There is something immensely endearing in the passion that community theater groups bring to the stage. A Man of No Importance captures exactly these qualities, as its cast plays a troupe preparing for a production of Oscar Wilde’s Salome.

Set in 1964 Dublin, Ireland, A Man of No Importance was a 2002 Broadway musical comedy written by the team that created Anastasia and Ragtime – Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty, with book by Terrence McNally (Master Class, The Full Monty, Kiss of the Spider Woman, et.al.). While not a blockbuster, it does have some lovely music. 

That show in turn was adapted from the well-regarded 1994 film (a non-musical), which starred Albert Finney in an exceptional performance as Alfie, a 60-year-old Dublin streetcar conductor. Severely repressing his gay orientation (even the term “closeted” was not in general use then), Alfie expresses his gay self channeling Oscar Wilde in his mirror. 

The broad strokes of A Man of No Importance are the same in both the film and the musical, though the inner life of Alfie is the point of the film, while the musical version emphasizes the community of players – and the redemptive quality of being who you really are, even if you are gay. That was more easily said than done in 1963 Ireland, where a “pouf” was the pejorative term for a gay person, who was subject to severe social opprobrium in the period. Same-sex relations were only decriminalized in 1993 in the Republic of Ireland. (For the U.K., including Northern Ireland, it was legalized in 1967.)

In both versions Alfie is beaten and outed, but survives and comes back stronger. Finney’s Alfie is an exuberant, ebullient fellow, though filled with longing and extreme inhibition about sharing his secret of the “love that dares not speak its name.” In Pride Films & Play’s production, directed by Donterrio Johnson, Alfie (Ryan Lanning) is likewise filled with longing and inhibition, but with little of the kind of verve that made the film version Alfie believable and lovable.

Alfie entertains his streetcar patrons with warm banter and poetic readings, and scouts their numbers for potential performers in his troupe. He identifies one new arrival on his Dublin streetcar – Adele Rice (Ciera Dawn) – as a prospect to for the show – and talks her into joining. 

Alfie is also secretly in love with the motorman, Robbie Fay (Nick Arceo), and entreats him to join the cast, with a promise of meeting single women players. Robbie Fay in turn pressures Alfie to join him in the pub after work. Alfie does so reluctantly, retreating awkwardly when his secret yearnings turn up on the gaydar of a barfly, the comely young Breton Beret (Kevin O’Connell, who also plays a phantom Oscar Wilde).

All the while, Alfie risks running afoul of society. Late middle aged (he is 60 in the movie) Alfie lives - since mother died - under the watchful care of his spinster sister Lily (Sarah Beth Tanner brings great life to this character). Lily avidly wants Alfie to find a girl to marry, so she can relinquish her responsibility of caring for him. (That's how society worked in Ireland.) Lily's intended, the butcher Carney (Tommy Bullington), is a regular cast member in the Alfie’s group, but also an arch conservative Catholic in the Altar & Rosary Sodality.

It isn't long before Carney figures out that this year’s script includes salacious scenes "and fornication" as Carney rails – the Dance of the Seven Veils included – and the show is booted from St. Imelda's as pornographic midway through rehearsal. The positive resolution of this crisis - it’s Broadway, after all, the show must go on – is melodramatic, but still somehow satisfying.  

This cast features some very good singers, dancers, and performers. Though there are a couple somewhat wooden actors, most bring an infectious energy to the show, as do the characters they play in the rehearsal for Salome. Lanning is a polished tenor; and Nick Arceo’s baritone gives Robbie Fay the requisite manliness. Amanda Giles’ performance as Mrs. Curtin earned belly laughs, especially her proposal to transform the seductive “Dance of the Seven Veils” as a tap dance sequence. A Man of No Importance runs through November 10 at The Broadway Theater in Pride Arts Center, 4139 N. Broadway.

*Extended through November 17th

Playwright Lucy Kirkwood was named “Best Newcomer” when her first play debuted in London in 2009. Her Chimerica played to acclaim all over, including a well regarded production at Timeline Theatre in 2016. Kirkwood’s 2017 Mosquitoes, now running at Steep Theatre, depicts today's societal clashes between advocates of post-Enlightenment rationalism, and the more magical thinkers who resist modernist thought. In current terms, that plays out in things like Climate Change and vaccination debates. 

Lest you think this is dry, let me assure you Mosquitoes is quite the play, and director Jaclyn Jutting gives us a lively dramatic production, the clash is acted out in the highly charged relationship between two sisters. 

The older one is Alice (Cindy Marker), a research physicist at work on the sub-atomic particle-smashing Hadron Collider, which starts up in Geneva, Switzerland during the play (dating it to 2008). Jenny (Julia Siple, who simply tears up the stage in the role) telemarkets vaginal cancer insurance policies – quite effectively, as she demonstrates by replaying her phone pitch in the second act.

Jenny questions the many things in life dictated by rationalism, including vaccinations. She doesn't get one, then Kirkwood has her come down with a preventible illness. And Jenny thinks the Hadron Collider and its quest for the elusive (and quite theoretical) Higgs bosun particle, is a waste.

“Six billion European for something you can’t even see?” says Jenny, comparing the meeting of two particles to mosquitoes smashing into each other. 

In one of the early scenes, Jenny reveals to her sister she is pregnant, and seeks reassurance from her sister Alice – the baby hasn’t been kicking, she fears the worst. Jenny admits she hasn’t had an ultrasound – she has been told that the sound waves can damage an unborn child. Yet when scientific Alice protests that routine ultrasounds are a safe way to show the baby’s status, Jenny resists the rational arguments.

“What I feel as a mother is stronger than facts,” Jenny says. And that conversation, in a nutshell, is the play Mosquitoes. Alice and Jenny love each other, though they don't readily admit it. 

But there is much more, as Kirkwood has us live through the lives of these women, and those around them. However it begins to feel interminable by the end of Act 1, which has no hint of intrigue about what comes next.

We meet the girls’ mother, Karen (Meg Thalken) who believes she has incipient dementia, and is bitter about her late husband’s Nobel win, when she did all the research without credit. Thalken is quite good in a sometimes over the top role (though her speech leans toward the geriatric more than to British). We meet Alice’s significant other, Henri (Peter Moore), a scientist at the Hadron Collider who struggles to get people to remember he is Swiss, not French. Moore does a good job in his role. 

And we also have Alice’s teenage son Luke. Alexander Stuart is perfectly convincing as this angst-ridden, alienated teen, a high-school kid forced to leave England and struggling socially in Geneva. We have Luke’s one school chum, Natalie (Upasana Barath is endearing), like Luke a transplant who is his empathic friend. The two operate a second play within the play that adds to the length but does little to advance the story.

It is, however, Luke’s relationship with his aunt Jenny, as well as a subplot, that reveals the wealth of emotional strength that a more feeling and less thinking adult offers Luke. It is exactly what he needs.

And finally we have a character playing that elusive subatomic particle, Bosun. Played by Lyn Evans, Bosum steps in at transition points, including one that arrives following a scene that I was thinking would be the end of Act II. Evans seems to loudly declaim all of Bosun’s lines, which erased whatever power Kirkwood might have intended for them. The character is also a metaphorical stylization that added nothing but length to Mosquitoes.

Setting aside the criticisms, there is much good here, and Mosquitoes is Somewhat Recommended, largely on the basis of Julia Siple’s performance. Mosquitoes runs through November 9 at Steep Theater, 1115 W. Berwyn in Chicago.

*Extended through November 16th

Invisible, a new play by Mary Bonnett, tells a provocative story about a little known slice of history – the emergence of the women’s arm of the Ku Klux Klan – the WKKK. Bonnett is also artistic director of Her Story Theater, and has produced eight such works with powerful social messages.

Directed by Cecelie Keenan, Invisible (the KKK was known as the "Invisible Nation") is set in 1920 in Mound, Mississippi (a site of a native burial grounds). It centers on a trio of ladies - Doris, Lucinda, and Mabel - who are marketing Women’s KKK memberships through the social media of the day – door to door solicitation, marches, and nasty gossip about those who won’t join.

The poisonous dynamics are reminiscent of the ominous thumb of group-think social pressure seen in The Crucible, or Tracy Letts' The Minutes, but with a Southern drawl. Starting from a baseline of racism against African-Americans, the WKKK ladies of the 1920s welcomed only Protestant Northern Europeans and Anglo Saxons to their group.

Those who were unreceptive were shunned socially. Pro-scripted categories of white people – Catholics, Jews, immigrants – weren’t even approached, and along with black people, were targets of venomous attacks by the women’s group.

Interested in reducing marital violence and advancing education, these women were liberated on some levels. They had won the vote in 1920, and voiced ambition for loosening male dominion over political power. But this was restricted to advancing the fortunes of nice, Christian, white ladies like themselves. (Historically the group got the Texas Schoolboard to prohibit hiring Catholics as teachers.) Like the KKK, the women were nativists, anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic, organizing “Poison Squads” to denigrate enemies, and boycott immigrant-owned businesses.

“I hate talking this way,” says Lucinda before launching into another specious character assassination. “I really am a good person.”

The Ku Klux Klan issued the ladies’ chapters an organizing handbook, and Lucinda Davis (Barbara Roeder Harris) reads its advisories to her daughter-in-law Doris Davis (Megan Kaminsky), and Mabel Carson (Morgan Laurel Cohen) in planning sessions. Memberships in the WKKK are $10, which covers the cost of the robe and hood.

Mabel, the protagonist in the play, is an aspiring officer in the Mound chapter of the ladies KKK, encouraged by her husband, Tom Carson (Brad Harbaugh) into joining to advance the fortunes of their general store. An outsider, Mabel comes from Missouri (a Union state in the Civil War). As she witnesses Lucretia and Doris abuse David Stein (Richard Cotovsky), a Jewish reporter from the Chicago Tribune, Mabel pushes back, but only so far.

“Since when did we become so inhospitable to strangers?” she asks.
“Since these Jews and immigrants started taking over our country,” Lucinda replies venomously, pressuring Mabel until she turns Stein out in the night.

The performances and production values are good, with sets by Kevin Rolfs and costumes by Shelbi Wilkin. Mabel and Tom are a convincing couple with good chemistry. Harbaugh registers Tom’s pain convincingly, though Cohen’s conflicted Mabel cries so often that even the script calls it out.

The play is burdened with a subplot that seems forced, to presumably to add a dramatic structure to Invisible. Likewise some questionable subplots are forced into the mix.

For example, Stein is driven into the swamp where he is rescued by the mysterious 11 year old Ghost Girl (Maddy Fleming is quite good in her role). She brings him to her foster home on a prehistoric Indian Mound where she lives with Jubal (Lisa McConnell offers a boisterous performance).

The one person of color in this show, exotic, exuberant multi-ethnic Jubal, a former Chicago artist and sideshow performer, is the lone complainant about Klan-led injustice to black people – drumming and shouting in protest as corpses from lynchings pile up on the mound near her home. When Tom Carson tells her she will go to hell for her behavior, she drawls, “I am in hell, Master Tom – I lives in Mississippi!”

Jubal later convinces the reporter Stein to pitch a story about lynchings, and the Tribune agrees to cover it. A worthy endeavor, but a distraction from Invisible’s main story.
Nevertheless the performances are good, and the fundamental storyline strong enough to overcome these diversions. Bonnett’s works for Her Story Theater are aimed at “shining a light on women and children in need of social justice and community support.”

Invisible is intriguing, with its anti-immigrant tones resonating strongly today. And it shows how easily a woman can pressured socially down a perfidious path. But in highlighting the struggle of the protagonist Mabel amidst the racial depradations of the Klan against black people, the script indirectly conjures up another contemporary struggle – toxic white feminism. It's recommended. Invisible runs through November 3, 2019 at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont in Chicago. 

The late British playwright Peter Shaffer broke into new and radical territory with Equus. First produced in 1974 (and based loosely on a true event), the play tells of a grotesque crime by a teenaged boy, Alan Strang (Sean William Kelley is excellent) who put out the eyes of six horses in a stable. Strang is given a purposeful but extended nude scene, and presents us with his religio-erotic (though not sexual) relationship with horses. It tends to sell a lot of tickets.

Shaffer, who rose to even greater fame for his 1979 Amadeus – both a hit play and movie - was masterful in crafting “thinking” works. In Equus, he gives us the character of Alan's therapist Martin Dysart (Rian Jairell brings an understanding of the role), a figure struggling through his own dark night of the soul. Dysart feels he is on a treadmill, only healing young people who, as they "normalize," lose some of the magical and imaginative qualities that also drive their aberrant behaviors. 

That is particularly the case with Alan, who has developed an emotional fetish for horses in a Dionysian merger of the sexual and spiritual. But following the horrifying incident (it is shown as a recalled memory only at the end of the play), Alan is withdrawn, nearly catatonic, staring at the television, babbling advertising jingles, with difficulty relating or, understandably, recounting the event. A court magistrate, Hesther Salomon (Alexandra Bennett), brings the bizarre case to child psychologist Dysart, who must unravel what led the boy to his heinous act, and try to heal him.

But as he unwraps Alan's psyche, Dysart increasingly regrets his own station in life. “This is more than professional menopause,” Dysart complains to Hesther. "I'm jealous of Alan Strang. Such a fantastic surrender to the primitive!" 

Hesther's character as a fellow professional allows the two to comment for the audience’s benefit on the progress of the case. Dysart also looks for clues in the tensions between Alan’s parents, the excessively religious mother Dora Strang (Julie Partyka) and his austere atheist father Frank Strang (Robert Tobin).

AstonRep has given this production of Equus at The Edge Theatre much of the power that must have made the original so notable – using choreography and stylized puppetry (Jeremiah Barr) - with imposing horse masks on six players. As Dysart painstakingly works to get Alan Strang to open up, we learn of the boy's history working with horses, his love for them, and Alan re-enacts scenes with his favorite horse - Nugget – very well played by Jordan Pokorney who doubles as the stablemaster, Horseman.

In a notable scene, Alan mounts Nugget for a midnight ride on his beloved animal. And gradually, using hypnois and other therapeutic techniques, Dysart reveals Alan's skewed and rather sexualized worship of Nugget, who in Alan’s mind transforms to a horse god, Equus. Some of the therapeutic descriptions Dysart gives to Hesther sound a little dated, or even a bit offhand. Dysart uses the term "abreaction," something that dates back to Freudian psycholanalysis and is less current today. In describing his plans to trick Alan into deeper revelations, he sounds almost unprofessional by today's standards. 

There is an intensity and earnestness in the performances in this Equus – but director Derek Bertelsen needs to help the actors play off one another a little more, Instead, each actor plays for himself – though sometimes to good effect. Sean William Kelly as Alan Strang is a protrait of youthful estrangment, so his lack of chemistry with Dysart almmost makes sense - but seems unlikely in therapy. Alan's young love interest Jill Mason (Malia Hu) makes a good match with a nice frisson. By contrast, in scenes with Dysart it is as though the actors are in two different plays. 

Julie Partyka is compelling as Alan's mother Dora. “I’m a parent. We gave him the best we could. Whatever has happened has happened because Allen is ’him.’ He is not just the sum of us added up. The devil isn’t what mommy said or daddy said."

Where this Equus stumbles – and perhaps it was just the performance I saw - was in hearing and understanding the power of Martin Dysart’s internal struggle. Jairell gave us a rushed, and consequently somewhat monochromatic delivery. Even more so for Hesther Salomon – Bennett sometimes talked over the ends of Jairell’s sentences.

Because Dysart is so essential, I would love to see the language slowed down just a bit. Regardless, Equus is highly recommended for the quality of this production, and for a chance to see this ineffable work by a dramatic master. Equus runs through October 27 at The Edge Theatre, 5451 N. Broadway in Chicago.

When you arrive at Windy City Playhouse South for Every Brilliant Thing, you will be ushered into an elevator and emerge at the third floor loft theater entrance.

There a young woman greets you at a display case. Somehow, she seems to be in character already. In fact you will soon learn that this is not the house staff, but an actor, Rebecca Spence, and she is indeed already performing her role as Narrator. But Spence does much more than play this demanding role, one that stretches the definition of scripted performance.

Watching Spence (and unfamiliar with the play) I left completely convinced she had authored Every Brilliant Thing as a performance piece based on her own life. In fact, Every Brilliant Thing, written in 1984 by British playwright Duncan Macmillan, had a successful Broadway run, and was filmed for HBO.

It tells the story of a young adult (it has been played by men and women) whose mother veered into deep depressive episodes, eventually taking her own life. To contend with this, Narrator – who relates tales from elementary school, high school, college and adulthood – sought to create uplifting lists of “every brilliant thing” (puppies, rainbows, songs by Sarah Vaughan, etc.).

As a schoolgirl Narrator offered her first list of 300 items to boost her mother's spirits. As Narrator ages, the list grows from hundreds to thousands, and includes age-appropriate items. Eventually we realize she is keeping the list as her own coping mechanism to fend off adversity, as when her mother meets her end, or when Narrator's husband leaves her.

In keeping with Windy City Playhouse's immersive theatrics, Every Brilliant Thing has the Narrator involve the audience, choosing for each a “brilliant thing” from a collection in the display case that she deems is suitable to them. Seated in black leather club chairs, the each person is called on to read a word, phrase or long descriptor when Narrator calls out an associated number attached to the object they hold.

But Narrator goes even further – designating audience members to play key roles in the show, sometimes they follow her lead by reciting lines she dictates. Spence showed great insight in her selections of audience performers to play characters that Narrator met along her life’s path: a veterinarian, her father, a high school counselor, a girlfriend, a young man whom she marries and separates from.

That last one, a good looking dark haired man, gamely played through flirtatious library encounters, betrothal, wedding, and separation. The audience performer who played the high school counselor who good naturedly removed his shoe to turn his sock to a hand puppet - which he named "Trouble" to the delight of Spence and the audience.

Despite the dynamically constructed script, Every Brilliant Thing manages to have a dramatic arc, and a poignant storyline with touching moments, and a bottom line. "It occurred to me how much the list changed how I see the world along the way," says the Narrator.

With director Jessica Fisch, and the properties designer Eric Backus, Spence must be given great credit for managing the audience member performances. Given the ups and downs of attendance, it's hard to predict exactly what your experience of Every Brilliant Thing will be like - but with Spence in this role, I bet it will be good. Every Brilliant Thing runs through December 15 at Windy City Playhouse South in the Automobile Row District, 2229 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

Booming thunder unleashed by a violent storm marks a scene change in King Hedley II, the sound and fury expressing the clash of deep emotional confrontations playing out as the stage goes to black.

Under the direction of Ron OJ Parson, Court Theatre gives us what is surely a definitive rendition of August Wilson’s 2000 play.

Wilson gives vivid voice to the life of his African American characters, showing them hemmed in and struggling for opportunity accorded readily to others. In King Hedley’s 1980s setting, amid trickle down economics, Americans saw greater divides between rich and poor, and rising mass incarceration. And against this backdrop, Wilson’s characters live life – with all its glory, and all its monumental tragedy, which abounds in the play.

In King Hedley II, the action takes place in 1985 in the backyards of two modest brick homes. Following five years in prison, Hedley (Kelvin Roston Jr.) returns to the home where his aunt raised him, optimistic, and aiming to rebuild his life. He plans to marry Tonya (Kierra Bunch). His aunt died while he was away, and his birth mother Ruby (actress Taylar) is now living in the house.

Hedley plants flower seeds, a perfect metaphor for his aspirations to reclaim his life, then struggles to stop others from trampling his young plants, and dragging him down with pessimism. His mother warns him the soil is too weak. Tonya, already a single mom, rebuffs Hedley’s overtures.

“I got to make it whatever way I can,” says Hedley (Kelvin Roston Jr.). “I look around and say 'Where's the barbed wire?”
“You could cut through barbed wire,” says Mister (Donald L. Conner). “But you can’t cut through not having a job.”

The ninth in Wilson’s ten-part Pittsburgh Cycle, each play takes place in that city, and each in a different decade. A Pulitzer finalist, it earned Viola Davis a Tony in its original Broadway run. I had the chance to see it in 2001 at Goodman Theatre, and barely understood what I watched then.

But at Court I threw down my program and leapt to my feet to cheer and applaud, like the rest of the audience, even before the final spotlight ended. It is that good, and hopefully we the people are better audiences for Wilson than 20 years ago. 

Though August's womenfolk are more guarded than optimistic, there is a hopefulness brought to Hedley by his buddy Mister, who works in a nail factory. Characteristically, Mister is hoping for a raise, that never materializes, even though business is booming. Hedley is in line to work on a demolition job for the City of Pittsburgh, but his employer (presumed to be African American) was denied the contract because the bid was too low, and the city doubted his capabilities.

Hedley and Mister devise side jobs, including re-selling refrigerators and, as opportunities narrow, plan a heist at a jewelry store. The plan and execution will remind you of  David Mamet's American Buffalo.

Into this intriguing setting come two even more powerful dramatis personae: the neighbor Stool Pigeon (Dexter Zollicoffer), a quirky person who is a hoarder, and delivers thundering prophecies drawn in ominous tones from long Bible passages. 

The other arrival is Elmore (A.C. Smith), hoping to recapture his lost love Ruby, and aiming to unburden himself of a secret that Ruby wanted both of them to take to her grave. (No spoiler here.) 

Smith tears up the stage with his larger than life Elmore. But then so does Zollicoffer as Stool Pigeon, a haunting character impossible to forget. And Taylar, Conner and Bunch all deliver remarkably good performances. And Roston gives us a complex, and nuanced portrait of Hedley.  

Wilson, who died in 2005, loads his plays with high-octane dialog. These can be challenging to deliver, or watch – with extra hurdles in understanding the overtones for white people like me. Parsons, working with this great cast, keeps each performance in balance with the others.

This is no small achievement when you realize that any of these characters could be the main protagonist in any other play. And indeed some recur in other works in the Pittsburgh Cycle. Act I of King Hedley II runs 80 minutes; after a 10 minute intermission Act II runs 70 minutes. You will be amazed at how quickly the time passes. Highly recommended for those who like great performances, staging, and a complex play. See King Hedley II through October 13 at Court Theatre in Chicago.

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The immensely entertaining and surprisingly complex Bernhardt/Hamlet is a must-see at the Goodman Theatre. A hit at New York's Roundabout Theatre on Broadway last year, it’s very on-trend for contemporary feminist dramas playing out in sports, the workplace, and the arts.

It is also a rather delicious backstage drama, like The Dresser or Noises Off, but has more in common with Kiss Me Kate - another work that used Shakespeare as a plot point. In this case playwright Theresa Rebeck tells the story of Sarah Bernhardt (Terri McMahon) in her quest to play Hamlet – working against the odds, gender, and the advice of critics and colleagues.

"You cannot play Hamlet as an act of ego," says her paramour and devotee, playwright Edmond Rostand (John Tufts.) "All of theater is an act of ego," Bernhard counters, and the audience roars at the delivery and the truth of it. 

"A woman who does nothing is considered worthless," Bernhardt says at another point. "A man who does nothing is Hamlet!." 

And it's a true story that Rebeck makes gripping and fun. (Rebeck also wrote Seminar, a similarly language- and thought-centered work which I had the good fortune of seeing with Alan Rickman.)

In Bernhardt/Hamlet, director Donna Feore uses Rebeck’s script to show actors at work, mining Shakespeare for clues to character, struggling with motivation, and working assiduously to meet the demands of cadence and pace.

Much of the action takes place in Bernhardt’s Paris boudoir, where this attractive woman was waited upon by a coterie of fauning men. But the playful and exuberant Bernhardt never lets the under-fulfilled romance bother her, and Rebeck fends off melodrama by dropping in witty laugh bombs left and right.

"You've decided whether you'll like even before you have seen it," Rostand tells a theater reviewer, Louis Lamercier (William Dick). "Of course! I'm a critic!" Lamercier responds. More laughter. 

The Bernhardt character also takes men to task who would put her on a pedestal, but not really egage her mind. She excoriates playwright Rostand for writing the play, Cyrano de Bergerac, modeling his love interest Roxanne after Bernhardt. "How can you put all your genius into Cyrano and make Roxanne an empty vessel?" she asks. 

One also expects that a play about actors playing Hamlet might have some breakthrough moments of great Shakespeare. Be assured. Wise casting brings us two intensely good, full-fledged Shakespearean performers – as Sarah Bernhardt, Terri McMahon brings a bedrock of 23 years of performances at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but has all the range for this dual role.

Larry Yando, in the role of Constant Coquelin, is that world-weary trouper who has played Hamlet four times, but has now aged into the roles of Polonius and Hamlet’s father – and imparts acting advice to the less experienced players. When he turns on the power, it is electrifying. The cast is so good, the production values so high, and the play so entertaining there is only one thing to say: go see it.

Bernhardt/Hamlet is also a familiar story of actresses everywhere, who lose their grasp on major roles for stage or screen as their youth fades. These days actresses like Nicole Kidman, Selma Hayek, and Emma Thompson are defying this by successfully producing projects or scripts themselves.

And so did Sarah Bernhardt, and she did it way back in 1896. One of the first international celebrities, she achieved her global fame in analog: acting on stage, celebrated in newspapers, and promoted by posters and by word of mouth.

She was also the most prominent serious actor, among a handful, who successfully took her stage skills to the new medium of film, in 1900. That’s where the collective memory of my generation picks up on her. During her last quarter century and after, the term “Sarah Bernhardt” suggested a cross between an immensely talented stage beauty, who was also a diva – in other words, she knows her power, and how to use it. 

This is the character we meet in Rebeck's play. As she hit fifty, Bernhardt tired of playing Camille, her signature role – and she knew she was too old for the part, so she decided to try Hamlet. A master of her own fate, in 1893 Bernhardt became the manager of the Théâtre de la Renaissance, and in 1899 she relocated to the former Théâtre des Nations, which she renamed the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt and managed until her death in 1923. 

"I am not a tragic figure," Rebeck's Bernhardt asserts. "I do not play Hamlet as a woman. I play him as myself." And you can see Bernhardt/Hamlet through October 20 at Goodman Theatre.

In Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon, dolorous music accompanies the opening scene: a clearly debilitated woman is wheeled into her apartment, where she is eased into a bed in her main room. This is Paulina (Rebeca Alemán), and we see she is weak and tired.

Helping her is Rodrigo (Ramon Cámin) – we learn later he is a poet – and he methodically cares for her needs, clearly familiar with the routine tasks. Is she a stroke victim? We are not sure. He helps her practice her letters, then words and then pictures. The one-act play shows scene after scene, compressing an interval of two months into 90 minutes, as Paulina gradually recovers her ability to communicate, and more importantly, to understand, and the audience learns gradually with her as she recovers.

Paulina, it turns out, has suffered a traumatic head injury, blocking her memory. We discover she is a crusading journalist, spotlighting the heinous crimes of drug cartels that terrorize areas of Mexico. For this she was targeted for punishment. Steadfast Rodrigo is helping her regain her faculties, relating her past as she recovers her memory. We also have scenes in which multimedia presents memories from her daily life. 

The play is inspired by the true story of journalist Miroslava Breach Velducea, shot eight times and killed in Chihuahua, Mexico in 2017 as she was leaving home in her car, accompanied by one of her children. Breach covered politics and crime. A note found at the scene of the murder read: "For being a snitch. You're next, governor.--The 80,” the pseudonym of Arturo Quintana, who allegedly leads a criminal gang associated with the organized crime syndicate known as La Línea in the area. 

Aleman, an Argentine-born actor, delivers an exceptional performance...showing us with a seamless gradualness the recovery of a wounded individual. We also ponder the tragic agony of a recovery that brings with a punishing awareness – in the play, it takes weeks for Paulina to realize that she does not know where her mother and daughter are. These are powerful moments onstage.

We also share a wonderful opportunity to witness the universal nature of good acting, a craft that transcends cultural and language barriers. The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon, playing at Steppenwolf Theatre 1700, is directed by Iraida Tapias, and is being presented by Chicago Latino Theater Alliance as part of Destinos, the 3rd Chicago International Latino Theater Festival.

While Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon has political currency, it is also moving on a level of human drama. Alemán’s performance is exceptional – she also teaches acting through the Chicago-and-Caracas-based Water People Theater group. But the play itself suffers from requiring so much exposition to tell the story points, a drudgery that falls mostly to Rodrigo’s character. To make the play reach more audiences, it is delivered at the 1700 in English with Spanish supertitles – which is helpful even for English speakers. But it takes some unraveling for English speakers, anyway, to unravel what is happening on stage.

The Water People Theater relocated to Chicago from New York in 2012, though it continues working in Venezuela. Last year it received eight Chicago ALTA Awards nominations in 2018. In 2018, it presented MUSES, a fictional and extraordinary encounter between Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and American poet Sylvia Plath. Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon runs through October 13 at the Steppenwolf Theatre 1700 in Chicago.

In its opening scene, Blue Stockings sets us in a bustling 19th century train station, the crowd swirling quickly by, then shifting to slo-mo – just like a digital film – highlighting characters who soon become principal players in the action.

That cinematic touch seems to be used more frequently on stage, and underscores the growing crossover of film and stage. In fact, Blue Stockings - the true story of the struggle by 19th century British women for access to college degrees - is now being adapted for a television series by Jessica Swale from her 2013 script, which won a Most Promising Playwright award when it debuted at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

So this is a wonderful opportunity to see a significant work by a rising writer (Swale has two other movies in development). It is very well directed and produced by Spenser Davis for Promethean Theatre Ensemble (at the Den Theatre through October 13).

Following that opening scene, we quickly cut (movie style) to a foretaste of a future scene, where guest lecturer Dr. Maudsley (Jared Dennis) is holding forth:
“Except if theywith to sacrifice themselves, the higher education of women may be detrimental to their physiology,” he posits, noting the women who pursue education are of four types: scientists, mathematicians, writers, and “wealthy dilettantes” the latter known at the time as “Blue Stockings.”

When he reappears, Dr. Maudsley will also lecture on hysteria, “rooted in the Greek for ‘uterus’” he reminds the students. As preposterous as such assertions sound today, it was in fact exactly the type of “scientifically grounded” basis on which men objected to equality for women. “These are not opinions,” Dr. Maudsley says, “they are facts of nature proven by science.” And this sets the basis for the tension and drama that follow.

Girton College was founded in 1869 as the first of Cambridge University’s 31 colleges to admit women. By 1896, when Blue Stockings takes place, women also began agitating to vote – then restricted to males, just like the U.S. You may not need to know all the background to appreciate the play, but it helps – since Swale confronts us with the unbelievably bald misogyny of the period. These sentiments still infiltrate current debates, so revisiting them in Blue Stockings is instructive.

Girton’s headmistress, Elizabeth Welsh (Jamie Bragg), has been working steadfastly for decades to raise the stature of women’s education, arguing for the right to award degrees. Blue Stockings follows the action culminating in an 1896 vote by the all-male Oxford University Senate. But the men on campus, students and professors, found the prospect of women earning degrees just like men but threatening and perverse.

Promethean Theatre has developed a wonderful “Appreciation Guide” to provide background for the play. And I must admit, watching it with no with no factual context made me think of it more as a PBS-style costume drama, like Dowton Abbey – interesting, but not gripping. Being reminded that the Cambridge Senate voted down the degrees measure, and women were not awarded Cambridge degrees until 1948 (!) makes it matter much more.

Swale gives us another mark of a good playwright, with a host of distinct and memorable characters, and an entertaining story line, too. Girton lecturer Mr. Banks (Patrick Blashill) is that inspiring and nurturant educator who helps reorder the women students’ thinking. He has them dress in bloomers (those billowy 19th century pants) and teaches them to ride a bicycle, astride no less. (In real life, this happened, and the male students protesting women’s degrees burned in effigy a woman on a bicycle.)

With 19th century co-education comes the first challenges of keeping the young men and women safely separated, and all the efforts college students engineer to circumvent that control. Swale Tess (Heather Kae Smith) plays an everywoman student, a gifted mathematician and astrophysicist. The women student performances overall were far stronger than their male counterparts. For the first time society proffers a choice for her between romantic love and the life of a mind.

Swale shows this up to be a false choice from a male-dominated society. With the right man, she can have both. Among noteworthy performances are Jamie Bragg as schoolmistress Elizabeth Welsh; Cameron Feagin as Miss Blake, a lecturer and active suffragist; Patrick Blashill as Mr. Banks and Jared Dennis as Dr. Maudsley. Blue Stockings runs through October 13 at The Den Theatre in Chicago.

Directors say Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information is a challenging play, but in good hands, it is a treasure. And this is what we have at Trap Door Theatre’s production – an absolutely enthralling experience directed by Kim McKean.

It is like a tightly scripted improv show, packed with familiar personalities, some of them offbeat, playing roles that could share the stage in Lily Tomlin’s “Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe.” McKean’s accomplishment becomes clearer when you realize Love and Information brings us more than 100 sometimes loosely identified characters, mostly appearing as couples or trios, in a series of short scenes that end in blackouts.

These are gathered into seven sections, and within each, Churchill requires the director to set the order of the scenes and assign the roles. To further spice it up, the script packs an eighth section of scenes intended to be sprinkled at will in the show wherever they seem to fit.

And those scenes! Listing heavily toward couple encounters, Churchill shows us how information becomes a form of emotional currency in relationships. Couples share (or withhold) knowledge, leveraging it to gain power, debilitate, bond – or just plain flirt. A representative sample:

• A girl whose rare nerve condition doesn’t let her feel pain asks a man to explain what pain is. (He compares it to a failed love affair.)
• A man tries to impress an adoring girl by describing his research in animal learning, but ends up clinically describing dissection of chicken brains involved in his work. (She is not put off.)
• An aspiring male suitor brings a young girl a red flower. On his knees as her feet, his heart is full and open. She thanks him for it, profusely. Then too profusely, launching into a rattling, seemingly endless manic riff about how we see red, things they will do together, envisions a day trip on a train….as she goes on and on, he wilts.

Admittedly it is difficult to describe humor, and really which Churchill gives us is a dark and coldly clinical look at the world and those we share it with. Love and Intelligence doesn't traffick in sentimentality. It opens with a scene in which people are moving mechanically and seemingly inexplicably on the stage. A man enters the crowd, apparently paranoid. Then the electronic dance music rises and we see it is like a dance floor at a rave, and suddenly everything makes sense - but Churchill has pulled back the curtain and we cannot unsee the uncomfortable social aspects of that dance floor.  A  Here's a sample scene with a man who doesn’t recognize his wi

But I am your wife.

You look like my wife.

That’s because I am. Look, even that little birthmark behind my ear. Look.

Yes, I see it. It’s me.

Darling sweet, it’s me. I’m here.

No, she’s gone. They’ve all gone. Who’s gone?

Everyone I know. Everyone who loved me.

No, I love you.

I don’t want you to love me, I don’t know you.

There’s things only we know, aren’t there. That day on the beach with the shells. You remember that? Yes, of course. And cabbages. Why is cabbages a funny word, we’re the only ones who have cabbages as a joke because of what happened with the cabbages. Cabbages is a joke, yes?

Cabbages was a joke I shared with my wife. I miss my wife.

But I am. . . Let me touch you. If you’d see what it feels like to touch me. If we made love you’d know it was me because there are things we like to do and no one else would know that, if I was a stranger pretending to be her I wouldn’t know those things, you’d feel you were back with me, you would I know, please.

You disgust me. You frighten me. What are you?

Director McKean has made the most of this formula, selecting and ordering carefully from this smorgasbord of very fine writing, packing dozens of carefully honed mind-bending scenes by Churchill. Among Britain’s top ranking playwrights, Churchill is known best known this side of the Atlantic for her Cloud Nine or Top Girls. Most recently Chicago had a chance to see her Dark Mirror-style A Number, a stunning 2012 thriller produced at Writer’s Theatre in Glencoe last year. And McKean also brought in a spectacular cast, willing to go with a blank slate that evolved into this fine show: Whitney Dottery, Jake Flum, Brian Huther, Emily Lotspeich, Michael Mejia, Emily Nichelson, Keith Surney, Lilly Tukur, Carl Wisniewski. Love and Information runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturday’s through October 19 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland in Chicago.