Category: Chicago Essays

A serial killer is suspected to live amongst the residents of Ipswich, UK when the holiday season is darkened by the murder of five sex workers. The town’s safety and reputation are at risk, and national attention only amplifies the danger lurking on London Road. Using verbatim theatre, London Road creators Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork adapt real interviews into a musical documentary that explores all the ways tragedy encouraged a community to come together and expose its negligent prejudice. Shattered Globe Theatre’s extraordinary ensemble cast, directed by Elizabeth Margolius, relives the horrifying events that rocked Ipswich between 2006 and 2008 with compassion, humor, and awe-inspiring skill. 

London Road relies on the actors to authentically embody the diverse characters whose interviews make up the production’s entire text. This lofty challenge is executed masterfully by a tight-knit ensemble that works as a team to make a town full of strangers feel familiar. Each performer portrays multiple characters and all effectively change their personalities in the blink of an eye. There is a wealth of talent packed in the cast of eleven and every performance shines. Countless breakout moments bring a beautiful dimension to the production where joy and horror live side-by-side. Continue reading “True Crime Meets Verbatim Theatre in London Road at Shattered Globe Theatre”

The first time I heard about Chicago’s Neo-Futurists was seven years ago, in a room full of playwrights, as an intern at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The Neo’s now-closed production of Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind subsequently became my first Chicago Theatre-going experience as a newly-minted resident in 2016. Returning over the years to see multiple iterations of The Infinite Wrench, my favorite skit of all time was by Ensemble Member Leah Urzendowski, who kicked, punched, and stomped on a diagram of a vulva; a disturbingly accurate depiction of what it felt like to bike the gravel section of Clark Street between Foster and Montrose when it was under construction pre-pandemic. I have never laughed so hard in my life. While the Neo-Futurarium is the first spot I think of to introduce new friends and out-of-town visitors to the best-of Chicago Theatre, The Neofuturists Sell Out was my first time seeing a ‘prime-time’ show.

Hilarious and poignant as ever, the Neo-Futurists Sell Out is a skit-filled hour of entertainment with a special focus on capitalism, astutely directed by Lavina Jadhwani. Without the Neo’s typical greetings, menus, and nametags handed out at the door, the four performers instead rolled in chairs and desks on stage to launch straight into the action. But, with no greeting and minimal audience interaction until halfway through the show, this prime-time experience left me missing the performer-to-audience connection that usually drives the Neo’s pacing and energy; the connection that punches up their versed and starkly intimate sense of humor. Continue reading “Tackling Capitalism in ‘The Neo-Futurists Sell Out’”

Marela, the youngest daughter of a Cuban Cigar Factory Owner, casts a spell to bring sweetness to Juan Julian’s journey from the island of Cuba to Ybor City, as she and her mother Ofelia (the expressive, incomparable Charín Álvarez) and sister, Conchita, anticipate his arrival. Juan Julian (in an affecting performance by Arash Fakhrabadi) whose voice is “like a Persian canary,” is the new lector. His job is to read books to the Cigar rollers as they work. The characters and a digital dramaturgy packet both note that this tradition comes from the customs of the Taino people (the Indigenous people of Cuba, a first-contact tribe) listening to storytellers as they roll tobacco leaves.

Nilo Cruz’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning play is a Cuban American adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Cruz deftly crafts character relationships and factory politics to examine many of the same industrial binaries Tolstoy obsessed over. Machine vs. tradition, speed vs. leisure, with cigarette vs. cigar taking center stage. All are so incredibly specific to the play’s 1929 setting while simultaneously resonant today. 

Continue reading “Women take control in Remy Bumppo’s timeless remount of Anna in the Tropics”