Kimberly Katz' Platinum Press

I enjoyed this piece about an upper middle class family in Glencoe struggling to welcome an errant family member home after his five-year stint in prison.

Tony nominated actor Kevin Anderson plays Doug, the black sheep of the family and does a great job portraying the wild mood swings a person might experience trying to fit in and accommodate alienated family members as he adjusts to the basics of having a nice place to sleep again, nice food to eat and nowhere else to go. Kevin, who is originally from Gurnee Illinois, is well cast in the role and has a good sense of comic timing. Now at age fifty, he has the depth and road weariness to make you believe he is the disoriented, loser of this well educated, moneyed family.

Francis Guinan also gets high marks for his role as the neurotic, out of work, ineffectual father figure. Guinan’s high strung, detail oriented performance made me actually squirm in my seat with its authenticity. I was waiting for his character to explode, which he does finally when he discovers his precocious genius child has purposely killed all his exotic fish.

I also enjoyed Cynthia Baker’s portrayal of her character “Betty”, a cougar who has been writing to Doug while in prison and who desperately and futilely tries to win his affection and trust by showering him with expensive gifts and unconditional love but to no avail as he bluntly reminds her over and over, “I’m not going to f-ck you.”

Kudos also to set designer, Jeff Bauer, who has designed a sumptuous, spinning set that really makes you feel you are inside and on the patio of a gorgeous Glencoe million dollar home on the edge of a forest preserve.

The luxury and beauty of the home are also quite sterile in the way that many of these homes are and serves to exemplify the main theme that no matter how nice your home,

if you aren’t happy inside it, you might as well be back in prison - prison of another kind.

The feeling of isolation in the home with it’s track lighting and vaulted ceilings, completely surrounded by trees also serves the play in that each family member are so lonely themselves, that just having Doug’s presence there in this big house is a welcome, distraction, kind of like welcoming home a new puppy. They are eager to play with him (Doug) but desperately afraid he will metaphorically crap all over the house and their lives.

There are a few problems with Joel Drake Johnson’s script that only he can iron out - places where the monologues are not cut properly and cause these fine actors to struggle to make them sound natural and believable.

Overall though, I think that the Chicago families who attend theater at Victory Gardens are very much like the one in this play and will see themselves in it in a new and ultimately positive light.

*photo by Liz Lauren - Kevin Anderson (left) and Bubba Weiler

When is the last time you saw full frontal nudity in the theater? Was it “Hair”, “Oh, Calcutta!” or maybe “The Blue Room”? Maybe you have never seen a play with nudity in it, well, here is your chance to experience the liberating effect of live theater specifically designed to give you the feeling that your body - despite its quirks or flaws - is OK just the way it is.

Laurence Bryan, my old friend and classmate from DePaul, is the Artistic Director of National Pastime Theater and he has assembled a really wonderful assortment of plays that each utilizes nudity in an artistically sound fashion. I have already seen two of the one act plays, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” deftly directed by another talented DePaul Alumna, Carolyne Anderson, and “The Living Canvas: Demons”.

I highly recommend buying the festival pass or daily pass to enjoy more than one show because they are all very different in their approach, some farcical, and some more sensual or dance oriented and taken in combination you really get the full effect of  a democracy of positive body image that the Naked July Festival is trying to convey.

“The Emperor’s New Clothes” is a light, funny, very clever take on the original tale by Hans Christian Andersen with a satirical political twist thrown in for good measure.

“The Living Canvas: Demons”, is the seventh show by this company, directed by founder Pete Guither and, by using projected light over nude dancer and actors bodies, beautifully portrays the journey into the mind of an autistic girl and her sister’s attempt to understand that world. It was tremendously moving and exciting to watch. The performance of the lead dancer Emily Mark, who portrays Lily the autistic, was worth noting as she was not only an accomplished dancer but also an accomplished actor in expressing without words a very precise and deeply moving sense of what it must be like to be trapped in a body and mind afflicted with Autism. Also, I think it is a tremendously courageous task to undertake a role like this involving nudity from beginning to end. The neat thing about “Living Canvas” shows is that at the end they allow the audience to strip down and join them onstage under the lights and a lot of people actually went for it and joined in. That in itself was a beautiful, free love kind of thing to see happen in a theater setting in the year 2010, not 1968!

I’ll be honest, I was skeptical. I have always felt that nudity in the theater is something to be avoided at all costs to avoid damaging the delicate psyche of a good actor. However, when it is undertaken in the way that Naked July Festival has with a real eye for liberal thought and artistic merit, it is a tremendously exciting and liberating experience rarely encountered in traditional theater going.

I especially enjoy returning to the atmospheric and historic National Pastime Theater (4139 N. Broadway), which was an actual speakeasy for almost twenty years and fills it’s lobby with wonderful local artwork for sale in the theme of the shows currently running.

I highly recommend attending the Naked July Festival: Art Stripped Down, and I look forward to seeing the last two pieces, “Eros” and “The Tumultuous Tale of the Tragically Transparent Tunic” next weekend. See you there!

Call 773.327.7077 for performance times or check in at www.np2.com.

“Fuerza Bruta: Look Up” was hands down the most exciting, sensual, life affirming theater piece I have seen in years!

 From the moment you enter the theater, Fuerza Bruta, which means “Look Up”, takes the "fourth wall" and literally breaks it over the audience's head - explosive! When I got home I found confetti in my undergarments. It was awesome!

I knew this was going to be a different kind of show when I walked into the normally staid Auditorium Theatre lobby and found a full fledged bar and disco party going on. I love the feeling of disorientation that occurred as we were ushered into the theater and away from the seats right onto the stage. I had no idea we were about to stand for the entire hour and fifteen minute show. As we got onto the stage, which also had club music pumping, the crowd looked expectantly around at each other, some dancing, and most wondering where the set actually was. Suddenly out of the darkness, a spot lit, beautiful man in a white business suit appears walking purposely on a treadmill. Soon he is running at full speed and, with the help of a harness, is eventually jumping through solid brick walls, which explode into bits onto the audience and without any words really gives the feeling of the obstacles we face in modern life. 

The dances grow more and more intense including two dancers flying/fighting/dancing up a twenty foot, undulating wall of color and silver fabric. During intervals a DJ sprays the crowd with a fine mist of water while music pumps and a fog horn blows, almost as a cue for the crowd to start jumping up and down, turning the entire stage into a bouncing rave.

Without giving away all the spectacles, one of the most remarkable is a transparent latex sheet like a gigantic kiddy pool that holds five female dancers, clad only in childlike cotton shorts and tops slipping and sliding like playful dolphins over the audiences heads. The occasional breast innocently and sensually pops out as the latex swimming pool is lowered right down onto the audience’s heads.

I can’t say enough about how refreshing it is to have the fourth wall of the theater broken down so completely, actively involving the audience directly in every action that occurs onstage. It really gives the feeling of great sex with plenty of passionate “throw down” as the crowd is moved, seemingly effortlessly, in the dark through one set change after another. As you are moved from one spot to another and another, a dynamic stage full of dancers rises out of the darkness giving you that wonderful feeling of awe and wonder about what will happen next in the play and how in the world did I get in this position?

I loved the attitude of the dancers, they seemed to have a gusto for life and a saucy, get up off your asses energy that radiated through the audience, making us dance and respond where we would all normally be sitting quietly in our theater seats hoping not to be singled out into participating.

One of the most beautiful and surprisingly “wet” moments of the show comes at the end where a rain shower opens up right in the center of the audience, pouring down large warm round drops of water onto whoever is willing to jump in and dance. After a brief hesitation that my blouse might be turned into a transparent wet t-shirt like the dancers in the pool, I just jumped in and danced and was happily drenched by the heated rain shower in just a few seconds. I really felt transported to a party somewhere on a beach in Rio, everyone’s arms upraised, jumping and dancing with friends and strangers, free and unfettered by the any of the usual protocol of theater decorum or life in the city.

I can’t recommend seeing this show highly enough. My suggestion to really get the full experience is to go with some good friends, have a drink or whatever loosens you up before this show and wear comfortable shoes.  If you see Fuerza Bruta prepare to have your mind blown by some incredible dancing and acrobatics and be willing to get really WET!

“Fuerza Bruta: Look Up” is playing at the Auditorium Theatre through July 25^th. For more information on this amazing show, visit www.auditoriumtheatre.org.