of a black man in a racially-fraught society; and John Hoogenakker, an actor I have followed for years, here creating a meticulously-detailed characterization of former Harvard student Willie Oban, whose deep-seated insecurities prevent him from having the illustrious life of someone with his educational pedigree can have in a socially-conscious society such as New York in 1912.

Then of course there are Dennehy and Lane.  Dennehy, who played Hickey in Falls’ 1990 Goodman production that transferred to Broadway, is excellent as the cynical, unwavering former anarchist, Larry Slade.  I love how he commands the stage even if he is just sitting at the table with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face.  Slade, as the den father of the despairing drunks, is the linchpin to Hickey’s plan: if the tough Slade who seems to have no more hope in his body is inspired by Hickey, then it will be easy enough to convince the rest of the pack to make better lives for themselves.  And Lane’s Hickey sells his plan grandly: initially flirting and joking like the great salesman he is, and then turning into a tormenting, hectoring, tough-loving combination social-worker/prison warden/best friend. Lane is brilliant in these scenes – demonstrating the grace, the radiance, and the peerless comedic skills that he is famous for.  Then Act Four arrives and Hickey’s famous, 40 minute long monologue. Lane, careening from anger and self-hatred to delusional behavior rationalization to pleading with the other characters to understand and exonerate him is unforgettable.  It is a physically, vocally, emotionally strenuous monologue, and man, Lane delivers it with high stakes: raw, passionate, bombastic, showing depths of pain that is astounding when you think that this is the same guy who created the character of the life-affirming con man Max Bialystock.

After the rave reviews that this production has received, talk about a Broadway transfer has surfaced, despite the fact that Lane had said he only wants to do this production in Chicago.  And I don’t blame him – this The Iceman Cometh is an uncompromising production that Chicago audiences gave a rousing standing ovation to after an emotionally and intellectually exhausting four hours and forty minutes.  I don’t think those lining up to see Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark would do the same.

The Iceman Cometh is onstage at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St., until June 17. Tickets are scarce, so get yours now!

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against hipster theater.  Hey, more power to shows that can bring in audiences that typically may not be going to the theater.  I went to see the first iterations (with Michael Cerveris and GCB star Miriam Shor) of the mother of hipster rock musicals, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, in New York in the late-1990s.  But Hedwig, for me, had real heart and emotion and characters to root for, and more importantly a coherent narrative, amidst all the glam rock posturing and eardrum-blasting music-playing. Unfortunately I didn’t find any of those in Rise of the Numberless, well, except for the eardrum-blasting. It’s a musical-within-a-musical in which a group of The Numberless, people driven to live underground because of the US’ one-child-only policy, dramatize their plight within the confines of some subterranean lair while the government is in hot pursuit to shut the show down and arrest them and their audience.  This whole one-child policy is the brainchild of a demagogue US Senator who gets elected President after some cataclysmic event strikes America.  I’m not really sure what that event is, and why having a one-child policy should win someone the Presidency over, say, trying to rebuild the financial markets or urban re-development.  What’s the appeal of this policy to the voting public?  It’s never made clear. And that’s one of my complaints about the script, by Patriac Coakley, Andrew Hobgood, and Evan Linder – it starts on big themes (rise of authoritarianism, extreme conservatism), and never fully develops them because the show just hurtles on to the next hip-glam number. Well, of course, it turns out that the President has a second son, and against the First Lady’s wishes, he is abandoned and, expectedly, becomes part of The Numberless.  Then there’s the whole business of the First Lady and the First Son (Joshua) all getting reconciled with the banished Son (Jacob) underground through various situations, but again, there is no emotional payoff to the scenes:  the relationships are not fully developed, the characters’ motivations are hazy (how did the First Lady turn into a boozehound underground?), and there is this rush through the book scenes to get to the next throbbing and shrieking musical number (music by Chris Gingrich and Julie B. Nichols, lyrics by Gingrich and Hobgood). It’s not my kind of music, admittedly, but to be frank, the songs are not memorable at all.

Unmemorable songs in a musical can still make an impact on the audience though (hello, Nine) through exceptional staging and dynamic performances.  Hobgood is a good director, and I’ve admired his previous work but the musical numbers in Rise of the Numberless come off contrived, as if they are faithfully adhering to step-by-step instructions from the “How to Put on a Glam Rock Musical” handbook.  There’s a lot of jumping and running and raising fists and collapsing on the floor, but these don’t adequately communicate much of the anger, or violence, or menace, or danger that the show’s book implies.  You may not need these qualities in musical numbers when you’re putting on a rock concert at the Empty Bottle or The Hideout, but if these numbers are in a theatrical piece that aims to engage an audience into a world they can suspend disbelief in then they’re kinda important.  And maybe part of the problem is that Hobgood’s cast, comprised of many talented musical theater actors who have dazzled in many, many shows I’ve seen them at in the city, doesn’t come off as the revolutionaries with borderline-deranged chutzpah that The Numberless are supposed to be – despite the intricate costuming and make-up, the cast comes off for the most part inherently clean-cut, good-natured, luminously-talented actors who will feel more at home in Smash then, say, Velvet Goldmine.  There are exceptions:  Ryan Lanning, by sheer force of boundless talent and charisma, powers through his numbers, and Michael Harnichar delivers a gritty, on-the-edge riveting performance of one of the later songs (is it “Idiot Girl”?) in the textured manner I expected the rest of the show’s performances to have.

Hobgood, The New Colony, and Bailiwick Chicago end The Rise of the Numberless in one of the most brazen stagings I’ve seen recently. But isn’t there something wrong with the picture if the ending of the show is the most memorable part for me as an audience member?

Rise of the Numberless is at Collaboraction Studio 300, Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee, until May 26.

For those who have lived on a steady diet of reality TV and Bravo and who may not have seen the HBO film, Part I: Millennium Approaches introduces Kushner’s main characters, among them the fictional Prior Walter, a gay man diagnosed with AIDS and abandoned by his lover, Louis, in mid-1980s New York City; the real-life Roy Cohn, the much-feared and deeply-closeted Manhattan prosecutor who is in denial of his own AIDS diagnosis; and the fictional Joe Pitt, Roy’s protégée, an also-closeted Mormon lawyer, whose wife Harper is unhappily manic-depressive and happily medication-addicted. Oh, plus there’s the titular Angel who visits Prior with a literal bang at the end of the play.  Part II: Perestroika untangles, re-tangles, somewhat resolves, somewhat upends all the threads that Part I unveils.  Because of the nature of the writing, Part II: Perestroika is the more gut-wrenchingly dramatic of the two.  But no blog post can fairly and accurately recount Kushner’s writing: funny, intelligent, insightful, angry at some times, optimistic at others.  And it is unsurpassable, mythic, large-canvass writing which Newell beautifully highlights by staging the scenes seamlessly and fluidly, almost cinematically, not just on all parts and corners of the minimalist stage, but all around the audience as well.  Newell’s direction is confident and unfussy, which to this audience member is exactly what an already complexly-layered, metaphor-filled, stylistically-abundant play needs.  Unlike the Trib’s main gripe (in what can only be described as the Yelp version of theater reviews, in its, uhmm, substance), I don’t think Newell needs to stage the arrival of the Angel as if a tsunami has struck Hyde Park. Chris, it is fine as it is.

What I expected the Trib  and the other middling reviews this production received to have pointed out is how Kushner’s writing is still so potent for us today, when many people, gay and straight, have begun to engage in unprotected sex with a notion that this is ok; or how the character of Joe Pitt seems so apt in embodying the hypocrisy of the conservative tea-party-ers and their ilk who are currently irreparably damaging the social fabric of American society;  or how the contrast between Roy Cohn’s and Prior Walter’s healthcare situations is so resonant in the distressingly have and have-not divisions of our own current healthcare environment. No, the Reader for example, spent more time reporting on its intermission poll of how much of a “period piece” this whole play is. Really?  Well, my dear readers, hopefully after reading this post, you will go out and run to see this important and still-resonant production and decide for yourselves.

Run to Hyde Park to particularly see some of the best acting onstage in Chicago right now. Larry Yando is spectacular as Roy Cohn, erasing any memories of Al Pacino’s Emmy-winning performance: frightening and bombastic, acerbically wily yet melancholy and impressively defiant to the end.  It is a gargantuan performance that is truly one of the most impressive I’ve seen in recent Chicago theater (his first scene with the telephone is a marvel of verbal dexterity and focus). Rob Lindley’s Prior Walter is beautifully, thoughtfully layered – sad, frightened, perplexed by his Angel visions, he is also a Prior with an energetic will to hang on and prevail. Hollis Resnik’s multiple characters (a Rabbi, Ethel Rosenberg, Joe’s mother Hannah, the oldest living Bolshevik) are infused with the actor’s innate warmth and intelligence, and well-honed subtlety.  Resnik has a lot of big moments in the two plays, but she is most effective, I think, in her quiet final scene in Part I:  Millennium Approaches, when, through inflection and intentional body movement as she sells her house in Utah, she communicates Hannah’s ambivalence at confronting Joe’s confession about his sexual orientation, and her unacknowledged confusion with her own.  Heidi Kettenring as Harper, Eddie Bennett as Louis, Mary Beth Fisher as a very earth-bound and funny Angel and various characters, and Michael Pogue as Belize, Cohn’s nurse and Prior’s best friend, all give finely-crafted characterizations (although Pogue seems a little overwhelmed in Part I, but comes into his own in Part II).  But their roles are mammoth, attention-grabbing roles with universe-exploding scenes.  So, I think ultimately, for me, the MVP in this production is the graceful Geoff Packard whose Joe Pitt has the most restrained and most internalized characterization.  Packard is excellent and manages to impressively become a quiet anchor amidst all of Kushner’s fiery speeches, grand ambitions, and widescreen shots. Packard’s scenes with Bennett’s Louis and Kettenring’s Harper, meticulously forlorn, are the scenes that, for me, demonstrate without a doubt, Kushner’s contention that Angels in America, despite its epic reputation, is a “series of 71 intimate scenes.” It is an incredibly detailed performance (you can see Packard jingle the keys in his trouser pocket in a rhythm that reflects Pitt’s emotional state in the hospital visit scene with Cohn).

It’s not a perfect play or production.  Part I: Millennium Approaches drags in some stretches of its three hour length.  The heaven scenes in Part II: Perestroika come off awkwardly staged. Keith Parham’s overall lighting design is terrific, seamlessly blending natural and stylized, but the lighting effects during the Angel’s arrival are jarring. I’m not a big fan of the hug-it-out ending which comes off as a whimper after the firecracker grandiosity of the past seven hours. But it is a play that still demands to be seen, not just by gay people, not just by people who love theater, but also by people who are genuinely concerned with today’s world.

Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is essential viewing. The Court production is a significant revival, in my opinion. Part I: Millennium Approaches and Part II: Perestroika run in repertory until June 3 at the Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Avenue.  Check the Court website for the days when you catch both parts, which should be an exhilarating, though time-intensive, experience!

Theater began from religious ceremony (the Greek religious festivals) and some of the best examples of theatricality in the world are religious in nature (the Christian passion play, for instance).  So Teatr Zar’s mission, which is as much anthropological and documentary as it is performance, is pretty impressive.  It is a theater and performance group based out of the Grotowski Institute, the research and performing organization in Wroclaw, Poland named after the titan of experimental theater, Jerzy Grotowski, who revolutionalized performing arts with his non-linear storytelling methods and distinctive use of environmental staging.  The group is particularly focused on creating ensemble theater work using religious songs and rites handed down as oral tradition among ethnic groups in Georgia, Bulgaria, Greece, Sardinia, most them belonging to the Eastern Orthodox faith (“zar” is the term for the funeral songs of the Svaneti tribe in Georgia).  If I haven’t lost you after that sentence, then you should indeed buy your ticket now!

But some things to know before you do buy that ticket: the episodes are non-linear in nature, so there’s hardly any narrative.  The minimal text is spoken sometimes in English, sometimes in Polish and other Eastern European languages, without translation.  The works demand concentration, and in the first episode, “The Overture”, stillness and patience, qualities that theatergoers used to The Phantom of the Opera may not be used to. Also, for this particular theatergoer, ultimately the appreciation for the work is impressionistic and experiential, versus complete understanding.  And if these are all fine with you – and for smart, sophisticated theater audiences, they should be – then, you’re in for quite an experience.

The first episode of the triptych, “The Overture” tells, loosely, the story of Lazarus’ resurrection from the eyes of his sisters Martha and Mary, and from the testimony of Mary Magdalene, using ancient ecclesiastical hymns and funeral songs from Georgia, Bulgaria, and Greece.  The stage pictures, usually lit very dimly, or with a single spotlight, are truly evocative, and haunting and spine-tingling as they are accompanied by harmonious singing and chanting.  The second episode, “Ceasarian Section.  Essays on Suicide”, is probably for me the most enthralling, and the most different in tone from the episodes bookending it.  Although it uses ancient Corsican songs, they’re mixed in with a score from French composer Eric Satie, astoundingly performed using a variety of musical instruments including a saw, so the effect is contemporary yet haunting.  This episode is also fierce, raging, frenzied, which are spot-on depictions of desperation and suicidal thoughts.  The last episode of the triptych, “Anhelli. The Calling”, uses Byzantine and Sardinian hymns to again, loosely, tell the story of the Polish poet Juliusz Slowacki’s trip from Naples to the Holy Land. His poetry supposedly talks about human beings preparing themselves to be possessed by angels, but I’m not sure how the vigorous dancing and stunning stage imagery using a billowing sail, doorframes, and the male cast members lying in dirt graves, communicate that.  This episode is pretty opaque, but still breathtaking.

The ensemble is so impressive and awe-inspiring, both in their multi-faceted talents (dancing, singing, chanting, acrobatics, instrument-playing) as well as in their focused, no-holds-barred dedication to their performances  (in “Ceasarian Section”, the actors danced and rolled around a line of broken glass onstage, and I truly wanted to cry “watch out” several times!). The Gospels of Childhood Triptych is truly unique, uncompromising, world-class theater, and last night at the MCA was one of those nights that I felt really grateful and fortunate to be actively participating in Chicago’s vibrant cultural life.  Without a doubt, the MCA Stage is so integral and irreplaceable in ensuring this vibrancy never falters.

Teatr Zar’s The Gospels of Childhood Triptych is on the MCA Stage,  202 E. Chicago Avenue, until Sunday, April 1.  Tonight and Saturday night’s performances are sold out! Go on Sunday or you’ll be kicking yourself for missing one of the theatrical events of the year!

When I first opened my copy of the first issue of The Chicagoan, my breath was literally taken away.  It is printed on high-quality, glossy stock paper, and generously peppered with vividly-colored, exhilaratingly-laid out photographs and illustrations.  The breadth and depth, and the uncompromisingly high quality of the pieces selected by Editor-in-chief JC Grabel and his editorial team are just stupendous.  There’s the magazine’s centerpiece: a riveting oral history, culled by Playboy executive editor Josh Schollmeyer from their closest colleagues, of the complicated, contentious yet begrudgingly affectionate relationship of two of the greatest film critics to have come out of Chicago, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel (cleverly entitled “Enemies: A Love Story” which is also the title of the 1989 film from Paul Mazursky, based on the Isaac Bashevis Singer short story).  There’s the stunning collection of photos from the website NoPromiseofSafety.com, which chronicles the adventures of a group of anonymous, rogue skyscraper climbers, and depicts Chicago as a ruggedly-dazzling urban metropolis.  There’s Ling Ma’s endearingly honest profile of jazz musician and Pitchfork Music Festival director Mike Reed.  There’s playwright and author Joe Meno’s enthrallingly quirky “The Secret Society of Alphonse F!”, sort of like a (500) Days of Summer, with less meet-cuteness and more ruthlessly truthful human observations. The writing is always engaging but never flowery, high-falutin, or insincere (some of the other articles focus on the city’s emerging coffee connoisseurs, architect Jean Gang and her ambitious plan for reinventing Northerly Island, and chef Tara Lane’s transformation from fine-dining pastry chef to Hull House food preservationist).  But what I love about The Chicagoan, in addition to its unabashed celebration of the cultural genius of Chicago, is that the editorial viewpoint and the exceptional writing truly captures the essence of the city: artistic and innovative, yet unpretentious, down-to-earth, plainspoken, confident.  I cannot wait for the second issue! Unfortunately, I believe the first issue is now sold-out. (The Chicagoan will be published bi-annually but digital content will be available year-round on its website, www.thechicagoanmedia.org,  and corresponding smart phone and tablet apps).

Anyone who has a half-way decent camera and who has enough mechanical aptitude to  point and shoot at a restaurant plate seem to be calling themselves food bloggers nowadays.  In my opinion, if there is one overused and quite abused term, it’s “food blog”, which often turns out to be a collection of food pictures and two sentence paragraphs that contain the words “amazing” and “delish”.  The new site, Roads & Kingdoms (www.roadsandkingdoms.com), with its exciting use of multi-media platforms, its global scope, and its erudite, but clear-eyed perspectives on how politics, society, and cross-cultures inform cuisine, is as much a food blog as Meryl Streep is an actress or Ferran Adria is a cook.  Seriously, there is no comparison.  The site is run by Nathan Thornburgh, who is a contributing writer at Time, and Matt Goulding, the former food editor of Men’s Health.  These guys, with their extensive travel experience, wide-ranging interests, and their affable curiosity and pointed insights on world issues, cultural norms, and culinary practices are the guys you’d want to have at  every meal (actually, they’re guys you’d like to marry, except that are both already attached, drats!). They write beautifully, confidently, and smartly –like hotter, less snarkier, more brazen Tony Bourdains.  I spent an entire afternoon just ravenously imbibing the terrific content on Roads & Kingdoms: from concise yet idiosyncratic videos on their Burma trip, which included Nathan’s bout with dysentery after eating bad crab, and a primer on street food eating featuring Matt and Naomi Duguid (who also wrote a great piece on Chiang Mai street food in the latest issue of Lucky Peach), to astounding photo collections of Hong Kong and Cuba’s campo or countryside, to perfect capsule posts on specific dishes, from the avant-garde take on beef tartare at Michelin-starred El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain, to the simple yet brilliant preparation of coconut crab at a seaside shack in Kep, Cambodia. I love the sense of specific place that Thornburgh and Goulding’s writing evoke; I love the experiences they portray (check out this post on Georgian khachapuri, a type of pastry, which is part travelogue, part memoir, part food writing, part history lesson); I love the way they talk to their readers: always smart, approachable, assured, sometimes self-deprecating, and never condescending despite their qualifications. Great job, gentlemen!

No blog post or theater review can prepare you for the experience of Bieito’s Camino Real.  And I will leave it to Chicago’s myriad theater critics, bloggers, and other arts and culture pundits to dissect, debate, dismiss Bieito’s interpretation and reconception of Williams’ writing. From the Ledge has always been about the impact of a theatrical production on a paying, artistically savvy, informed audience member’s point of view – and boy, this audience member will gladly fork over his hard-earned buckaroos to see over and over again theater that is this grand and original in vision and ambition.  Bieito and his brave cast and imaginative designers have created a haunted, sensual world of failed dreamers, aging hedonists, repressed queens, loathsome authority figures, and intriguing misfits all trapped in a place called Camino Real which seems to be too grotesque to be real, yet too palpably sad and heartbreaking to be a figment of the imagination.

The play’s visuals are stunningly cinematic – frequent Bieito collaborator Rebecca Ringst’s larger-than-life set pieces (a dizzying, gasp-inducing collection of neon signs, two muscular lines evoking either an airplane runaway or a deserted highway) and James F. Ingalls’ impressive lighting design, alternatively moody and harsh, bring into vivid life a border town world that recalls both the realism of Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu’s Babel and the surreal dreamscape of the best of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  The score, which marvelously combines original compositions of Williams’ work set to music from co-adapter Marc Rossich and Richard Woodbury, Spanish ballads, and even the rock and roll classic “I Put a Spell On You” (sung with desperate fervor by Tony nominee Andre  De Shields), gives the play a mellifluous melancholy, so appropriate for a show about people at the end of their rope, and possibly, the end of their days, with nowhere to go.

And Bieito coaxes some hypnotic, masterful, no-holds-barred performances from his largely Chicago-based cast. De Shields is riveting as the lonely, worn-out Baron de Charlus, the center of one of Bieito’s most harrowing stage pictures. The incomparable Barbara Robertson leaves you slack-jawed with astonishment as the aging, grasping prostitute Rosita, pathetic yet humane, looking like Steve Tyler in drag but emanating boatloads of sadness.  Marilyn Dodds Frank is heartbreaking as a bone-tired, world-weary Marguerite Gautier, humiliated when she is unable to board the Fugitivo helicopter to escape from Camino Real.  Matt DeCaro is both menacingly loathsome and hilariously nonchalant as the prissy hotel manager Gutman.  The always-terrific Carolyn Hoerdemann is mesmerizingly bawdy and manipulative as The Gypsy, whose alleged prophesying talents make her one of Camino Real’s power-brokers.  I can go on and on with each and every member of the superb 13 person cast, who have created marvelously indelible characters that all have a sense of the garish and broken-down, but are also breathtakingly ethereal at the same time, the qualities of Bieito’s dream-nightmare world.

Do I understand everything in this production? No. And I think the usual protagonist Kilroy, despite Antwayn Hopper’s passionate performance, is less interesting in this production than the night gallery of ghoulish soulfullness surrounding him.  Do I think it represents Williams’ writing appropriately and respectfully?  I think so, since Bieito’s production has so much of the beautiful yet searing, achy, poetic quality of Williams’ best naturalistic works, from A Streetcar Named Desire to The Glass Menagerie to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, three of my favorite plays of all time that I have seen and read over and over again (and during the audience talkback at the performance I attended, several of us commented on the echoes of Williams’ oeuvre that we picked up in the production).  Do I think Camino Real is for everyone? Definitely not.  If you cried at The King’s Speech and join tour groups when you travel abroad, then you should probably stay away.  But if you love originality and challenge at the theater, and you thought Inception should have won over The King’s Speech, and you seek out exploration and unique experiences when you travel to other countries, than you should rush out to the Goodman and get your ticket.  Come to think of it, Bieito’s Camino Real is like a bolder Inception for the smart, savvy theatergoer.

Do you think Chicago is a global arts and culture capital or just a Midwestern city slightly larger than Minneapolis-St. Paul? If you think the former, than I am confident you already have your ticket to Camino Real. If not, rush out to get it! Bieito’s singular vision will be on view at the Goodman, 170 N. Dearborn St., until April 8. And read this New York Times article before you go.

A Catered Affair is about a lower-middle-class family in the Bronx who, having just lost their son in the Korean War, finds out that their daughter is planning to get married through a quickly-arranged City Hall wedding.  Aggie, the mother, for various reasons – whether to do the right thing for Janey, their only surviving child, or whether to make up for the fact that she didn’t get a proper wedding to Tom since she was several months pregnant when they got married, or whether preparing for the “catered affair” takes her mind off the pain of losing and burying a child – vehemently insists on throwing an elaborate wedding. This stubbornness to have a wedding at all costs leads to all sorts of emotional conflicts between Aggie, Tom, Janey, and Aggie’s “bachelor” brother, Uncle Winston, who lives with the family.  It’s a pretty mundane set-up, but Bucchino’s songs, beautifully haunting, reeking with palpable sadness, skillfully crafted with lyrics that pointedly and oftentimes painfully depict family relationships of all kinds, elevates the material.  Bucchino writes the songs in the contemporary recitative manner which can be off-putting to audiences who like their musicals with big brass, schmaltzy strings, and repetitive choruses. I haven’t seen the movie but I think Fierstein’s book, although it honorably attempts to say something resonant about the 1950s period (the preoccupation with social standing and material goods, the semi-closeted aspects of the obviously gay character Winston are things we can still relate to today), still comes off a little quaint and old-fashioned, demonstrating its origins as a, well, 1950s teleplay.

The show, I think, succeeds on the strength of its performances, and boy, does Porchlight’s production have a supernova in its middle.  Rebecca Finnegan, one of my favorite Chicago actors, and who, admittedly, I have a gay-boy-crush on, plays Aggie, a role the great Bette Davis said was one of those she was proudest of in her career, with an impressive, indelible mix of smoldering infuriation, resignation, and frustration at a life that could have been lived better or more fully.  Finnegan is one of those rare actors who are as great in the singing scenes as they are in the dramatic scenes. And when she sings, always marvelously and heartfully, she sings not because she’s a musical theater performer basking in the spotlight, but because the song emanates naturally from the emotions of her character. Frankly, I teared up during her performance of “Our Only Daughter” when she explains her reasons for insisting on the wedding.  Finnegan is superbly matched by Craig Spidle as Tom, who hardly speaks, but through his gestures, silent responses, posture, shuffling walk, communicates eloquently the exhaustion of years of trying to be a good provider to a wife who doesn’t truly appreciate him. And when he sings Tom’s eleven o’clock number, “I Stayed”, in response to Aggie’s claim that she has been in a loveless marriage all these years, it’s powerfully gut-wrenching.

The rest of the cast is terrific, with an impressively restrained performance from Jerry O’Boyle as Winston, a character that could have been played as a stereotypical 50s Tennessee Williams-like gay. I like Nick Bowling’s unfussy, naturalistic direction, but I find it perplexing that some of the scenes are played on a catwalk which actually for me gives a distancing, artificial element to what is essentially a naturalistic play. A Catered Affair proves that you don’t need all that razzle-dazzle to have a great time at a musical.  Just don’t call it “fun”.

A Catered Affair is at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont, until April 1.

The play is set in a police station in Southern Missouri, where Carlton, a mid-level State department employee who claims he has the list of American citizens that are going to be arrested by the US government, has been thrown into the holding cell while awaiting the arrival of Department of Homeland Security agents sent to interrogate him.  But there’s another unlikely occupant of the holding cell, which is unfortunate for Carlton, but terrific for us, the audience.  Tanya, a foul-mouthed, tough-talking, not-too-bright, broad’s broad has turned herself in for driving under the influence the previous night, and she becomes the unwilling Carlton’s accomplice to safeguard the list and get it out to the hands of the media for publication. Tanya is one of the most memorable characters I’ve seen in a new play recently – she’s tough, salt-of-the-earth, self-deprecating, realistic, attention-grabbing, with a vocabulary that seems to know more profanity than Chris Brown’s Twitter account.   And in Kate Buddeke’s earth-shaking howl of a magnificent performance, both hilarious and empathetic, the play has its marvelous heart.  What I love about Buddeke is that she transcends the camp-and-mug deliciousness of the character, but actually makes you believe that Tanya, despite being offered a sum of money to smuggle the list out of the police station, also wants to do, in her mind, the right thing.  And the ending despite its outrageousness, feels so ambivalently right.

But the gaps in the writing that were in the developmental production are still in this revised version.  How did Carlton get the list? Why is he in Southern Missouri instead of say Washington DC, or some other big city? What is the relevance of this particular setting, other than to set up the contrivance that a less-educated person like Tanya becomes the unlikely accomplice?  Are there themes, then, around class differences that have not been fully explored?  Why does Shonda, the police station’s Administrative Officer, just up and leave in the second act, despite playing a substantial role in the first act, and seeming to be the type of person who would be on the list according to Carlton?  And maybe Wells meant The North Plan to be more of a parody, but until the final scenes, there doesn’t seem to be a palpable sense of menace and fear despite the backdrop of a US under siege, qualities that were more integrated in his earlier play, Men of Tortuga.

But there is a lot to like in this Theater Wit production.  The cast is excellent, matching Buddeke’s game, with special props to the always-exceptional Kevin Stark as Carlton, winning even while hysterical, and Brian King, who appeared in the First Look production, as the calmer one of the Homeland Security agents, subtly funny in his preoccupation with his place in the power pyramid.  Jack Magaw’s terrific, flexible set, which undergoes a significant change during intermission, is impressive in its detail and atmosphere.

The North Plan is at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, until April 1.

In my previous blog post, I wrote about The Inconvenience’s Hit the Wall.  The other noteworthy new work I saw in the early weeks of 2012 was American Theater Company’s world premiere of Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced, which began in late January but which has mercifully been extended into early March. Disgraced is a little bit more polished, somewhat more thoughtfully structured, and comes off more re-written (which is a good thing to say about a play in this case) than Hit the Wall, but it isn’t any less powerful, and arguably, is probably more topical and resonant.  The central character is a first-generation Pakistani-American, Amir (an extraordinary Usman Ally), who has thoroughly embraced the American Dream: the fast-track in his corporate law firm, an interior-decorated Manhattan apartment, a non-Pakistani artist-wife (a good Lee Stark in an underwritten role), a worldview that’s skeptical, challenging, and to a certain extent, shunning of his Muslim background and upbringing.  It’s a truly provocative piece of theater- Akhtar palpably and sometimes brutally tackles large-scale themes around cultural identity and assimilation. 

Akhtar also doesn’t shy away from having the audience confront, maybe a little painfully, its perspectives on topics such as whether there is such as thing as a more “desirable” minority (Amir’s chief rival for Partner in his law firm is his friend, an African-American lawyer played by the always-terrific Alana Arenas, who lifted herself out of poverty).  Or the inherent prejudices against each other in both sides of the Jewish-Islam debate, which deters finding a middleground solution (as realized in a searingly acute scene when Amir argues with his friend’s husband, who is Jewish, played with fervor by Benim Foster).  It’s pretty impressive writing.  Sometimes though, Akhtar’s writing transitions from being impressive to, in my view, trying to impress, with some of the scenes (especially the dinner table one around the violent content of the Quran) coming off as too much of a staged he-said, she-said discourse, sort of like what you’d see in a Presidential candidate primary debate, or a graduate seminar in cultural anthropology at Harvard.  The writing can veer into the too structured and argumentative, versus coming out, smoothly, intrinsically, from the motivations and points-of-view of the characters. I also feel that Stark’s bleeding-heart liberal wife, Emily, is a little too one-dimensional for me (and is a little creepy and fetishizing about Islamic culture), and suffers from the more full-blooded characterizations (including Amir’s nephew Hussein, torn between assimilation and authenticity to his roots, played with thoughtfulness by Behzad Dabu).

But these are little nitpicks for what is, overall, one of the best scripts I’ve seen in the past several months.  Director Kimberly Senior’s fast-paced direction is excellent, but the show is Usman Ally’s all the way.  I’ve been such a big admirer of Ally (and especially of his performance in Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity), and he is ferocious and extremely warm-blooded as Amir, without losing the nuanced notes (I love the way he interacts with Hussein, big-brother tender yet standoffish, not only because his nephew is a reminder of the culture he has successfully stored away, but also because he represents the courage in self and identity that he cannot bring himself to evoke).  Ally is riveting, and delivers the best performance of Chicago theater 2012 so far.

See Disgraced at American Theater Company,  1909 W. Byron St., until March 11.