Month: March 2016
KILL FLOOR at American Theater Company is truly a killer production. Abe Koogler’s intense and poignant new play is in excellent hands in this Midwest premiere directed by Jonathan Berry. KILL FLOOR insightfully examines contemporary issues of humanity, race, and identity, and with its superb casting, also genuinely moves. This exhilarating production certainly merits the attention of any Chicago theater lover.
Eugene O’Neill’s blazing masterwork LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT introduces audiences to the enormously dysfunctional Tyrone family, who over the course of the play’s three-and-a-half-hour run time, completely and utterly destroy one another. O’Neill felt that LONG DAY’S JOURNEY was such a personal and exposing play that he wished to have it published fifty years after his death. And in almost every moment of the play, we feel the immense agony and suffering of this deeply troubled, addiction-riddled family.
Continue reading “LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT at Court Theatre”
One of the most quoted lines from Daniel Waters’s 1989 teen film HEATHERS is the succinct, biting question: “What’s your damage?” Kokandy Productions’ staging of HEATHERS: THE MUSICAL leaves the “damage” behind in favor of delight, yet still captures the agony and terror of high school. This production marks the musical’s Chicago premiere (it debuted Off-Broadway at New World Stages in 2014.) With book, music, and lyrics by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe, HEATHERS: THE MUSICAL manages to be both satirical and at times legitimately moving, largely echoing the biting tone of the original film in the show’s first act and unfolding onto more sincere, sentimental territory in the second. As directed by James Beaudry, Kokandy’s dynamite cast brings the story to life with humor and heart.
Continue reading “HEATHERS: THE MUSICAL at Kokandy Productions”
Rachel Weinberg Reviews 