Lifeline Theater’s madcap adaptation of British author G.K. Chesterton’s 1908 metaphysical thriller The Man Who Was Thursday, gives us a madcap mix of  spy-vs.-spy and Masterpiece Theater who-dun-it.

Ensemble member Bilal Dardai is clearly a lover of this brief novel by Chesterton, a satire on espionage that if adapted to a contemporary setting would read fresh, lively and funny. Chesterton’s Catholic-infused philosophical writing is among staples of college English literature survey courses.

The Man Who Was Thursday follows the tale of a Scotland Yard undercover officer, Gabriel Syme, who infiltrates an anarchist cell intent on blowing up Parliament. In the course of his investigation, he is named the head the anarchist cell, then stumbles upon one embedded agent after another, until, it seems, the anarchist group is being managed entirely by Scotland Yard undercovers – with hilarious results. “I will tell you something else: this is no way to fight anarchists!” barks one of the agents on discovering another.

Director Jess Hutchinson and Dardai have kept the story in its Edwardian timeframe (it’s a remount of a New Leaf Theatre 2009 work) and while the first half dawdles the pace picks up, and the audience was fully enjoying this show – with the theater well filled. It’s a bit like watching a Dungeons and Dragons game enacted, with the characters (anarchists are named for the days of the week, to keep them incognito) taking on personae (a Scotsman, a German intellectual, a French petty nobleman) then discarding them when their identity is found out.   

The show rides entertainingly on the exceptional performances of the cast overall, especially Eduardo Xavier Curley-Camillo, who as Gabriel Syme, drives much of the show on his suave and exceptional delivery in a manicured British accent. It’s a fun show we can recommend for an entertaining afternoon or evening.  

The Man Who Was Thursday runs through April 7, 2019 at the Lifeline Theater.

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, running through March 23 at Strawdog Theatre, is an exciting rendering of the courtroom battles that led to a fatal fall from grace for 19th century literary genius Oscar Wilde.

It is hard to imagine now, with the growing empowerment of the LGBT-plus community, that Wilde’s career was completely destroyed when his attraction to men was discovered and proven. He was sentenced to two years of hard labor, and he lost all his assets and his income, dying nearly destitute three years later.

Promethean Ensemble’s wonderful presentation of Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (actually a revival of a 2016 production by these talented players), brings us playwright Moisés Kaufman’s 1997 debut work, which won an Outer Critics Circle Award for outstanding Off-Broadway play in New York.

The play has aged well, and is exceptionally well crafted, and carefully researched, drawing from court records, and liberally sprinkled with Wilde’s memorably entertaining expressions. It has all the power of a court room drama, and all the flair of Wilde’s colorful life and friends.

The Promethean Ensemble is in its element, with a work that is loaded with excellent language, and demanding versatility – as 8 actors take on more than 25 characters, plus Wilde. He was a great speaker and writer, and Jamie Bragg’s performance in the lead conveys his brilliant intellect, and great humor. The cast is large, and the characters plentiful – and while the casting includes several women playing men’s roles, gender identities disappear for the audience as soon as the performances commence.

Because it is a revival of an earlier production, with largely the same cast, Promethean hit the ground running even before opening night. Directed by Brian Pastor, the costumes by Uriel Gomez have a creative steam punk that cross the boundaries from 19th century to contemporary leather and safety pin fetishism. 

The first act describes Wilde’s creative world and his social circle, and at one point we leap to the present, as a scholar explains to a television interviewer that in his time, Wilde would not have conceived of himself as “gay,” but merely as a creative aesthete, who was unbound by contemporary mores and taboos, modeling himself after the ancient Greeks in his love for young men.

Wilde was “outed” by the Marquess of Queensbury, accusing him publicly of being homosexual in an effort to end Wilde’s relationship with his son, Lord Alfred Douglas. The Three Trials part follows from Wilde suing Queensbury for defamation, but losing when it was proven that he did have sex with men.

This evidence brought a new trial as Wilde was charged with "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons," a crime against a recently adopted law. We see enacted the excellent defense mounted by Wilde’s lawyer. But the trial ended in a hung jury, and Wilde was convicted in the third trial, and went to prison.

Wilde’s reputation was reclaimed over the decades, largely by the power of his writing. He is perhaps the second most prized author in English letters for such perfectly realized works las his novel, A Portrait of Dorian Gray, or his plays that remain popular to this day, such as Lady Windermere’s Fan, The Importance of Being Ernest, or The Ideal Husband.

Watching this show, I whispered to myself, “Brexit!” For the play brought to mind a rigidity seen in British Government, which under a Victorian sodomy law, felt duty-bound to continue its unfortunate legal pursuit of him – despite several junctures at which it would have been possible to do so gracefully.

Bound by expectations in a rigid social structure, the Crown’s legal apparatus went over a cliff with Wilde as they destroyed one of the leading lights of British culture, on behalf of the nobility class. (Likewise they are headed over a cliff by slavishly following the Brexit plebiscite – in my humble opinion.)

There is great tragedy there, both in Wilde's original decision to sue for slander, and in his ruin. At the time, Wilde had two immensely popular plays on London’s West End. These closed, cutting off his revenue, and allowing creditors to seize his assets, amid a scandal that, as we learn in Gross Indecency, he largely initiated himself. The Promethean Ensemble show runs through March 23 at Strawdog Theatre, and it is highly recommended.

You may need several moments to come down after witnessing Steppenwolf’s stunning, let me say truly astounding new production of a play by Jackie Sibblies Drury. This powerful work was ahead of its time when it premiered in 2012 at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre – eventually heading for off-Broadway and recognition in multiple awards, but under appreciated at the time, and neglected afterward. But now perhaps the world is better able to receive it.

It tells the story of a high school class enacting a historical recount of three decades of German occupation of what is now Namibia (formerly Southwest Africa), ending with World War I. It was a period replete with the worst of Colonialism, with land theft, cultural destruction, and a deliberate genocide against the Herero people.

The play’s unlikely long name suggests the earnestness of the students producing it: “We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915.” Since there is little written record from anyone but the occupiers, the students begin with letters written home by German soldiers, and incorporating factual details from other records.

As with any production, the student actors seek the motivation of their characters, and the roles they play. They tell fundamentals like geography and language in a lighthearted engaging way, capturing the audience. As the story progresses, though, and the German government asserts increasingly stringent control, the students must act out cruel and even violent behavior – and they begin to resist. Learning 80 percent of the Herero men were killed in this period, students are overwhelmed and do not want to re-enact the scenes.

"We're talking about a rehearsal for the Holocaust," says one student, horrified. But another corrects him. "It wasn't a rehearsal," he says. 

Yet their teacher pushes them on, beyond the brink, to unbearable acts and emotions, and the audience moves with them. The performances by the cast show real stars on the rise: Will Allan (Actor 3/Another White Man), Terry Bell (Actor 2/Black Man), Taylor Blim (Actor 5/Sarah), Jeffrey Owen Freelon Jr. (Actor 4/Another Black Man) Michael Holding (Actor 1/White Man), and Jennifer Latimore (Actor 6/Black Woman). The performances of Allen, Freelon, Holding, Bell and Blim blew me away, their parts demanding extreme versatility, or in the case of Bell, deep emotion and sentiment.

Playwright Drury gives us a concatenation of the inhumane treatment of tribes by the occupying army in Africa, to the treatment of African-Americans under Jim Crow. These scenes are especially unsettling, and we are reminded of the consequences of laying waste to the social mores that keep us civilized. With social movements like Black Lives Matter, #Oscarssowhite, and following Charlotte and NFL protests, the public at large may be better able to understand this aspect of the play - but it is gut wrenching.

We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… is a consequential work of art, reminiscent of Master Harold & The Boys and Miss Margarita’s Way, which similarly trace the seemingly inevitable power of sinister social forces. Director Hallie Gordon (she co-directed it with Gabrielle Randle) says to reconstitute the account of the tribal people, the production called on the work of Toni Morrison and others who employ "critical fabulation" to reconstitute histories of lost peoples, as well as existentialists like Brecht and or Beckett.

This production of We Are Proud to Present a Presentation is aimed at young audiences and will tour schools and Park Districts after it closes on Halsted. It is without question serious material, and an important production for everyone - the opportunity to see it should not be missed. It comes highly recommended, and runs only through March 23 at Steppenwolf Theatre.

Lookingglass Theatre, known for its excellent production values and its incomparable space at the Water Tower pumping station, brings us an intriguing new work, Act(s) of God. 

Billed as an existential dark comedy, but really much more of a farce, it is a “guess who’s coming to dinner” tale of cosmic proportions. Written by troupe member and actor Kareem Bandealy and directed by Heidi Stillman, the show spares nothing in quality of effort and has an intriguing storyline, but runs off the rails by the third act. 

It opens on a middle-class family home where Father (Rom Barkhordar) and Mother (Shannon Cochran in an outstanding performance) await the homecoming of their boy Middle (Anthony Irons) and his girl Fiancée (Emjoy Gavino). Their two other children will also be arriving soon, a daughter Eldest (Kristina Valada-Viars) and another son, Youngest (Walter Briggs).

Sorting the mail, Mother listens to a radio report on the imminent passage near earth of the asteroid, Apophis, while she and Father reveal in passing that it is April 2029 – a date that gains in significance. Other rather witty exposition tells us how much (and how little) the world has advanced from the present. “Everyone’s driving solar cars, but why do we still have junk mail?” Mother asks.

In the mail pile Mother finds an unusual letter, but she can’t tear the envelope, nor can Father, nor the other children as they each arrive. No one can, that is, until Eldest arrives, disturbing the others who are deep in a stylized, futuristic New Age prayer ritual. (In a  droll touch, Bandealy has them ask God not for forgiveness, but to “Help us forgive ourselves.”) As it turns out Eldest is not only an atheist but also a lesbian, things which estrange her from the family. And perhaps to the detriment of this script, Eldest is a writer. But she is able to open the letter, revealing that it contains a message from God: he’s coming for dinner tomorrow night.

The plot thickens promisingly, and great deal of angst and stress accompanies preparations for their guests’ arrival, with Mother begging the rest, “Please don’t embarrass me in front of God.”

But the play takes a turn for the worse, as family tensions and dynamics fill the remainder of a way too-long show (three acts, two intermissions). These scenes are full of drama, but they do not a play make.  And while Bandealy’s characters are clearly defined personalities, jousting continuously, they seem only vaguely related to each other. Was it a matter of casting or direction?

Perhaps it’s the script – which is not fully jelled. Much of the dialog is actors reciting lengthy written texts, well stated, but mostly unconvincing as spoken language. This is slightly less of an issue with Mother, Youngest, and Fiancee, but is especially a problem with Eldest, who talks over the other characters in sometimes interminable diatribes and expository essays. Such character types have been known to represent the author.

There are also unconvincing dramatic moments, as when Father falls asleep sitting up in a chair for almost an entire Act, while a wild family wrestling and shouting match surrounds him. Or the siblings and Mother sitting unnaturally rigid and immobile throughout a scene as Father comes and goes from the kitchen, talking a mile a minute. 

Bandealy does give each character a moment of glory, with a signal monologue: in the son Middle’s take-down of his sister, Anthony Irons is moving and convincing. In Father’s recitation of an invented religious parable, Rom Barkhordar is flawless. Likewise, Shannon Cochran, who in what might be a ranting soliloquy decrying the raw deal given her by motherhood, instead sings her lines to the accompaniment of a baroque sinfonietta. It’s surpassingly than charming.

Oh yes, and God comes and goes, unseen by us. But we do hear him like a “passing wind” (a nice inside joke for religious folks, he is flatulent on a cosmic scale as well, it turns out). The date of God’s arrival, April 14, 2029, is repeated so frequently in the dialog I looked it up in Wikipedia. It is the day a large asteroid will come within 19,000 miles of the Earth – which clarifies the radio report in the opening minutes of Act(s) of God. 

The set by Brian Sidney Bembridge – the living and dining room of a middle-class family home – is wonderfully appointed, and conveys that indeterminate futuristic point in time with a mix of furnishings dating from 1920 deco and ersatz 1950s French provincial, to mid-century modern and contemporary retro, along with futuristic sconces and wall paper. 

The set matters, as it must also provide a climactic end to the play. But it was not a particularly satisfying one. The coincidence of a visit from God and an asteroid flyby gives a reasonable platform for an existential dark comedy, but hours of family squabbling didn't seem very existential or funny. There’s some good in Act(s) of God, and some great bits, so it's somewhat recommended if you have the patience for it. It will be at Lookingglass Theatre through April 7, 2019.

The Total Bent is a musical show so delightful I wish I could shrink it down, put it in a shoebox and show it to all my friends. But you can (and should) go see it full scale at Den Theatre, where it runs through March 10.

Ostensibly the story traces a British record producer’s effort to record a Gospel music prodigy in Montgomery, Alabama. But to be truthful the real story told by playwrights Heidi Rodewald and Stew depict with color and verve the personal journey of a creative spirit – Marty Roy (Gilbery Domally) – as he finds his voice and attains fame on a global stage.

All that is set against a sweeping portrait of the tense interplay between black music and African-American culture as the Civil Rights movement seized the day. It is told through the oedipal battle of a father and son who are at odds around matters, spiritual, social and musical.

The Total Bent features Chicago treasure Robert Cornelius as Montgomery preacher Joe Roy who has built his career as a Bible-thumping televangelist and Gospel music recording artist. This role taps Cornelius's wonderfully expressive baritone, and his stentorian delivery in the dialog.

But it is Gilbery Domally, as Joe’s young adult son, who steals the show, channelling the role of Marty Roy. He is dazzling! Domally is more like a force of nature than mere performer as he traverses a role that sees him evolve from his father’s hidden spiritual musical muse, moving across multiple musical styles and stage personae as he navigates toward his creative apotheosis on the world stage.

All this is told with an acerbic wit, and that ironic twist we get from the likes of Donald Glover, Jordan Peel, and Spike Lee.
From the moment Marty Roy prances onto the stage, we are treated to a continuous critique of his father, and an uproarious and irreverent running commentary on the conflicts between those clinging to the status quo in the Jim Crow South, as Black Power emerged.

Joe Roy is celebrated for his inspiring, traditional Gospel songs. But to keep the song mill moving, he relied on his wife, now gone, and now his son Marty, to pen the music. As the social revolution rocks Montgomery and the South, Marty encourages his father to tap into it in his preaching and singing, and provides him a lovely song with a scathing refrain: “That’s why he’s Jesus and you’re not, Whitey.” Marty asks the Music Director (Jermain Hill, who also plays Deacon Charlie, is a stitch) to do a retake: "Try a less church-y sound," he says. "I am such a pest!" 

Siding with social conservatives, “This protesting stuff is going to ruin everything,” Joe Roy tells his son. “Is there any real money in it?” He advises Montgomery's white people to ride the buses to combat the boycott by blacks that was launched by Rosa Parks. “If our spiritual rights were in order, we wouldn’t need no civil rights,” he advises his African-American followers.

Then Marty Roy skips across to stage right, waves his hand, and offers an explanation to the audience (it's hard to imagine today, but most white people regarded Parks as a villain): “This all be the past, and shit.” Rather than labor in his father's vineyard, Marty sets out to become a secular music writer, and we watch him transform in stages, becoming a James Brown soul singer with carefully choreographed back-ups, to a Prince-like apparition who has continuous bookings in London.

The Total Bent is largely a sung work, with limited amounts of dialog. It is the latest theatrical script by the creative team of Heidi Rodewald, and Stew. The two rose to fame with Passing Strange, which won a Tony, an Obie, and a Drama Critics Circle Award in 2008. Stew (he doesn’t use his last name, See) is a singer, songwriter, and leader of a pop-rock band in Los Angeles called The Negro Problem, which recorded Post Minstrel Syndrome in 1997. As this background suggest, Stew mines a rich vein of “detached black irony” in his creations.

The music is wonderful, two band members also characters: Frederick Harris as Deacon Dennis; and Jermain Hill as Deacon Charlie. Outstanding also were supporting cast members Michael Turrentine as Andrew and Breon Arzell as Abee – the duo deftly taking on a variety of comical roles as church ladies and bumpkins.

Among so many striking aspects of the show, we get to see and hear several songs composed, Joe Roy's sacred version, then a retake by Marty Roy in a profane rock style. One such is "Sinner I Know You're Lost." It's a lovely classic hymn as Joe Roy originates it; but it is transporting when Marty Roy redoes it in a swinging rock style, coupled with the refrain, "I gotta get up on the cross." 

The Total Bent is highly recommended on its own merits, and especially to see Gilbery Domally’s amazing performance. Jointly produced by Haven Theatre and About Face Theatre, it features dummer Christian Moreno on drums, Anthony Rodriguez on winds, Derek Duleba on guitar, and Kurt Shelby on Bass. It’s at the Den Theatre through March 17.

Before he was Twilight Zone’s scriptwriter and frontman, Rod Serling broke through with the 1956 teleplay of Requiem for a Heavyweight, a powerful noire telling of a boxer on his way down. This work was originally broadcast live in black and white, and starred Jack Palance, Keenan Wynn, and Kim Hunter. In those days it was performed just once, and in this case the lone recording is of moderate quality. 

Putting such a teleplay onto the stage is transformative for the work. The audience is not limited to the camera’s viewpoint, but it tests the writing and of course, the performances. We can report that Artistic Theater’s production is absolutely first rate – first and foremost because it is very well cast, with a staggeringly good performance by Mark Pracht as Harlan “Mountain” McClintock. Pracht seems born for this role, as he is both a mountain of a man, and carefully expresses Serling's portrait of a Tennessee country boy who has taken way too many punches.

This is also a tragedy, in the Greek sense – Mountain had risen to become a contender for world heavyweight champion, but began to decline before he could get there. Like any tragic hero, he is thwarted by an antagonist: his manager, Maish Resnick (Patrick Thornton), who has skimmed profit from Mountain during his rise. Now as Mountain loses more than he wins, Maish plays a deceitful game – which creates the turning point in the play’s resolution.

Thornton is full throttle in this role, playing convincingly enough that you will come to loathe him. But even more forceful and compelling is the performance of Todd Wojcik as Army, as Mountain’s trainer and constant wingman. Wojcik’s performance is freighted with emotion and empathy, and will touch your heart.

There are a several other colorful characters in this cast, hustlers on the make that Serling drew from his own experience as a boxer. And we have a chorus of lower-level boxers and trainers, and thugs. These characters enact stylized boxer training interludes that are very powerful. And though each has a small part, it makes for a stunning effect overall. The set is a simple canvas platform – the ring – and the audience is seated around it, in a very intimate space.

There are just two female figures in Requiem, and both seem bound to be stereotypes of a 1950s male psyche: Golda (Laura Coleman), a “dame with a bad reputation” and Maish’s main squeeze. “What are you doing vertical; is there a recession on?” Maish asks her, in a reference it’s hard to imagine got through the censors.

The other female role is more substantial – Grace Carney (Annie Hogan), an employment agent who falls for Mountain as she tries to help him transition from boxing to something new. Hogan’s performance mines the role for all the meaning it can bear, and she is a strong heroine against the dastardly Maish. Her character in Requiem for a Heavyweight foreshadows another woman who supported Rocky years later.

The teleplay was influential enough to warrant a British TV version starring Sean Connery with a cameo by Michael Caine, and was turned into a 1962 film featuring Anthony Quinn in the lead. As a genre, teleplays are memories, but perhaps they foretold Netflix and Amazon movie productions. Teleplays have been tremendously influential – think of 12 Angry Men, Marty, The Days of Wine & Roses – all originated as live television productions.

Requiem for a Heavyweight is a great show, and a theatrical event. Running through March 31, there are just 50 seats per performance, so it is highly recommended you plan to attend at The Artistic Home on Grand Avenue in Chicago. 

Dead Man’s Cell Phone- its title a built in spoiler alert - opens with an unbeatable scene: In a nearly deserted café, the young woman Jean (Cydney Moody) dining alone is disturbed by the repeatedly ringing cellphone at the next table.

The young man sitting there with his back to us makes no effort to answer it. In frustration she walks over to confront him, and gets a shocking surprise. Then she answers the phone – it is Mrs. Gottlieb, seeking her son, Gordon, the man whose back is to us – and Jean tells her he can’t answer.

Jean continues to answer more phone calls from relatives and business associates. She soon becomes enmeshed in the family and its affairs, and what we learn are Gordon’s unseemly business dealings. That set-up was enough to make me see this play for a second time – I had been so thrilled by Steppenwolf’s 2008 production that I bought the script and rave about the play – it has also made me a fan of Ruhl, a Macarthur Genius and Yale drama professor.

Ruhl's scripts, especially Dead Man's Cell Phone, go well beyond the ordinary, bundling sometimes conflicting dramatic elements – the literal storyline of the plot, but infused with absurdism and serving up commentary on religious, philosophical, and psychological issues. All that gives Dead Man’s Cell Phone true substance, but the audience also gets an entertaining show that is largely a romantic comedy – and very funny at that.

Among the most entertaining aspects of Dead Man’s Cell Phone is the irreverence. Soon after that café scene, we meet Mrs. Gottlieb onstage, a well-off matron, and now delivering a eulogy at her son Gordon’s funeral. Describing herself as non-religious, Mrs. Gottlieb (her name, ironically, mean’s God’s Love) praises the soaring sanctuary.

I’m not sure what to say. There is, thank God, a vaulted ceiling here. I am relieved to find that there is stained glass and the sensation of height. Even though I am not a religious woman I am glad there are still churches. Thank God there are still people who build churches for the rest of us, so that when someone dies – or gets married – we have a place to - I could not put all of this – in a low-ceilinged room – no – it requires height.

Then a cell phone goes off and Mrs. Gottleib swears. In minutes she violates a sacred space, taboos on foul language, funerary propriety; she is off-hand about her son’s religious service, and the church in which it takes place. It’s subversive, and very funny.

High praise is due for The Comrade theater group's selection of Dead Man’s Cell Phone. It is well done, but compared to other versions perhaps a bit more “in your face” (and maybe a little off script). Director Arianna Soloway has chosen to give the overall production a “noir” flavor, and adds theatrical flourishes that serve as commentary on how cellphones have become mandatory appendages for humans.

In the 12 years since Ruhl wrote this script, cell phones have insinuated themselves even more eventfully into our lives. This production at Greenhouse Theater has elaborate scene changing routines, with actors dressed in trench coats and fedoras to move sets, and holding a phone on-high as they leave. But arguably this puts an emphasis on an aspect of the play that mattered to Ruhl. And perhaps it's a matter of preference; I like a leaner approach that relies more on the language and timing for Sarah Ruhl’s devastatingly funny lines.

But the audience around me was loving this show, and there was a lot of laughter. Bryan Breau as Gordon turned in the best performance, while Mike Newquist as his younger brother Dwight and Lynette Li as Gordon’s widow Hermia were very strong in keeping the intellectual mayhem afloat. Cydney Moodey carries off well Jean as Everyman, and this seems to be exactly as Ruhl intended. 

The night I saw the show, Caroline Latta as Mrs. Gottlieb had all the imperiousness Ruhl must have a intended, but some of the humor fell flat because the timing was off. (When Jean is rescued by Dwight in one scene, Mrs. Gottlieb asks her if she would like “a cold compress, some quiche” and the interval between those phrases is the difference between funny ha ha and funny weird.) 

Titles of Sarah Ruhl's plays suggest her outlook: How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday, In the Next Room, or the vibrator play, The Clean House and Stage Kiss (I’ve seen the last three). She is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and a Tony Award nominee. Her plays have been produced on Broadway, and translated into 14 languages.

Withal, this show is highly recommended: an opportunity to see Dead Man's Cell Phone performed live should not be missed. It's at the Greenhouse Theater through March 10, 2019.

Six spectacular actors bring deeply moving performances under director Cheryl Lynn Bruce in Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline.

The capacity crowd who braved six-degree weather to show up at the Biograph Theatre on Lincoln Ave. were richly rewarded by this exceptional production. But you kind of have to go when a Morisseau premiere beckons. I for one am invested in her work now, having been wowed by two of her three Detroit cycle plays - Skeleton Crew at Skokie's Northlight Theatre last year and Paradise Blue at the tiny TimeLine Theatre on Wellington the year prior. (Just by coincidence, Morisseau's 2017 play, now having its Chicago premiere, was also broadcast nationally by PBS last night from another ongoing production - the one at Lincoln Center in New York.)

Pipeline is lauded for its topicality around the current issue of young black males too easily at risk of entering a pipeline to jail. And it also touches on the merits of inner-city public community schools versus private education.

But perhaps even more powerfully, it highlights the debilitating effects of our society's racism-based social dysfunction. In Pipeline this adverse miasma infiltrates the emotional lives of the middle class parents of a teenage boy, Omari (a kinetic performance by Matthew Elam). A slight, sensitive poetic youth who seems an unlikely candidate to become a thug, Omari gets into trouble after inexplicably assaulting his high school English teacher.

Pipeline also showcases Morisseau’s prowess for examining the inner lives of interesting personalities, the forces that energize them as people, all against the contemporary societal backdrop. In Pipeline there is a specificity to these characters – six fully-formed individuals, no tropes or archetypes.

You will be touched by these exceptional people, and by the compelling performances that bring them to life. When the play opens on a sparse stage, Omari's mother Nya (Tyla Abercrumbie – who is devastatingly good), a public high school teacher, is leaving a voice message for her ex, and Omari's dad, Xavier (Mark Spates Smith), detailing their son’s predicament: that he may be expelled from his private school and possibly be charged criminally with assault.  

Nya leaves a lengthy voice mail in which her language stumbles and runs aground – a sets a tone for the remainder of the 90-minute show. Repeating and rephrasing that 60-second message, Nya shows her inner self and internal conflicts. The scene cues the audience to listen to the language for the rest of the show, for it will communicate on multiple levels.

Pipeline is also literary, revisiting at several points Gwendolyn Brooks in a poetic remix of We Real Cool – the 24-word masterpiece the perfectly captures a cry of lost youth: 

We Real Cool

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL. 
We real cool. We
Left school. We 
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We 
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon. 

Courtesy The Poetry Foundation

The event that triggered Omari’s rage was also literary: a classroom discussion in which his teacher over-aggressively called on him to discuss Richard Wright’s Native Son character, Bigger Thomas. “He was asking me in that room, in that way,” Omari tells his mother, his language suggesting that as an African-American, he is a rarity in his class. “I don’t want to be the token respondent.”

And in fact, as Omari later tells his father about the incident, he says he was feeling upset that his dad sent him financial support like clockwork, but never delivered his love. “Guys say they want their dad, but it’s overrated,” Omari says. The child support he gets from him “does the biology, but it doesn’t do the soul.”

This is a play for actors, because Morisseau gives each of the characters a show-stopping soliloquy, or ranting digression. You’ll want to stand up and cheer for Security Guard Dun (Ronald L. Conner) in “I Do My Job,” weep after Omari’s double-barreled unloading to his dad Xavier. Or laugh and applaud, for Aurora Real De Asua’s Jasmine – Omari’s girlfriend; and Janet Ulrichs Brooks as the teacher, Laurie - both of whom provide measured lightheartedness to the show. 

This production of Pipeline runs through March 1 at the Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago. It’s highly recommended that you don’t miss it.

The dynamic clashes of three couples living parallel lives fuels Christina Anderson’s delightful new play, How to Catch Creation. With dialog that is fresh, arresting, and completely natural, Anderson captures and holds our attention throughout the 90-minute show.  We quickly become invested in the characters, want to know how things will turn out for them.

Particularly strong were the portrayals of Griffin (Keith Randolph Smith is spectacular), and his bosom buddy and best female friend Tami (Karen Aldridge in an electric performance).

Griffin is a middle-aged man recently released from prison after being wrongfully convicted, trying to reclaim his life – with a settlement to get him started. Tami is an academic administrator in the fine arts department, whose life as an artist is now in abeyance – and likewise for her love life, which trends toward women.

Tami and Griffin have that most special intimacy, one that allows for unsparing honesty, and in the best of all possible worlds could be the basis for a rock-solid marriage. But nothing suggests they are headed in that direction. But your antenna will rise as the dialog between these two, sparklingly well written, suggests a special energy – and the chemistry between these two accomplished actors is unrelentingly magnetic.

In the course of the action, Tami pairs up with Riley (Maya Vinice Prentiss) a computer technician and electronic musician. Complicating things is the fact that Riley is involved with Stokes (Bernard Gilbert). Without spoiling the plot and reveals, we discover a thread of connections through two generations, and through coincidences and fate, paths cross and the complicated fabric of the drama is woven.

The presentation of the play is fast-paced and technically wonderful – Anderson’s script sets great production challenges, as it mimics the fast-paced, quick-cut style of a film – with vignettes, short scenes, and jumps back in time. To accomplish this, director Nigel Smith seamlessly integrated scenery and staging (Todd Rosenthal) lighting (Allen Lee Hughes) and sound (Joanna Lynne Staub, with composition by Justin Ellington).

In How to Catch Creation, Anderson reminds us that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The title tips us off to the parallels within these couples, and the pursuit each holds in common of creation – in painting, writing, procreating – and the quest for love. As if to underscore it all, Anderson gives us several pairs of scenes that run concurrently, with identical dialog spoken sometimes simultaneously, sometimes sequentially, by couples in different times and of different ages. The effect is marvelous.   

One couple is shown living in the 1960s and 1970s, Ayanna Bria Bakari (Natalie), Jasmine Bracey (G.K. Marche) and Anderson is very specific about the timing of scenes: one takes place a few days after the specific reference to the September 15, 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama; the scene references the killing of four little girls in the church. Another takes place years later, with a very specific presentation of an ad at a bus stop for an Apple computer (a perfect replication of the real thing), setting it in the late 1970s, when Apple first began advertising.

The other two couples inhabit 2014, but also with a specificity. “It’s 2014,” says Riley. “If you have the money, you can have can have a kid.” Perhaps by rooting the action in concrete details, Anderson wants to make it more credible. But she has accomplished that already, with the dialog in this wonderfully written work. Highly recommended. How to Catch Creation runs through February 24 at Goodman Theatre.  

Droll, knowing, and surprisingly good, Evil Dead: The Musical, transforms the campy self-aware horror-comedy movie franchise into something wickedly fun.

Even those who haven’t seen the Evil Dead movie series in awhile – or ever – will enjoy this show. It's laced with irony, just like the original, and doubling as a send-up of the scary films genre. It's producers Black Button Eyes Productions specializes in obscure works and plays with elements of fantasy, such as 2014’s Coraline and Nightmares and Nightcaps: The Stories of John Collier – a British author along the lines of Ray Bradbury or Neil Gaiman. Evil Dead has bee crisscrossing small theater groups around the country. 

Evil Dead – The Musical parodies Sam Raimi’s classic Evil Dead films – it's an amalgam of Evil Dead I & II – with a nod to Army of Darkness, third in the series. All three starred the square-jawed Bruce Campbell. It’s a prototypical story of teens who vacation at a deserted cabin the woods - only to be dismembered and possessed by evil forces that lie in wait.

In the films and this staged musical, one by one the teens succumb to Kanderean Demons, called from the cellar due to an inadvertent recitation of passages from ancient books written in blood and bound in human flesh, of course. Resisting these forces of evil as the story progresses is Ash (Jordan Dell Harris perfectly captures the swaggering heartthrob played in the films by Bruce Campbell.)

And like the films, Ash transforms into that iconic character we know and love, along the way replacing his left hand with a prosthetic chainsaw, wielding a double-barreled shotgun in his other, battling those Kandereans who inhabit the trees in the woods, the cellar, and even the bodies of his former friends.

All that, and singing and dancing, too – with some infectious tunes by a quartet of writers (Christopher Bond, Frank Cipolla, Melissa Morris and George Reinblatt are credited – and Oliver Townsend gets the credit as musical director.) The book by Reinblatt is funny – he is clearly an Evil Dead Head - though lyrics falter at times. Among the bigger standouts are the opening number as the group of five teens take off on their weekend getaway – and a number with some dancing trees. (Choreography is by Derek Van Barham.) Also charming is a duet by Ash and his girlfriend Linda (Kirby Gibson) about falling in love at S-Mart. 

The cabin itself also becomes possessed before the end, and an animatronic moosehead, squirrel and other figures, join the fun. Set, props and puppetry are by Jeremiah Barr.

Aficionados will recall that the original films Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 didn’t have much in the way of continuity. Evil Dead 2 was a reboot, the first half retelling and modifying the story of the original and the second half breaking new ground. But the movies were grounded in a sense of horror/humor that has not been lost in translation, and distilled into this amalgam the musical version gives us the true heart of the films. (My resident Evil Dead expert Kyran Esler provided exegisis on the show's film origins.)

Along with Jordan Dell Harris as Ash, the cast is strikingly good: Josh Kemper as the ever randy Scott; Kirby Gibson as Ash’s girlfriend Linda (eventually beheaded), Stevie Love in dual roles as Shelly and Annie. For an over-the-top performance Caitlin Jackson gets a shout-out – she is wonderful and it is a performance not to be missed. Recommended. Evil Dead: The Musical runs through February 16 at Pride Arts Center.