SR Digest: review roundup
January 21, 2019—Issue #6
Welcome to the free biweekly edition of Storefront Rebellion! This free digest brings Chicago theater news and reviews from me, Kris Vire, right to your inbox. I definitely want to hear your feedback: Reply to this email, or if you’re reading this on the web, hit me at kris@krisvire.com or find me on Twitter @krisvire.
Adia Alli, left, and Kearsten Keller in Cardboard Piano at TimeLine Theatre Company. Photograph: Lara Goetsch
New year, new reviews
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, friends. Did you hear that racism is a thing of the past now? A white guy said it, so it must be true.
Since it’s a holiday, let’s just do a roundup of 2019’s first reviews. Paying subscribers have received three new reviews from me since the last free digest.
Interrobang Theatre Company mounted an impressive Chicago premiere of Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s I Call My Brothers, led by Salar Ardebili.
Salar Ardebili in I Call My Brothers. Photograph: Emily Schwartz
Ardebili’s all-out performance, as athletic as it is empathetic, so thoroughly impresses that you’ll want to keep an eye on this actor. His high-voltage presence is the inverse of set designer Eleanor Kahn’s striking backdrop: an array of empty headscarves shaped, it would appear, out of aluminum foil. The standard Nordic Stockholmer, these negative spaces suggest, can’t see anything past the kaffiyeh or hijab. Ardebili’s Amor dares us not to see the damage that does to the human being behind it.
Exit 63 Theatre launched its first full season with a site-specific production of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Dark Matters.
Michael Carey, Ann Sonneville and Nick Shank in Dark Matters at Exit 63 Theatre. Photograph: Shea Petersen
Nora Lise Ulrey’s staging makes intelligent low-budget use of its surroundings, with an effective lighting design by David Goodman-Edberg that employs ominously flickering practical lamps.… Dark Matters feels a little more like a treatment than a fully fleshed-out play, but Ulrey’s production marks Exit 63 as a young company to watch.
At About Face Theatre, Keira Fromm helms a handsome, impeccably acted Chicago premiere of Peter Parnell’s gay-parenting dramedy Dada Woof Papa Hot.
Bruch Reed and Benjamin Sprunger in Dada Woof Papa Hot. Photograph: Michael Brosilow
Parnell finds his most interesting terrain at the intersections. Marriage and children are relatively new territories for gay people in the U.S., grounds that many of us grew up believing were off-limits to us—or were options only available by repressing your true self and remaining in the closet. Fromm’s sleek, confident staging, played against an ingenious puzzle-box set by William Boles, tees up those questions handsomely for an impeccable cast.
And over at the Sun-Times, I reviewed TimeLine Theatre’s production of Hansol Jung’s Cardboard Piano. I found the first act frustrating, but it led to a big emotional payoff in Act II. Read the whole thing here.
Elsewhere, I have a tiny interview with Sydney Charles, who plays the title role in Nina Simone: Four Women at Northlight Theatre, in the January issue of Chicago magazine. The online version of the interview went up last week; read it here. Four Women opens in previews this Thursday.
Newcity’s Players 2019: The Fifty People Who Really Perform for Chicago
I failed to mention it in the last digest, but Newcity released its annual “Players 50” list of Chicago theater influencers on January 2, and I was honored to have a spot on it.
I got the email saying I’d been chosen on Thanksgiving Day, as I was hosting dinner for friends. I had just announced the launch of this newsletter three days earlier, and after a rocky 2018 in which I’d had moments of wondering if my time covering theater in Chicago might be at an end, I was thankful indeed for the signal that I was doing something that people wanted to get behind.
To be included, as a critic and journalist, among all the incredible artmakers and art enablers on the list—in an industry where artists and critics are too often assumed to be at odds—it really is so gratifying to be heading into 2019 with so many folks excited about Storefront Rebellion and other new avenues for criticism and advocacy. Thank you for being among them.
What to see this week
La Ruta at Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Photograph: Michael Brosilow
It’s your last chance to see the world premiere of Isaac Gomez’s La Ruta, which closes January 27 at Steppenwolf. I was at Steppenwolf on Friday morning working on a future story, and ran into Isaac at Front Bar. I got to hear a little from him and Steppenwolf staff about the intense reactions to La Ruta, which is about the ongoing kidnappings and murders of Mexican women in Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from Isaac’s hometown of El Paso. Apparently it’s been bringing in record numbers of first-time audience members, many of them Latinx, and inspiring vigorous and well-attended post-show talkbacks. Paid subscribers can read my full review here. Get there if you can.
Closing soon
Dark Matters at Exit 63 Theatre, January 27
St. Nicholas at Goodman Theatre, January 27
I Call My Brothers at Interrobang Theatre Company, February 2
Opening soon
Us/Them at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, January 22–February 3
Red Rex at Steep Theatre, January 24–March 2
Nina Simone: Four Women at Northlight Theatre, January 24–March 2
In the Blood at Red Tape Theatre, January 25–February 23
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder at Porchlight Music Theatre, January 25–March 10
A Doll’s House, Part 2 at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, January 31–March 17
Fulfillment Center at A Red Orchid Theatre, January 31–March 24
Girl in the Red Corner at Broken Nose Theatre, February 1–March 2
Pipeline at Victory Gardens Theater, February 1–March 3
Thanks for reading! This is the free biweekly edition of Storefront Rebellion, a newsletter about Chicago theater by Kris Vire. You can subscribe for $6 a month or $60 a year to receive exclusive show reviews and features in your inbox.
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