Something Clean, directed by Lauren Shouse, gives us a compelling story, very well acted, and with that touch of magic that comes from a great chemistry in the performers.

The script (by Selina Fillinger) is notable for the way it depicts real human beings who develop and change in the course of the action. Fillinger is an actor, and it shows in the dynamic, truly living characters she places onstage.

It is a story for our times, and tells of three people whose lives have been impacted by a sexual assault. One, whom we meet later in the action, is Joey (Patrick Agada), a tall, strapping, charming, perpetually upbeat counselor at a downtown assault crisis center. 

But first we meet Charlotte (Mary Cross) and Doug (Guy Massey) whose 19-year-old son Kai was involved in an assault. Gradually we learn that he was not a victim (we never meet him), but was the perpetrator. Until Kai was convicted and imprisoned, his parents lived humdrum lives, pretty much on autopilot socially and domestically. Now, they visit their son in jail each week, and their angst festers and threatens their relationship. They are unsuccessful finding couples counseling, with Doug rejecting therapists weekly after a single visit.

As we get to know these two, we sense they are estranged from each other, physically aloof, and alienated from their social circle by the shame of their son’s crime. Charlotte cleans compulsively, and Doug buries himself in his work.

Eventually, Charlotte volunteers at the sexual assault crisis center – and her process of healing commences when she meets Joey. Agada’s performance is deft, and striking. His effusive personality (he is Joey with a "Y" because "I like to end my name with a smile!") makes these two seem an unlikely pair, but they develop a completely convincing bond that seems to draw energy from their work together as actors – informing their portrayals as emotionally connected workers at the center. This relationship and performances are what sustains Something Clean. It is hard to imagine it working without this level of excellence in the roles of Charlotte and Joey. 

Under Joey's nurturance, Charlotte emerges from her protective shell to become a sweet, charming and vulnerable woman. Charlotte’s emotional recovery contributes to Doug’s healing as well – something we see in real life when one person’s therapy ends up addressing their partner’s problems, too. The neutral gray set (Arnel Sanciano) is noteworthy, as is one of the props (which are byJonathan Berg-Einhorn): a book by Jennifer Weiner, I think it was Who Do You Love, a tale that mirrors the emotional dynamics of this show. 

I have to admit I sometimes approach Rivendell Theatre Ensemble’s productions with trepidation that I will end up being more edified than entertained. Something Clean does both, and in no small part because of Mary Cross ‘s great performance – she has her craft nailed, and watching her crawl out of her shell is a delight. Produced in partnership with Sideshow Theatre, (it received funding from The Eliabeth Cheney Foundation) which commissioned the work, Something Clean played to acclaim after premiering at New York’s Roundabout Theatre last month. It runs through July 21 at Victory Gardens Theater (the old Biograph Theater building).

The Ballad of Lefty & Crabbe is a new musical comedy that is so good I found myself lamenting half-way through Act 1 that its run at Underscore Theatre ends July 14 – or ever!

It is hard to imagine anyone not being smitten by it; it is just the type of show that you can imagine endearing itself like Hand to God or Avenue Q to an Off-Off-Broadway audience as it works its way into the hearts of investor angels.

Smartly written and played with boundless verve, it takes us through the rocky path trod by many early 20th Century Vaudeville performers, who hoped to save their flagging careers – decimated by the talkies – by transferring themselves onto celluloid in Hollywood.

The main characters are Theodore “Lefty” Childs (Kyle Ryan) and James “Crabbe” Hathaway (Shea Pender), a pair of comedians not unlike Laurel & Hardy, whose regular performance circuit is disappearing as playhouses convert to movie houses. They board a train to Hollywood and we are introduced to other performers doing likewise. 

On their arrival, the duo quickly is told their brand of humor won’t translate to the screen, and they are cast separately. The portly Crabbe plays the butt of jokes in a series of demeaning “Fatty” movies (a likely nod to the real life Fatty Arbuckle who hailed from Kansas City where this show originated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Arbuckle). The more photogenic Lefty repeatedly plays the unrequited suitor in romantic films. (This character type is vaguely like Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis’s co-star.) Lefty & Crabbe are disillusioned at first, then inspired when the big fat checks arrive from the studio.

We meet so many notable characters and performers it’s hard to list them all – but megaphone-wielding movie director Mac Lloyd (he’s co-author Ben Auxier) is a blast; and blonde bombshell Lolo Carmichael (Elisabeth del Toro) delivers great singing. You will probably enjoy the Mr. Burns-like producer wraith Mr. Rocksfeld Stephanie Boyd). Directed by Rusty Sneary with choreography by JennaShoppe, this show in Underscore’s tiny storefront with just a piano (Annabelle Rivak yields an orchestra from the keyboard) and a dozen earnest players features songs, singing, dance, and performances that are positively top drawer. 

There is also a depth to the show, as the characters eventually tire of the vaporous Tinsel Town success and long for live performances before real people. Perhaps we're hearing a warning drawn from another era's experience with media transfoprmation that seems to parallel the offline longing engendered by our own digital age.

The writing team (book by Ben Auxier, Brian Huther and Seth Macci with music and lyrics by Auxier and Huther) has clearly drawn inspiration from the vaults of old time stage comics to adapt into this show’s slapstick schtick, with fast-paced dialog, smart jokes and throwaway one-liners. It is so quick, my mind did double-takes, provoking laughter sometimes mid-way into the next scene.

The Ballad of Lefty & Crabbe was originally work shopped and produced by the Living Room Theatre in Kansas City, MO, and was produced last year in a new musicals festival in Chicago. You won’t want to miss this run at Underscore Theatre – it’s highly recommended. See it through July 14 at 4609 N. Clark St. in Chicago. 

When Chicago drag performer Joan Jett Blakk ran for President in 1992 – the year Bill Clinton was nominated – it was certainly the most outré act of political insurrection Americans had seen – for those who noticed, anyway. It’s unlikely the Tribune and Sun-Times gave her candidacy much coverage.

Now Steppenwolf Theater is telling her story, in Ms. Blakk for President, timed for Gay Pride Month and the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.Let me tell you something: it will make you laugh and cheer.

This show is particularly special for its genesis – co-authored by Tina Landau (who directed) and Tarell McCraney. McCraney also plays Joan Jett Blakk in a shoot-for-the-stars great performance. McCraney has also had several other plays produced at Steppenwolf. Oh, and he chairs Playwriting at Yale. Oh, and he also won an Oscar for the script with Barry Jenkins for Moonlight. To put it bluntly, this is a moment in Chicago theater you will not want to miss.

The real Joan Jett Blakk, Terence Alan Smith, was a transgressive performance artist who dashed straight cultural and political norms. Smith has collaborated on this play, which finally gives him his due. Running for Mayor of Chicago against Richard M. Daley in 1990, as a black, gay, man in drag, this Queer Nation Party candidate was well ahead of her time. Then she went on to the Democratic National Convention, gaining credentials and making it to the floor. OMG!

In fact, Joan Jett Blakk actually ran twice for President of the U.S. – in 1992 and 1996 – and some of her best lines are put to the service of this show – “Lick Bush in ’92!” “If a bad actor can be elected president, why not a good drag queen?” Doesn't that convey the power of drag?

Her platforms included legalizing all drugs, and to have “dykes on bikes” secure our borders. She posed as Angela Davis in a wicker chair holding a machine gun, but turning that violent Black Panther slogan “By Any Means Necessary” to something altogether mind-bending, delivering power on another plane. That is what Joan Jett Blakk was all about.

The very subversiveness of Blakk’s drag queen candidacy by necessity is ephemeral. Seeing it staged, against the gay liberation protests and demands made at the Madison Square Garden Democrativ Convention for AIDS support and abortion choice, reminds us of not just how far society has come, but how fragile those victories remain.

Landau and Jenkins felt that a more experiential play would tell the story better. So the Steppenwolf has been converted to a drag show bar, with a runway, cocktail table seating, and familiar denizens (some look like Village People types). The audience is encouraged to dress in drag, I suspect, because many did the night I saw it. And some ask questions of the candidate in a free-flowing town hall.

Ms. Blakk for President relates basic factual aspects of the history: how Joan Jett Blakk got to New York (the Limelight Nightclub flew her); where she stayed (a former trick put her up); how she got credentials, and her path the floor of Madison Square Garden, appearing after a young Rep. Maxine Waters and Gov. Mario Cuomo gave nominating speeches. We see clips of those speakers from the real convention.

It is a great story – and Landau and McCraney give us an entertaining semblance of a drag show, with the requisite vamping, dancing, vogueing – all supporting McCraney’s high energy performance. She reveals Smith’s internal process as he changes from an ordinary black man to Joan Jett Blakk, while lying in a stall in the men’s room at Madison Square Garden. It was an almost sacramental transformation, that emancipated Smith into the powerful Joan Jett Blakk. (Smith chose not to use falsies or hide his male body; she donned gold earrings, makeup, and a tight-fitting spaghetti strap flag dress before joining the throngs on the floor). You can see photos of the real dress on the real Joan Jett Blakk in the theater lobby. 

Smith’s achievement with Joan Jett Blakk would be easy for contemporary viewers to overlook – she arrived long before characters like Ru Paul and from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy became household names. If you were around at the time and became aware of her campaigns, you were either tickled or repulsed. But there was a deadly serious element here: gay liberation was taking to the streets, and Queer Nation and ACT UP were demanding action on gay issues– which were largely disregarded by the political mainstream.

Joann Jett Blakk’s campaign brought an element of street theater to bear on pressing issues: LGBTQ Rights, gay oppression and discrimination, marriage equality, and the AIDS crisis. The establishment could only have viewed Smith’s run as an act of political insolence.

This show is good theater, and the play itself accomplishes its slapdash tale-telling, albeit with some loose threads, like the recuring wraith, dressed in popular drag roles, who gives Joan guidance at crossroads in her life. (It kinda sucks.) We do get to know Joan Jett Black, and through her, Terence Alan Smith. We get a pretty good sense of the streams of gay political movement – the more fiery queer rage and the more conciliatory gay gradualists who find drag threatening. The play is male-centric, given its drag focus, a fact that is acknowledged from the stage.

And this work is self-aware – largely a farce, and admittedly so. But it does chronicle someone who made an important contribution to our poltiics and society, by any means necessary.” Ms. Blakk for President” is lots of fun, big laughs, and will also draw you to spontaneous applause for those political statements that ring even truer today. The experience is extended with after-show talks, the DJ SLO'MO at Steppenwolf's Front Bar on Friday nights, and other events. Ms. Blakk for President  runs through July 14 at Steppenwolf Theater. 

*Extended through July 21st

The Physical Theater Festival, running through June 9 at Stage 773, is an exciting opportunity to really enjoy theater from around the world.

It overcomes the biggest barrier to shows from abroad – language – by reducing or eliminating the spoken script, subordinating it to broad movement, pantomime, facial expressions - that convey as much or more than words do. It also shows off a performance style that seems to spring from improvisational roots, while drawing the better aspects of mime.

Now in its sixth year, the Physical Theater Festival runs in tandem with workshops by these accomplished global artists,for actors interested in learning the techniques. held in the same Stage 773 location at 1225 W. Belmont. It includes performers from Brazil, India, UK, Canada, Belgium and other countries, with acts that run from 60 to 90 minutes.

We had a chance to catch two of them – Next Door, performed by Out of Balanz, a duo from Finland and Denmark; and Helga: Life of a Diva Extraordinaire, a one-woman show by the Kallo Collective of Finland, performed by Henni Kervinen, a circus artist. It is nearly wordless, and both highly entertaining, and quite distinctive. Helga is performed as a caricature, and exaggerated protrait of an apparently crabby and lonely old woman spending her days reading the paper and drinking bitter expresso. But wait - she ahd a past, a glamorous and exciting past. She dispells our prejudices about her condition by moving onto a trapeze in a spoof of a high wire act. 

Next Door was a poignant telling of the story of a man in Copenhagen, Ivan Hansen, who becomes aware, belatedly, of the death of an elderly man in a neighboring apartment. The two were in close proximity – they were separated by the wall about 18 inches thick between their domiciles – but weren’t close at all.

Ivan learns, about a month after the fact, that his elderly neighbor had collapsed and died just the other side of his bedroom wall, probably while Ivan was standing by inches away. This realization triggers an hour-long depiction of his upbringing in Copenhagen, with reenactments of his best friends enclouters, the apartment in which he was raised with his brother, times with his parents, and his youthful adventures with his buddies.

The digressions are tremendously entertaining, with brief narrative transitions (in English), as the two characters move us to insights into our individual human conditions. It was very powerful. Here's a traler to give you a sense of what a performance is like:

The Festival begain in 2014, when Alice da Cunha and Marc Frost originally launched the Chicago Physical Theater Festival through the Artistic Associate program at Links Hall. The inspiration for the Festival drew upon their combined experience in London as physical theater students at the London International School for the Performing Arts (LISPA). Moving from London to Chicago, they were inspired to start a new festival to promote a more progressive, fresh and physical approach to theater-making in Chicago. Do try to catch one or more of these shows for an exceptional experience. And mark your calendar for the next series in 2020, so you don’t miss it. www.physicalfestival.com 

Organic Theater has done such a wonderful job in The Memo, it is hard to imagine a more perfect presentation of this play by Czech writer and statesmen, Václav Havel.

The Memo is at turns funny and unsettling. While the original The Memorandum is rooted in the totalitarian Eastern Europe, in Paul Wilson’s fresh translation as The Memo, it reads as a commentary on the increasingly overbearing pressures today to perform in professional settings. That pressure is often ratcheted up to effect performance toward ambitious goals, often harnessing social pressure and WeWork-style perks toward these ends.

Set in a mythical office (the set is all in grays is by Terrence McClellan), The Memo opens with clerks busily waltzing in a stylized manner through the office, processing manila files. This and other transition scenes are choreographed by Erica Bittner, with music by Tony Reimer. Then a derby-wearing executive arrives with a bright red folder.. When he places it in the inbox on the main desk, the movement screeches to a halt, and the action and dialog commence.

Inside that red folder is the titular memo. The Managing Director, Gross (Tricia Rogers) struggles to read what sounds like gibberish (does she have it upside down?). Soon her shark-like Assistant Director, Balas (Joel Moses) arrives, joined at the hip now by that same mysterious derby-topped exec Kubs (Subhash Thakrar). Kubs speaks only through facial expressions – Thakrar is marvelous throughout with his big face an d exaggerated mugging. 

Balas explains that this memo is written a new, language – PTYDEPE – scientifically created for precision of expression, as a means to improved efficiency. It is being rolled out in administrative offices everywhere.
And it is here where The Memo strikes a dagger in the heart of the contemporary cultural ethos: those who adopt PTYDEPE will succeed, those who don’t will fall by the wayside - not so different than office apps that come and go. We watch as the Executive Director is coaxed into signing an authorization for this roll out, which then leads to the implementation of a PTYDEPE training department, and an unfolding world where The Office comes pickled in an Orwellian brine of 1984.

For context, Havel was that rare “poet king” who helped lead his people to freedom. Before the Arab Spring there was a failed Prague Spring (1968), an effort to liberate Czechoslovakia from the Communist Block. Dissident Havel ended up in prison. As with China today and the Soviet Union back then, Czechoslovakia’s totalitarian censorship inspired a flourishing expression of dark humored workarounds, lampoons, and with Havel, absurdist plays like The Memorandum– discrete takedowns of the excesses of central control.

While the object of the humor was obvious to audiences - the government censors could not pin down objections in those subtly subversive words on the page, making the power of the works even stronger. Eventually Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution (1989) precipitated the fall of the Soviet Union, and Havel became president of his now independent homeland. 

The performances and Havel’s characters are magnetic. The intellectual currency that the Organic Theater’s troupe has brought to The Memo is inestimable, informing inspired performances by supporting actors like Mary Mikva as the Director’s Assistant and Kris Downing as Translation Assistant. (Downing was awesome in Organic's production of The Melancholy Play, too.)

In particular the performance of Nick Bryant as J.V. Brown, the PTYDEPE trainer, is inspired – and a tour de force of acting as he shifts back and forth translating nonsense language to English with the passion of a revival preacher. You will love and surely recognize the many denizens of this office, incluidng Stephanie Sullivan as Kalous; Schanora Wimpie as Masat; Kate Black-Spence as Kunc; and Laura Sturm as Talaura. Don’t miss the chance to see The Memo, running at the Greenhouse Theater through June 16.

Goodman Theatre’s staging of The Winter’s Tale, loaded with spectacle, would have seemed ridiculous and even unanchored 20 years ago. But with the surging popularity of those magical realms in the movies of the Marvel Universe – Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame - where characters die, then return, and are repeatedly transformed – well, director Robert Fall’s almost (but not quite) overwrought effort fits our times perfectly.

The Winter’s Tale was one of Shakespeare final works, and it is a unique form (perhaps why it is produced less often), neither a comedy nor a tragedy, but devised as a romance.
Unlike the powerful plays that are channeled intellectually to our emotions through telling dialog, as in the tragic Hamlet or comic Taming of the Shrew, The Winter’s Tale was meant as a theatrical confection, and entertains us more than it sways us.

In Goodman Theatre’s magnificent production, director Robert Falls has given us spectacle – five acts delivered as a series of elegant vignettes, presenting different facets of Shakespeare’s spin on several forms: Tragedy, Greek Drama, Pastoral Romance, Comedy & Clowning. At first, I admit I was suspicious of it all, wondering whether Goodman had bankrolled an overproduced folly. But by degrees I came to appreciate Falls' vision, and fell for it.

The Winter’s Tale opens with a brewing tragedy among royals – the deeply bonded kings of Bohemia and Sicilia are like brothers, who have a falling out, leading to tragic consequences and suffering. But Shakespeare uses the stuff of this tragedy as a formula: we are meant to behold the key points of very bad things happening.

For this, Falls puts the cast in contemporary evening wear and paper crowns – suggesting through what is almost a cliché in contemporary Shakespeare style, that this is a throwaway tragedy. The cast delivers it’s Elizabethan dialog persuasively. But the rather convoluted sequence of events is more like an exaggerated operatic storyline, than compelling trough of sorrow.

In a nutshell, Leontes (Dan Donohue - he was Scar in Lion King!) King of Sicilia becomes jealous of his pregnant wife Hermione (Kate Fry) and of his dearest friend, Polixenes (Nathan Hosner), the King of Bohemia, who he deems are cheating on him. Leontes shifts with inexplicable rapidity from bosom buddy to enraged adversary, though friends and advisers try to soothe him. Hermione delivers the baby, and Leontes puts her on trial, and sends the infant girl to die in the wilderness – of Bohemia. Oh and his young son Mamillius (Charlie Herman) dies, leaving Leontes heirless.

Subsequent scenes, including the trial of Hermione, now are given the look of Greek drama, or, Game of Thrones as suggested by the costume of Leontes steward, Paulina (Christiana Clark is a dramatic force). Hermione’s fate is sealed by Leontes' edict, but an appeal is made to consult the Oracle at Delphos on whether his jealousy is misplaced.

The play transitions a more pastoral setting, in wilds of the Kingdom of Bohemia, where the baby in the basket is threatened by a bear – played with convincing ferociousness by Mark Lancaster. The baby is saved when the bear chases after someone else (“Exit, pursued by bear” is the script line).

The curtain falls. And when it rises, we are greeted by a transitional interlude, with the character Time and letting us know in metered verse the clock has moved forward 16 years. This precious scene is like an elaborate decorative embellishment in an antiquarian book, letting us know we are entering a new episode.

The next parts of the play brings us to the pastoral setting of the Kingdom of Bohemia, and Falls gives us celebratory scenes following a sheep shearing, with bales of wool stacked high, and ala Nutcracker, a giant sheep and sheers. Against the setting of plenty we meet the surviving infant, Perdita (Chloe Baldwin) now a teenaged girl, and her boyfriend, Florizel (Xavier Bluell, who brings a real freshness and spark to his role). We are greeted by delightful scenes, and eventually the play makes it’s way back to the Kingdom of Sicilia, for a magical resolution in which all is forgiven, though not all live happily ever after.

For Shakespeare fans this production of a rarity makes The Winter’s Tale must viewing. But anyone who comes will find themselves richly rewarded. It runs through June 9 at Goodman Theatre.

Promethean Theatre Ensemble has brought to stage a very good production of Mad, Beat, Hip & Gone, a play that is a riff on the Beat Generation literary movement – specifically drawing from Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel, On the Road.

The script by Steve Dietz (Private Eyes) adopts aspects of the free-form writing style Kerouac called “spontaneous prose." Some of Kerouac’s works were drafted in days-long, Benzedrine-fueled writing jags. He famously typed on paper rolls fed continuously through his Underwood typewriter.

Kerouac’s On the Road tells of two young guys thumbing westward in the late 1940’s, on the make, and in search of themselves – aiming to join the Beat’s congregating in San Francisco. (These two guys would be the real life Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassaday, his buddy and fellow writer.) Like Hemingway before him, Kerouac also brought a macho flair to the pursuit of writing – he was a college football star and outdoorsman.

Mad, Beat, Hip & Gone similarly tells of two buddies who have recently graduated from high school in Nebraska – Danny Fergus (Pat King) and Rich Rayburn (Michael Vizzi), who end up on a similar sojourn, but for very different reasons. We meet the boys on their return from a local bar, where Danny was thwarted in his effort to pick up a girl when the real Jack Kerouac (unseen in the play) wows her with some spontaneous poetry – and gets her phone number. "What's the deal with guys like that," asks an astonished Danny. 

On the Road is widely considered a seminal work of 20th Century American literature. Artists including Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and The Doors credit Kerouac as a significant influence. And successive generations continue to rediscover Kerouac’s accomplishment in this and other writing such as Dharma Bums. Kerouac incorporates stream of consciousness, but with a sufficiently structured plot to bring us along on a story line.

Dietz trades on Kerouac’s tone, but delivers an interesting plot line to hold our attention – working in the back story of Danny and Rich to create a motivation as they depart on a road trip very much paralleling Kerouac’s, but for more personal reasons. (We’ll avoid a spoiler here.) Dietz also captures the post-World War II world where young American’s were hungry for purpose, and seeking themselves.

You don't need to know Kerouac at all to like this play. Dietz has mined the times and developed characters who express the views Kerouac would recognize.Danny's father, Albert Fergus (Ted Hoerl) who runs a gas station, hold's forth on automobiles and their role in the American dream. He sounds poetic, like Kerouac, calling the gas and car a sacrament. 

"A car was a little house you could take along with you," he says. "In a house, your window is your fate. In your car, your window is your vision." 

Kerouac, along with poet Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and William S. Burrough’s The Beat Generation were the seminal literary expressions of non-conformist movement that came to life after World War II, accompanied by free-form jazz, drug experimentation, and sexual liberation. This evolved into the hippie movement, and the continued streams of social change (and reactions to these changes) that brought us to our charged contemporary social landscape.

Dietz uses poetic language that harkens to Kerouac’s style, which doesn’t always provide literal clarity. But it works. 

He also injects (a welcome anachronism given the period of Mad Beat Hip & Gone) a strong female character - Honey Vance (Hilary Williams) – who like the boys is searching for personal answers by hitchhiking to San Francisco. In Dietz’s storyline we are faced with the unconscious machismo that characters like Kerouac (and anti-heroes of the period like James Dean) represent. We also get some choice "Mrs. Robinson" moments between Danny’s mom, Mrs. Fergus (Elaine Carlson) and Rich – well played by Vizzi and Carlson. I especially liked Ted Hoerl as Danny’s Dad; and Hillary Williams’ peformance was excellent.

Strong performances and a script that channels Kerouac make this worthy show, definitely recommended to get a flavor of the period and a sense of how the Beat Generation was greeted by middle America. Promethean Ensemble’s Mad, Beat, Hip & Gone runs through June 1 at The Edge Theater Off Broadway, 1133 W Catalpa in Chicago.

Too Heavy for Your Pocket at TimeLine Theatre is both an important play, and a good one. Powerful, but not too heavy to bear, with a rock-star cast directed by Ron OJ Parsons, it tells the story of the Freedom Riders – groups of blacks and whites who traveled through the segregated South in 1961 on Greyhound and Trailway's buses, asserting the new freedoms set under the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

It is written by rising talent Jeron Breon Holder, currently a writer on NBC’s New Amsterdam, who developed it while working on his MFA at the Yale School of Drama in 2016. This project was triggered by a remark his grandmother made about a young friend who abandoned college to join the Freedom Riders. What followed were weeks touring locations and studying events that transpired more than 30 years before Holder was born.

The buses were met often with violence, and the passengers beaten and jailed. As stories of the lives of black people's experiences in the South are emerging – think The Butler, Hidden Figures, Selma – our awareness of this heritage of injustice grows. This is valuable.

Evelyn (Ayanna Bria Bakari) and Sally (Jennifer Latimore).

The challenge is that however well intentioned, these stories are filtered – even unconsciously - from a viewpoint of white people’s participation. We get what is called White Gaze, or depictions focusing on White Saviors. The overarching cultural perspectives make us feel good about the values, but we miss the full story. Think of the difference between the sentimental The Green Book, and searing works like August Wilson’s Fences, or James Baldwin’s If Beal St. Could Talk.
Holder takes the Freedom Riders as a backdrop to an engaging and rather incisive portrait of two young married couples, best friends living near each other in rural Tennessee. Bowzie Brandon (Jalen Gilbert) has just won a college scholarship; his wife Evelyn (Ayanna Bria Bakari) is the breadwinner. Their best friends are Tony (Cage Sebastian Pierre) and Sally (Jennifer Latimore).

Brandon decides to join the Freedom Riders. Yet this choice is not instantly celebrated, and instead throws this small circle of friends into emotional chaos. Each embodies a facet of that period’s African-American culture. But what elevates the work is that each represents a slice of the human condition.

Sally is a church-bound social conservative, who questions whether challenging the status quo is the moral path. Hardworking Tony, the salt of the earth and Brandon’s best bro, quickly supports his buddy’s choice. Most complex is the response of Evelyn, a former nightclub singer who has settled into the straight and narrow path with Brandon, and has supported his dreams - until this one. Bowzie goes ahead anyway.

"When I get on that Greyhound bus, it's gonna be the first serious thing I've done in my life," Bowzie says.

But what begins as an exhilarating ride, turns into a grind, and Holder  gives us real people, not symbols. Bowzie is broken and he longs for home, the only jailed protester who doesn't hear from his family and friends, while back home, the tides of change, and the pressure of Bowzie's plight, impact his friends and spouse. 

His wife Evelyn cuts off communication for her own emotional protection. Finally Bowzie reaches Tony, who tells him to come home and take care of his wife, "You ain't no Martin Luther King," And we see Sally hit a breaking point, when she realizes she is mistreated in her home, as well as outside it. In a stunning scene, she laments, "Everyone treats you like a dog," she says. "I want a freedom ride for me! Where is my goddam freedom ride!" 

Jireh Breon Holder

Holder has done a great job establishing the settings and building the emotional dynamics of these characters -though at a couple points the exposition through dialog is a tad leaden. My heart was in my throat and my tears surfaced. But between the melodrama and angst, Holder drops in parodies of church life and services – in which Latimore’s gifts for mimicry, and Gilbert’s impersonation of the church pastor are priceless. Bakari’s irrepressibly beautiful voice surfaces immediately in the first scenes, as she simply hums to herself – and eventually in a nightclub scene with a scintillating song.

Shout-outs are due the dramaturg (Regina Victor) and artistic director PJ Powers) who brought this play to TimeLine; and to the scenic designer (Jose Manuel Diaz-Soto) for blending the household and its rural surroundings. And to whomever is responsible for this exceptional casting – the chemistry of these four is electric. Running at the TimeLine theatre through June 29, Too Heavy for Your Pocket is highly recommended.

Language Rooms is a convincing portrait of the hidden world of government interrogators. These individuals use cajolery and flattery, or fear and intimidation, to persuade individuals to spill their secrets – all on behalf of securing the safety of the state.

This two-act piece (one intermission) flies by, as the characters go about their work. But we see as well the impact that these information-gathering activities have on those doing the questioning. Their personal integrity is compromised as they lie to get truthful answers. It also faces us with a distasteful prospect: if our government and our society condones using intimidation and even physical abuse to gather data, are we not complicit?

Language Rooms involves two Arabic-speaking men on an unnamed government investigating team, quartered in a windowless vault with motorized doors that slide open with a whoosh at the touch of a button. Ahmed (Salar Ardebili) is a rookie, and his work is being closely watched by his supervisor, Kevin (Bradford Stevens). His co-worker, Nasser (Bassam Abdelfattah) is apparently even more fluent in Arabic than Ahmed, and is doing his best to help Ahmed with his weaker command of the language.

It soon becomes evident that the same hidden cameras and observational techniques used in questioning suspects are also trained on the men doing the questioning. They speak to each other with siielding their mouths from view, as they try to carry on private conversations. – just like any office, except that they have the continuous impression they are being watched. The manipulative techniques used on the subjects are also part of the office communication.

All of this provides a set up for a workplace wherein paranoia runs rampant. And as a subtext, these Arab-Americans feel they must not only do a good job, but prove their worthiness and loyalty to the government agency they work for - not to mention to society at large. The plot thickens dramatically as a new suspect is brought in, hooded and shackled: Samir (Bilal Dardai). This one, says Kevin, will be the great test for Ahmed, to prove both his loyalty and his competency. To avoid a spoiler here we can only say this sets up a dynamic, powerful tete a tete between the questioner Ahmed and his subject, Samir.

Samir (Bilal Dardai).

As the probe into his "suspicious" behavior goes on, Samir offers truthful answers, but not convincing ones. "You know the problem with being innocent is the facts don't serve you well," he says. "Innocence is not a good story."

This worldly, sophisticated script by Yussef El Guindi feels as though it will become a classic in the existentialist-absurdist roster, along with works like Miss Margarita’s Way or Master Harold and the Boys, plays in which a sinister undercurrent froths just beneath the surface. El Guindi provides a valuable service to us all just by telling this story. That he does it in such a timeless, universal way, will allow it to be told widely – and we hope it will be.

The production boasts extremely strong performances, especially Ardebili as Ahmed, the rookie; and Dardai, who delivers a perfect portrait of a good-hearted immigrant under a torrent of unfair questioning. I had a chance to see this show twice, April 22 and April 26 – and can say Ardebili had refined and heightened his delivery, and the dynamic between Ahmed and Nasser was even more intensely expressed. Director Kaiser Zaki Ahmed specializes in actor-driven new American plays, and has assistant director credits on two recent, illustrious productions: Guards at the Taj (Steppenwolf) and Hand to God (Victory Gardens).

The script is strong, but the first act could have been streamlined just a little, perhaps to give a stronger thrust to the dramatic rise and moment of suspense as it ends. The Broken Nose Theatre production of Language Rooms runs at The Den Theatre through May 18. It is highly recommended. www.brokennosetheatre.com.

City Lit Theater artistic director Terry McCabe brings us an inspired pairing with Two Days in Court, a double-bill of one act plays with a legal theme - and pieces not often seen.

The Devil & Daniel Webster is a 1938 play about the famed 19th century orator who reclaims the soul of a client who has ill-advisedly sold it to the devil; and Gilbert & Sullivan’s breakthrough 1875 operetta, Trial By Jury, brings us a woman who sues for breech of promise when her fiancé abandons her for another woman.

The legal themes aside, the works couldn’t be more different. Gilbert & Sullivan serve up sly wit in a marvelous parody of society, and skillful mimicry of operatic forms, in a highly polished, high caliber musical work. The Devil & Daniel Webster is interesting as a bit of Americana, a decidedly rustic and really rather primitive morality play that originated as a 1936 story in the Saturday Evening Post by Stephen Vincent Benet.

Despite being stilted and laced with phrases like “Tarnation!” The Devil & Daniel Webster is also packed with still-biting commentary on American social foibles, and a backcountry wit. (It’s set in rural New Hampshire sometime after 1830.) And it trades on the abiding respect and affection felt for Daniel Webster, whose oratorical skills were legendary – and thus the reason the character was tapped to argue the case to save a soul. The story is also a cultural meme, reappearing regularly including in a Simpson’s episode and in a video game by Cuphead.

Terry McCabe added one more insightful touch: he found a cast that could sing, dance, and mine period language for its humor. Trained voices are required for any Gilbert & Sullivan piece, and this cast has them. To bind the two works in Two Days in Court more securely, McCabe inserted two songs from a 1938 folk opera version of The Devil & Daniel Webster - a nice touch.

City Lit does a lot with limited props and sets, and successfully relies on its devoted players who turned in strong performances. The polished pro Bill Chamberlain, as Daniel Webster, displayed his notable voice in “I’ve Got a Ram,” a song from the opera version of the play. Playing the Devil – known as Scratch – with an otherworldly style, was Lee Wechman. Though at certain moments his style seemed a little bit out of synch with the rest of the players, overall it worked.

On the Gilbert & Sullivan side we had a chance to really hear some voices, with Ryan Smetana a standout as Counsel for the Plaintiff and Sarah Beth Tanner as the Plaintiff. The one-act Gilbert & Sullivan work left me wanting more – a good feeling to depart with from any production. City Lit Theatre’s Two Days in Court runs through May 26. It ‘s highly recommended for those who don’t want to miss two rarely-played works that are important cultural touchstones.