Hannah Antman
Age: 23
Pronouns: she/her
Hometown: Wilmette, Illinois
What lenses or identities make your perspective as a writer unique?: I’m a virgo, a queer woman, a jew, an artist, and a young person.
What was your favorite live performance this year and why?: I had the absolute joy of seeing The Fly Honey Show for the first time this year. The Fly Honey Show is an inclusive, queer, body-positive burlesque show that has performed annually in Chicago for the past ten years. Through an atmosphere of support and love that is absolutely palpable, the amazing performers that make up The Fly Honeys make you feel like a part of a special club, where the only pre-requisite is being yourself.
What, is the purpose of arts criticism?: I believe that arts criticism should be about engaging with the work, as a means of collective examination. Art (and especially theatre, in its immediacy and impermanence,) demands a dialogue between the creators and the consumers. A critic has the power to spark that conversation. At its best, arts criticism is a powerful tool for inspiration: inspiring others to engage with art and start their own conversations. And on a larger scale, it can bring together the larger artistic community and help to ask the big questions of the moment — what do we all have in common? What makes us different? What are we moving from? What are we working towards? Criticism, like the art it responds to, is critical not only of the art itself but of the society in which the art exists. As such, criticism has the ability to shape and confront society in ways as profoundly impactful as art itself.
Reviews (Most Recent First)
Hoodoo Love
12.17.19
In Raven Theatre’s Hoodoo Love by Katori Hall, the magic lies inside. When young heroine Toulou initially expresses that she doesn’t believe in the hoodoo proposed by neighbor and mentor Candylady, she fires back: “It believe in you”. Indeed, it’s this steadfast belief and spirited hope that carries Toulou through her journey, as the men in her life turn from disappointing to depraved. In this richly painted drama, with evocative direction by Wardell Julius Clark, it’s the women that bring the magic to Hoodoo Love, and make the long journey worthwhile.
Set in a depression-era Memphis still reeling from the effects of slavery, the set’s rolling hills and rising sun, perfectly crafted by scenic designer Sydney Lynne Thomas and lighting designer Simean Carpenter, arouse not only a strong sense of time and place, but a sense of movement — something always stirring. The play opens and closes with the same refrain — Toulou (Martasia Jones) sings of riding the train out of Tennessee. Throughout the play, we learn why she longs to leave: she can’t make anybody stay. Her romance with a traveling Blues singer, Ace of Spades (Matthew James Elan) is thwarted by his wandering eye, so Toulou enlists Candylady (a masterful Shariba Rivers) to cast a spell that will make him stay with her. And while the magic works, it comes at a cost, further complicated by the presence of Toulou’s brother Jib (Christopher Wayland Jones), an aspiring evangelical who we come to learn is not at all holy.
Toulou’s inner journey is more compelling than the male-centric plot she traverses: throughout the music-infused play, she discovers her own ambitions to be a blues singer, and discovers her power and agency as she tries desperately to change her situation. Accordingly, the most compelling moments of Hoodoo Love are those that center Toulou, with Martasia Jones’ impressively commanding performance. However, long stretches of the drama focus on Ace of Spades and Jib, their relationship to each other, and the unsurprising and dramatically uninspired ways in which they fail and falter. Though both male actors were excellent, in these moments there was a lack of tension (specifically in two long sequences of card playing), that halted the dramatic momentum.
When Candylady gets together with Toulou to spin some spells, the play soars. The relationship between the two of them is at times hilarious and often heartbreaking, but always leaves you wanting more. Director Clark has crafted a movement sequence to convey their hoodoo magic that is visually electrifying and emotionally arresting.
Additionally, as a play with several prolonged and intense moments of sexual intimacy, it was both a relief and a necessity to see the wonderful work of intimacy and violence director Rachel Flesher. Too often, plays go without this necessary work, which can leave both the artists and the audience feeling unsafe, and the simple knowledge that intimacy choreography is in place allows everybody involved to fully enter the world of the play. The world of Hoodoo Love felt fully captured, music and magic and all.
Multimedia: Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner with David Chang
11.29.2019
In Netflix’s newest food series Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner, James Beard and award-winning chef David Chang bring us back for an extra helping of cultural and culinary exploration. Last year, Chang’s inaugural food and travel series Ugly Delicious hit our Netflix queues, and we collectively lost our minds — and found our appetites. The show focuses on a different food in each episode, traveling around the world and talking to food experts along the way while exploring the history and cultural context of tacos, pizza, fried rice. Yum. Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner, is a four episode joyride, this time focusing on Chang’s celebrity friends and the cities they love to eat in. Though Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner often holds more fluff than fat, it serves as a great companion to Ugly Delicious, and is a flavorful look into people and the places that feed them.
As is apparent from the first few minutes of each episode of Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner, complete with sketch comedy and a gleefully animated title sequence, Chang is a really fun, really cool guy — thus, the celebrity friends featured in each episode are accordingly fun and cool. The first episode takes Chang to Vancouver, the hometown of Seth Rogen. We then follow Chang and Chrissy Teigen on a trip to Marrakesh, Lena Waithe on a Los Angeles food crawl, and Kate McKinnon on a vacation in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Watching this show is like hanging out with your favorite celebrity on their day off – and who wouldn’t want to get stoned and eat jelly donuts with Seth Rogen?
Where Ugly Delicious is about the cultural exchange that food inspires, Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner is more focused on the exchange of conversation between Chang and his guests. Therefore, the food and locations serve as a backdrop for excellent interviews that weave the guest’s experiences with food with their thoughts on work and life. In every episode, unique and interesting connections are made across the table: Teigen speaks candidly about the challenges of raising kids, and how making tradition out of meals strengthens her family’s bonds. In perhaps the best episode of the series, Lena Waithe goes deep into her ambitious artistic process as she cracks into an equally ambitious amount of crawfish.
The show definitely has a focus on the people eating the food rather than the people making it, and I do wish that the onus had been taken off of celebrity a bit. I would’ve been just as interested in hearing from the chefs at each restaurant, not just about how their food is made, but about their own inspirations and origins. While Teigen and Chang are in Marrakesh, they visit the home of prominent chef Tarik Demlak to try homemade Tagine (a method of meat cooking specific to Morocco). While they interview Tarik, it’s his wife, Hajar Demlak, who makes and serves the Tagine. Though there is a language barrier, we don’t hear from her at all, which didn’t sit quite right in my stomach.
Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner has a smaller reach than Ugly Delicious, but the same focus on the sweet hidden morsels that reveal themselves when you make the edible personal. David Chang has a way of making you want to try everything, and my cultural and creative palettes were exponentially expanded.
Hope: Part II of a Mexican Trilogy
11.11.19
In musical theatre, a common saying is “we sing because we can no longer speak” – where the somewhat improbable act of characters bursting into song is made necessary by the stakes of the moment, and where emotions are so high that the character’s words transcend speaking, and become musical. Teatro Vista’s latest production, Hope: Part II of a Mexican Trilogy by Evelina Fernández, is certainly part musical, borrowing classic 60’s tunes to help narrate the trials of the Mexican-American Morales family as they make their way through a turbulent 1961in Phoenix, Arizona. Like a musical, Hope (co-directed by Ricardo Gutierrez and Cheryl Lynn Bruce,) uses many different theatrical devices in its storytelling: projections (creatively executed by Joe Burke,) sitcom-style humor, and some very presidential fantasy sequences. Yet the story, overwhelmed by different styles and narrative elements, often clunks instead of sings.
In its opening scenes, Hope is unique and joyful as a 60s-style musical sitcom, reminiscent of Bye Bye Birdie. In a long sequence of exposition, you meet all the characters that make up the Morales family: wholesome, JFK-obsessed Betty (Janyce Caraballo), and the outspoken and adventurous Gina (Ayssette Muñoz), their two trouble-maker brothers (Nick Mayes and Joaquin Rodarte,) dedicated mother Elena (played at my performance by Antonia Arcely,) and her husband Charlie (Eddie Martinez,) who we quickly learn is absent and unfaithful.
But the sitcom-like dynamic that is set up, complete with short punchlines and presentational blocking, becomes less sustainable as the play progresses and the family’s situations become more complex. As the show delved into some very serious and worthy topics, including domestic abuse, misogyny, and the struggles of Mexican-American assimilation, I sensed the performers felt stuck between playing the low stakes of the form and expressing the high-stakes emotions of the content.
In one scene, Charlie grabs younger brother Bobby out of the room, ostensibly to beat him. The family remaining on stage bursts into song, singing Shout by the Isley Brothers as they cover their ears and literally ‘twist and shout’ away from the offstage drama. While intertwining the story with music of the time is a clever idea that helped to evoke a very decade-appropriate atmosphere, I found that the song choices never quite matched up to the narrative moment, therefore detracting from its emotional weight.
Directors Bruce and Gutierrez still landed some evocative and heartfelt moments. Hope is a true period piece, in the sense that it showcases the past in order to illuminate something about our world today. I found Betty’s deep fear of the atomic bomb to be especially prescient, reflecting many young people’s current fears about climate change – in 1961 or 2019, being a teenager comes with the threat of the world ending. As an extension of that fear, Betty (excellently portrayed by Carabello), has a series of imagined phone calls between herself and JFK (and later, Fidel Castro). I found these fantasy phone calls to be particularly compelling, and I wish the rest of the play delved as deep in its theatrical risk-taking.
Hope: Part II of a Mexican Trilogy is presented as a part of Destinos, Chicago’s International Latino Theater Festival. And the story of Hope is an incredibly important addition to this roster, depicting vibrant and complex Latinx characters at a time in history when the Mexican-American experience was hugely under-represented. The Morales’ story would be honored by a narrower focus and more specificity in style. Removing the music from this production would clear away the noise, allowing us the space to truly hear.
The Brothers Size
10.18.2019
Steppenwolf for Young Adults, the company’s teen programming, consistently creates accessible opportunities for high-schoolers around the city to experience world-class professional theatre that is relatable, inspiring, and relevant. SYA’s production of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size, directed by Monty Cole, is no exception: it is a deeply felt, intense and dynamic production that explores the tension between personal identity and familial responsibility.
The Brothers Size first premiered as a part of Steppenwolf’s main stage season in 2010, as the middle triptych in McCraney’s three-play cycle, The Brother/Sister Plays. Since then, McCraney has exploded as an artistic force: as a Steppenwolf ensemble member (where he co-wrote and starred in a raucous and queer Ms. Blakk for President just this summer,) and as an acclaimed screenwriter. He is most widely known for his play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, which he co-adapted with Barry Jenkins into the Oscar-winning triumph, Moonlight.
Due to his prolific and fast-moving career, many will be surprised to learn that McCraney was just nineteen years old when he wrote The Brothers Size. The play accordingly honors and grapples with the very real and pressing issues that young people, particularly young men of color, face.
As the grounded and responsible Ogun (Manny Buckley) attempts to rehabilitate his relationship with younger brother Oshoosi after a few years in prison, Oshoosi finds himself torn between his brother and Elegba (Rashaad Hall), a new friend from prison who promises freedom, shared understanding, and a new car. The three men grapple to recognize and support each other beneath the looming, racist justice system that threatens to tear them apart once again.
Young people will deeply resonate with Oshoosi, a young person who, after having his freedom stripped away, seeks to re-discover himself on his own terms. In a particularly moving scene, Oshoosi describes looking at books of other countries and being amazed and overwhelmed by the enormity of the world — as he puts it, “there are more ‘me’s to meet” out there. Any high school student staring down the barrel of their future can relate to that hunger of possibility. The role is played with immense facility by Patrick Agada, who nimbly oscillates between vulnerability and boisterousness, as many teenagers do when trying to charm their way through a tough time.
Using Yoruba cosmology, poetry, and movement, this three-character triangle of joy and sorrow is expressively illuminated. In several of his plays, McCraney utilizes a device known as the “distant present”, in which characters speak their own stage directions of the action they are performing. This creates an urgent, visceral theatricality that heightens the story to mythic, archetypal proportions. As such, each character is named after a Yoruban Orisha — Oshoosi is the deity of survival, Ogun is the deity of ironworking, and Elegba is a messenger and trickster.
This theatricality is further illuminated by Yu Shibagaki’s gorgeous and stark scenic design, which leaves the original back wall of the theatre exposed amidst a mountain of rubber tar. And director Monty Cole allows intimacy and humor to shine through every crack of these characters, with fast-paced dialogue giving way to impressionistic dream sequences.
This sense of a distant present is never more, well, present, than towards the emotional climax of the play. Ogun and Oshoosi’s ultimate attempt at reconciliation comes through song, in a rendition of Try A Little Tenderness that bests Pretty in Pink. As the brothers joyfully dance and sing, they continue to act out their stage directions: they are literally trying a little tenderness, and finding their way back to the irreplaceable bond of brotherhood that prison has taken from them.