Bus Stop - Highly Recommended

What a treat! Excellent writing, set design, and solid acting combine to produce a thoroughly engaging evening of theater at the Raven.

I've said it before, but this production merits it being repeated: Chicago is home to some of the best theater I've encountered. Allow me to explain:

Set outside Kansas City in 1955, Bus Stop explores three lines of romance between six of the eight characters: a high school girl and a drunken, pedophile professor; an abandoned woman and a bus driver; and the principal story line, a rough, abusive young cowboy and a "loose" nightclub singer that he has kidnaped, stranded in a bus stop/diner due to a winter storm. In the wrong hands - in fact, in any but the best hands - this could be a disaster.

But in the hands of the excellent playwright, William Inge, the director, JoAnn Montemurro, the crew (in particular the set design by Ray Toler), and the actors, the result is a drama that finds the right notes with drama, romance and comedy. In particular, Michael Stegall as "Bo," Jen Short as "Cherie" and Kristen Williams as "Grace" deliver first-class, enrapturing performances: their transformation into their characters was seamless and complete.

Even in the face of some broad comedic moments (such as the professor's drunken stumbling and Bo's attempt to carry Cherie out over his shoulder), the moments of drama were genuinely touching. I was particularly moved by Cherie's nearly ten minutes of silent emoting as others occupied the speaking parts; Ms. Short truly inhabited "Cherie" and allowed us in for those very intimate moments.

A couple words of caution: the Raven has seats along the side, but the blocking for this play doesn't accommodate those seats. As it's open seating, arrive early and find a place in the main, center section. And, don't forego the opportunity to acquire season's tickets to this wonderful theater company: they tackle solid plays with predictable success - and delight.

Against Type Project - Highly Recommended

There's only one chance left to see the Against Type Project - Wednesday night, October 5. Don't miss it!

Presented by the Focal Point Theatre Company at the Think Tank (off Ravenswood in Lakeview), this is a collection of six scenes from contemporary plays: Glengarry, Glen Ross; Our Town; The Four Yorkshiremen; The Importance of Being Earnest; The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe; and Steel Magnolias.

The program flyer from Melissa Albertario (Artistic Director) notes in part that the purpose of the evening was "to give our group of extraordinarily talented friends, peers and collaborators and opportunity to limber up and challenge themselves." The theme, beyond the largely comic selection of themes, is "to discard ... preconceptions about casting according to age, gender, race and experience."

This is 75 minutes of high energy, extreme talent and just plain fun. The settings could only be more minimalistic if they did away with the four chairs and table; even the costumes are all Basic Black. All of which allows this very talented collection of artists to show their considerable chops. While all the performances are well done, the closing scene from Steel Magnolias brought the house down - deservedly.

Go see this performance. Or, if you can't, be sure to follow the careers of all of those involved - this is a real treat for any lover of theatre! To wit, their first full-length production is this coming Spring - but I don't want to wait until then to see these folks in action!

In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) - Highly Recommended

Sarah Ruhl's 2009 Tony-nominated play receives a top-shelf treatment by the actors and staff of the Victory Gardens Theatre. Directed by VG veteran Sandy Shinner, the play weaves together a broad range of issues and story lines without ever appearing too heavy or contrived. The humor is spontaneous and evocative, and the writing overall is elegant - taut, poetic, and incisive.

The cast of seven is well up to the challenge, even in preview. While some of the characters are broadly drawn, and the delivery is often intentionally "stuffy Victorian," we have no doubt that these are real people, and each of them faces real personal challenges.

Those challenges include infant mortality, infidelity, emotional isolation, racism and the strictures society places on strong women and homosexuality. To tackle any one of these effectively in a single play would be a treat; In the Next Room gives us enough of a taste of each that we know we have shared a new intimacy with those who face those struggles.

And yet the play never really loses its "light," produced by Mr. Edison's harnessing of electricity in both optical and mechanical ways. Ms. Ruhl offers up delightful one-liners ("Would you rather a Negro Protestant or an Irish Catholic?"), the nearly-mandatory excoriation of critics, and an interesting interpretation of the relationship between love and poetry. Clearly, she is having a great deal of fun with this play - fun she effectively invites us to share with her.

As for the vibrators? Oh, they are present, and while the application of those tools is discreet, the "paroxysms" of the patients to whom they are applied are compelling and superbly timed. The material is never prurient, but it is intimate - which is really what this play is all about.

Can intimacy become mechanical? Can the mechanical spark genuine intimacy? Are we "meat and bones," or do our souls live a couple of inches outside our eyes? Come enjoy the delicate handling that In the Other Room provides to these issues, and prepare to be tickled - and touched - by this wonderful production.

Strangers and Romance - Highly Recommended

These two one-act plays by Barbara Lhota are produced at the Trap Door Theatre, which is in itself an intriguing place to encounter. Set at the back of a narrow alley - after which one crosses a hallway joining two restaurants and enters through a door that looks like it belongs to a storage room - it is the first theater I've encountered where the "directions" page on its website offers extra assistance if you get lost. But it's well worth the trek!

The stage itself is spartan - don't be fooled by the promotional shots of the production, this is theater on a shoestring. And, with that in mind, I lowered my expectations a bit as to the quality of the productions, which proved reasonable for the first play, "Strangers" - but not for the second, "Romance." It is in fact on the strength of "Romance" that I give the evening a "Highly Recommended."

I would still recommend "Strangers," but it is the weaker of the two productions, and they are best presented in the order that I presume director Doug Long chose. In it, Maddie (Misti Patrella) and Madison (Tony Ketcham, in a strong performance) encounter each other through a clever device that Ms. Lhota uses to great advantage, establishing an accelerating pace to angst and discovery that builds nicely to a fine crescendo. The reveals are well-timed, and what (falsely) appears to be a forced performance in the opening scene serves the plot well. The given locale of Boston is purely incidental, and rightly fades from our attention before very long, as the accents of the actors are decidedly mid-Western.

It took a while for the audience to warm up to the humor (in a reasonably full house), which I take to be more of a commentary on the strength of the performances than of the material. The material that we are presented with is difficult, and the use of humor is correct, and eventually allows us to go deeper. The closing is, in my opinion, a little too tidy for the challenges facing the characters, but not so egregiously so that it becomes unbelievable.

With "Romance," we are presented with what seems to be greater maturity all around: in the writing, the acting, and the depth of knowledge with which the playwright faced the issues. Also incidentally set in Boston,  it is Timothy Amos (in the role of Mick) who "gets" the accent and keeps his character well-grounded in the roots of his geography; the only failing of Stacie Barra (as Miriam) is that she does not match his talent there.

The weakest part of the play is in the transition from distance to intimacy, and I suspect that is mainly due to the constraints of time. The performances are impressive, again in particular by Mr. Amos. Ultimately, the resolution is less easy and more believable, with more loose ends - and more possibilities. Ms. Lhota is able to display her talents at humor here as well, conveyed effectively by the cast and appreciated by the audience.

The underlying question in each play - that of managing loss in an intimate relationship - is nicely explored in very different ways by each character. The contrived settings - just before closing at a T stop and in the basement chapel in a church - are easily forgiven and add sufficient color to help paint the pictures that the men and women grapple with.

So, take the time to travel down a narrow alley through a back door into some of the more hidden, but far from uncommon, corners of relationships. It will be an evening well worth the price of admission.

Pornography - Recommended

This was not the play I expected, and I'm still not sure how I feel about that. One thing I can say for certain is that I wish I had seen it with friends so we could debrief afterwards. For that reason it lingers in "Recommended" land, but clearly tottering between "Highly Recommended" and "Somewhat Recommended."

Pornography by Simon Stephen is mounted with great skill by the Steep Theatre Company. Declared to be about the 2005 bombings in London, it seems to have little to do with either that terrifying day or pornography. Or does it? (As a disclaimer, my daughter was in London that day, and not far from the King's Cross bombing when it happened. So I have more than a little attachment to the topic).

Presented as six vignettes - four monologues and two dialogues - all that the characters share is the common time frame of the bombing, and the fact that all of them are touched by it in some way, if in some cases only indirectly. One of the terrorists is one of the characters, but if you did not know he was the terrorist, he would not be the most disturbing character you encounter.

The program notes give the logistics of, and asks a half-dozen pointed questions about, the bombing - none of which are directly addressed by the play. Which is all pretty much an unrealized teaser: we are promised a look into the dark underside of humanity, an exploration of what forces are at play to create events such as these, and instead, we are given six carefully drawn vignettes of 8(+1) characters who happen to be touched by three common events: the selection of London as the site for the 2012 Olympics, the Live 8 concert, and the terrorist bombings.

The staging and acting are excellent. The use of television screens to punctuate the vignettes is well-executed, and the images that flash through the major transitions are intriguing. One of the most successful technical aspects was the lighting of the six spare mini-stages: it is fluid and dynamic, and becomes a vital part of the grammar of each presentation.

Each of the characters is elegantly drawn and superbly realized. There is no doubt in my mind that - with the possible exception of the terrorist - these are very real people who happened to step into the play and expose themselves to us in a very intimate manner. The one exception is the terrorist, who seemed far too distant from the mission he was on, in a manner that I expect was an attempt to humanize him but for me simply made him less believable. Mind you, I wasn't expecting frothing fundamentalism, but the absence of any political dialogue seemed, well, wrong.

So where is the pornography? Is it a wry reflection on what the playwright thinks is necessary to draw people to a play? Who among the characters was obscene? With the possible exception of the first character, each seemed engaged in something that society would frown upon, even if it was merely the vulgar language of an 83-year-old woman.

There are many other questions to be mined from this play, but as I said before, they are best addressed with friends who attend the show. Left to an internal monologue, it's not clear if they are the desperate search for quality in a muddied script, or the enticements of a genuinely rich undertaking.

So see the play, and let me know what you think!

The Double - Highly Recommended

The opening volley in Babes with Blades' 2011-2012 season, The Double, should firmly establish in anyone's mind that this troupe is one of the more talented community ensembles that Chicago has to offer.

Even though seen in preview, the script was tight, the acting was first-class, and the "violence" was predictably top-shelf. There were, of course, the usual number of minor preview glitches, but these did nothing to detract from the show and, in fact, demonstrated the strength of the production in the way they were quickly left behind.

The script, the company's first foray into comedy, was crafted by Barbara Lhota, and reflects an endearment for the company, the period (1930s), and the genre. The comedy is broad but not slapstick, and clearly the actors are enjoying themselves as the plot unfolds and the mayhem begins.

Particularly strong in their parts were Lisa Herceg as Rosalind Rollins and Gillian Humiston as Minnie Sparks, but it should be said that there isn't a wooden nickel in the batch. And the direction by Leigh Barrett is crisp and clear - with so many story lines and actors to manage, she made the unfolding seem effortless.

Of course, what would a BwB production be without great stage violence, realized by Libby Beyreis? The Double builds nicely to a crescendo of swashbuckling derring-do that is simultaneously thrilling and comical. Given the imaginative multiplication of combatants and the swishing of blades across the entire stage, it was a treat to observe such skill and choreography from the front row.

What could be improved? Minor points, mostly: a few linguistic anachronisms creep in (being "freaked out" or "disrespected"), and there were a few times when the audience wasn't certain whether the time to applaud had come. Also, the first 15 minutes or so seemed a little muddier in exposition than they ideally might have been, but it wasn't long after that the roles and characters were sufficiently clear.

The long and the short of it, bub, is to find your way to this production at the Lincoln Square Theatre before it closes in late September!

A Beautiful Spell - Recommended

It had to happen. I managed to see two plays - penned by different playwrights, performed by different actors and produced in different venues - that bear such a strong resemblance to each other that comparisons are, for me, nearly impossible to avoid. Therefore, I'll postpone the comparison until the end of this entry.

A Beautiful Spell, from the pen of Greg Kalleres and presented at the Royal George Theatre, starts with the disquieting premise that one can awaken in the middle of the night with a terror sufficient to turn your world upside down. In this case, the terror is Franny's, who has the shattering experience of discovering she no longer loves her husband of nine years, Jim.

It's a rather intellectual premise that quickly gains solid footing under the talented performances of Maggie Corbett and Eric Burgher. The writing is both believable and fluid, making the several round trips necessary between angst and humor that are necessary for a story of this sort. The staging is in the round, so that the audience is close to this intimate struggle in every sense. And the set - the couple's bedroom - is for the most part very well executed, although the use of plastic for the windows was a distraction that could have been avoided without (it would seem) much additional expense.

The story itself seemed a little long, since the revelations that come don't deepen our understanding of the characters significantly, and so some of the middle section started to get repetitive. This was offset, though, by Mr. Kalleres' comedic talents and the vigor of the performances.

The question in stories like this is how they will be resolved, and I will not give away the ending. However, the penultimate moment is quite stirring, and the closing in good counterpoint to it.

So, why only "Recommended?" Here's where the comparison starts to rear its head, but I will nonetheless attempt to remain objective.

Basically, the story lacked an "edge." It raised the question of Tevye and Golde - if being married for all these years isn't love, what is? - in a way that was, for me, just a shade too intellectual. The presumed insecurities which kept the banter going made it seem too often more like curiosity than soul searching. The premise opened a door to darker passages, but no one ever really stepped through them.

The other play? "50 Words," which was presented at Profiles Theatre with almost identical staging, premise and setting (two parents of a young boy who discover their marital problems, set in the kitchen rather than the bedroom). That was a darker, edgier, bawdier, and far more difficult play. Were it in production, I would have no problem recommending which to choose. But, if you're looking for a less troubling, well-acted and written exchange between a young couple discovering that marriage ain't all it's cracked up to be, your time and money would be well spent at "A Beautiful Spell."