Displaying items by tag: Christina Gorman

Kirsten Greenidge’s Morning, Noon & Night, currently receiving its Midwestern premiere at Shattered Globe Theatre, is an ambitious, mind-bending exploration of the “new normal” in post-pandemic America. Greenidge, a playwright unafraid of tonal hybridity, situates her story at the uneasy intersection of middle-class and magical realism. Under AmBer Montgomery’s direction, the production attempts to navigate the landscape of family connection, digital surveillance, and the psychic fragmentation wrought by living life through digital screens.

The play unfolds over the course of a single day in the life of Mia, a work-from-home mother teetering on the edge of burnout. Kristin E. Ellis anchors the production with a performance that captures both the brittle humor and simmering desperation of a woman expected to hold everything together. Her Mia is perpetually toggling—between Zoom meetings and grocery lists, between maternal patience and private panic. Ellis embodies the quiet terror of a generation of women asked to endure the unendurable with a smile.

Opposite her, Emefa Dzodzomenyo gives Dailyn a restless, electric presence. As the hyper-aware Gen Z daughter oscillating between existential dread and a yearning for authentic connection, Dzodzomenyo resists caricature. Her Dailyn is sharp, wounded, and achingly perceptive—someone who has inherited not only climate anxiety and algorithmic pressure but also the emotional residue of her mother’s exhaustion.

The supporting cast deepens the sense of a household under strain. Christina Gorman’s Heather, Mia’s friend and confidant, functions as both comic relief and quiet warning sign—her lingering pandemic anxieties and conspiratorial asides suggest how prolonged fear can harden into identity. Hannah Antman and Soren Jimmie Williams lend a jittery immediacy to Nat and Chloe, capturing the skittish vulnerability of teens shaped by social media’s relentless gaze. That said, both performers read slightly younger than I imagined the characters to be, which subtly shifts the dynamic; their portrayals emphasize innocence and volatility over the more self-aware cynicism often associated with girls of that age.

The production’s most striking presence is Leslie Ann Sheppard as Miss Candice, a “Donna Reed  - Father Knows Best” AI-generated avatar of curated perfection who steps out of the algorithm and into the family’s living room. Sheppard’s performance is chilling in its serenity. With a voice that soothes and a gaze that scans, Miss Candice represents not simply technology but the seductive promise of optimized living—an influencer deity promising order amid chaos. Her presence pushes the play from realism into something more speculative, even dystopian.

Jackie Fox’s set and lighting design effectively ground the story in its post-pandemic malaise. The living room, cluttered yet aspirational, feels very lived-in and slightly unraveling. The use of projections is particularly striking; at times the audience feels as though it is peering through a phone screen. Notifications flicker, curated images intrude, and the boundary between the digital and the tangible dissolves. The design serves as a digital mirror—reflecting how social media refracts reality rather than simply documenting it.

Yet for all its thematic ambition, the production occasionally exposes a disconnect between script and staging. Greenidge clearly has much to say about female rage, consumerism, intergenerational trauma, and the violence of constant connectivity. However, Montgomery’s direction seems to engage these ideas primarily at a surface level, with moments of genuine thematic revelation passing too quickly to fully resonate. The result can feel unintentionally algorithmic—significant insights obscured beneath repetitive beats.

Moreover, despite the performances and the evocative design, the stakes never quite rise to meet the play’s expansive conceptual ambitions. Whether this disconnect stems from the script, or the direction is difficult to determine, but the result is the same: the looming threat of digital colonization and familial fracture hover suggestively rather than landing with decisive impact. The danger feels atmospheric instead of urgent, diffuse rather than devastating.

Morning, Noon & Night offers a portrait of contemporary anxiety, capturing the low-grade dread of a culture caught between the longing for authentic connections and the seductive pull of curated isolation. Like the screens it interrogates, the play pulses and glitches—at times mesmerizing, at times disquieting—but always insistently present, morning, noon & night.

RECOMMENDED

When: through March 28th

Where: Theater Wit, 1229 W Belmont Ave, Chicago, IL 60657

Running Time: 90 minutes no intermission

Tickets:  $20  -  $60

773-770-0333

www.sgtheatre.org/season-35/morning-noon-night

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

Shattered Globe’s 35th season continues with the Midwest Premiere of Morning, Noon, and Night, a mind-bending exploration of teens, family, surveillance, and connection in a post-pandemic world by Obie Award-winning playwright Kirsten Greenidge, directed by SGT Associate Artistic Director AmBer Montgomery.

Previews start February 13. Performances run through March 28 at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. Tickets, on sale now, are $20-$60. For tickets and information, visit sgtheatre.org. For the latest updates, follow @shatteredglobe on Facebook and Instagram. 

It’s hard raising a teenager. For Mia and her daughter, Dailyn, it’s not going smoothly. They both want everything to be perfect when older sister Alex comes home for her birthday. But when an unsettling visitor steps out of the algorithm, their best laid plans glitch into pure chaos. Reality blurs in this sharp and stirring drama about how the “new normal” is pretty weird.

“Morning, Noon, and Night is exactly right for this moment, as we navigate life after 2020,” said director AmBer Montgomery. “I hope this production provides a space to reflect on who we’ve become since the world shifted, to laugh at ourselves, to grieve what was lost, and to imagine how we can continue to care for one another as we step into an uncertain future. Through Kristen Greenidge’s extraordinary writing, through lots of magic and the wisdom of youth, this story reminds us of our resilience and the enduring strength of community. I am so honored to share it with Chicago.” 

Shattered Globe’s cast for Morning, Noon, and Night features SGT Ensemble Members Christina Gorman (she/her) as Heather and Leslie Ann Sheppard (she/her) as Miss Candice, with Hannah Antman (they/she) as Nat, Emefa Dzodzomenyo (she/her) as Dailyn, Kristin E. Ellis (she/her) as Mia and Soren Jimmie Williams (she/her) as Chloe.

The production team includes Jackie Fox (set/lighting designer), Kotryna Hilko (costume designer), Abboye Lawrence (projections designer), Persephone Lawrence-Wescott (props designer), Stephon Dorsey (sound designer), Sydni Charity Solomon (assistant director), Ariel Beller (stage manager), Emily Nicholas (assistant stage manager) and SGT Ensemble Member Adam Schulmerich (production manager).

Morning, Noon, and Night premiered at Company One Theatre in Boston in April 2024. Shattered Globe’s is the second production of Greenidge’s timely new play.

Ticket information for Morning, Noon, and Night

The first preview of Morning, Noon, and Night on Friday, February 13 at 7:30 p.m. is Pay-What-You-Can. Previews continue Saturday, February 14 at 7:30 p.m., Sunday, February 15 at 3 p.m., and Wednesday, February 18 at 7:30 p.m. Performances run through March 28: Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m. No show Friday, February 20. There’s an added 3 p.m. matinee on closing day, Saturday, March 28. Run time is 95 minutes with no intermission

For tickets and information, visit sgtheatre.org, call the Theater Wit box office, (773) 975-8150, or purchase in person at Theater Wit. Take advantage of early-bird discounts. Otherwise, previews are $25. Performances are $20-$60 ($20 for students, veterans, active military, teachers, and under 30; $40 general admission; $60 for those who want to support accessible theater). For group discounts, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call (773) 770-0333.

Access Services

Audio Description and a Touch Tour for patrons who are blind or have low vision will be offered on Friday, March 20. The Touch Tour begins at 6:15 p.m. Show at 7:30 p.m. 

Shattered Globe will offer a captioned performance on Sunday, March 22 at 3 p.m. for patrons with hearing loss. Assisted Listening Devices are available for all performances.

Theater Wit is wheelchair accessible. All patrons with disability needs are invited to purchase $20 access tickets with the code “ACCESS20” at Theater Wit’s checkout page. Please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to ensure the theater can reserve the right seat for your needs.

Literary adaptation for the stage can be tricky. Even trickier is bringing the complex work of Dostoyevsky from the page to the stage. Shattered Globe opens its season with Chris Hannan’s 2013 version of ‘Crime and Punishment’. Under the direction of Louis Contey, this unique production is fresh and exciting.

As anyone who has read the lengthy novel by Fyoder Dostoyevsky can attest, this is not an easy work to muddle through. While not the most accessible novel, those who take on the challenge will surely be rewarded by richly drawn, and somewhat disturbing scenes that linger in the memory. Hannan’s script gets right to the point. Instead of long passages of internal monologue, his Raskolnikov (Drew Schad) has fever dream conversations with the people in his life. This device ensures a much more engaging presentation, though Schad is entirely capable of carrying the monologs on his own.

Between Hannan’s script and Contey’s vision, there’s a very artful quality to this production. Unlike the novel, the plot of this play is easy to follow. The ethical debates Raskolnikov has in his head are shortened and the scene work is very strong. The murdered pawnbroker is played by Daria Harper. In her scenes with Schad, she’s nearly diabolically evil. She represents the greedy reality of the world in which Raskolnikov lives. Conversely, Harper is perfectly double cast as doting mother Pulkheria Alexandrovna. Christina Gorman plays his sister Dunya with the same grace and elegance she consistently delivers in Shattered Globe productions. Rebecca Jordan brings to life one of the novel’s most unpleasant characters, the wife of a drunkard who’s killed by an unconcerned buggy driver. Watching her unravel throughout the play is unsettling and heartbreaking.

With a peak interest in true crime shows and podcasts, ‘Crime and Punishment’ is very timely. It asks its audience whether religious morality or utility should be the guiding compass in life. Hannan, like Dostoyevsky, seems to believe that an action should be judged by its usefulness rather than its means. What we have here is a play that works to convince its audience that we should be sympathetic to a cold-blooded murderer. And it works. By the end of the play you’re on the murderer’s side. Perhaps the next time you turn on 48 Hours, put yourself in the killer’s shoes rather than the victims. Would you see it differently? Does anyone have a right to murder?

Shattered Globe dispenses with all the clichés of literary adaption and serves up an emotionally powerful interpretation of ‘Crime & Punishment’. Great performances and non-traditional storytelling make this a definitive adaption. Those who were not fans of the novel in school may find that there’s more to this story for our times than we’d like to admit.

Through October 20 at Shattered Globe Theatre. Theatre Wit, 1229 W Belmont Ave, 773-975-8150

Police brutality is nothing new. Having it broadcast on national news sources, however, is. The deep South in the 1960's wasn't a fun place to be if you were anything but a Christian Caucasian. Shattered Globe Theatre concludes its twenty-fifth season with Matt Pelfrey's adaptation of John Ball's best-selling novel "In the Heat of the Night." The film adaptation starring Sidney Poitier went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. 

Pelfrey's script keeps with the original time and setting, but adapts with a degree of hindsight. He's also good at keeping the pot boiling until the final conclusion, even if the dots don't exactly connect in the end. With the success of TV series like "Making a Murderer" and the podcast "Serial" - audiences can't get enough crime thrillers. What these all seem to have in common are police inadequacy. A disappointing trend among rural police forces. "In the Heat of the Night" tells the story of a small town reeling after a local real estate tycoon is murdered. The prejudiced, and largely incompetent law enforcement can't seem to find a suspect. After they accidentally profile an African American from out of town, they get help from an unlikely source. 

Louis Contey directs a large, and talented ensemble cast. Unfortunately the script is a bit clunky in parts. Too many entrances, exits and costume changes make for a puzzling caper. There's fun in the noir-esque stylings of Contey's vision, but it conflicts with the bigger themes this source material addressed. Character development suffers and the message of Ball's original novel gets a little muddled in empty one-liners and racial slurs. There's a major opportunity here to make biased police officers more three dimensional and Drew Schad as Sam Wood does his best to navigate the dialogue. Joseph Wiens' performance as Chief Gillespie is intense, but at times cartoonish. Christina Gorman as the victim's daughter is a high point, however brief. 

"In the Heat of the Night" is a sultry, and somewhat topical thriller. Its brevity and mathematical approach make for a satisfying murder mystery. What it occasionally lacks in substance it makes up for in exciting stage combat. An atmospheric who-dunnit, akin to "Twin Peaks." 

Through June 5th at Theatre Wit. 1229 W Belmont Ave. 773-975-8150.