With spot-on performances across a large cast, William Inge’s 1949 script for “Come Back, Little Sheba” is receiving a definitive production at American Blues Theater’s intimate Studio Theater. Those of us of a certain age had this work buried deep into our cultural formation by the searing film version starring Shirley Booth, who won the 1952 Oscar and a Tony for her earlier Broadway performance as Lola. 

This was my first time to see the stage version, and director Elyse Dolan goes back to Inge’s original script, which fits beautifully into this captivating 90 minute show (no intermission). The set by Shayna Patel closely tracks Inge’s intentions, right down to the telephone at the base of the stairs. Lighting by Brendan Marble and Sound Design by Thomas Dixon couple especially well in high throttle jazz interludes signaling scene changes or turning points in the plot. And those costumes (Lily Walls) were just what the playwright envisioned, right out of the end of the 1940s.

Cisco Lopez as the Milkman with Gwendolyn Whiteside as Lola.

Contemporary audiences may see ‘Come Back, Little Sheba” as a showcase of the reduced role of women in post-WWII society, their lives centered on homemaking and “keeping their man happy.” But it is something more, too - a portrait of two diametrically opposite personalities - Lola (Gwendolyn Whiteside is remarkable) and her husband Doc (Philip Earl Johnson is a portrait of seething restraint) - locked together in an unbalanced relationship. Inge subtly laces in the clues to their unhappiness. Doc’s ambition to complete medical school was cut short when he felt compelled to marry Lola at 18 after getting her pregnant. Her pregnancy didn’t come to term, and he quit his medical studies. Instead of a doctor he became a chiropractor, and took to the bottle.

Lola, who was a high school beauty queen, has given up caring about her looks under the withering abuse she suffered during his drinking days. But he joined AA, and has eleven months sober - but lives with an internalized rigidity while presenting a caring face to the world around him. Underneath it all, he is filled with resentment.

On the couch, Ethan Surpan as Turk and Maya Lou Hlava as Marie.

A shift has entered this couple's fragile homelife with the arrival of the sprightly Marie (Maya Lou Hlava is perfect in the role). This comely coed is boarding with them, studying art at the university. She has a hot jock boyfriend, Turk (Ethan Surpan is a study in self-assured youthful machismo). Marie also has another boyfriend back home, Bruce (Justin Banks), a well-paid young businessman on his way up.

Inge sends the clues through the behavior of Johnson’s Doc that he is crushing on Marie, and quite jealous of Turk. Eventually his sober resolve crumbles under his longstanding unresolved resentment - that he is not an MD, this new jealousy, and that he is stuck with Lola, who smothers him with attention and coaches him somewhat intrusively on his AA practices. It is also an early serious treatment of the AA 12-step recovery program, founded ion the 1930s. Doc's involvement in it is core the the plot and character motivation. 

Lola, for her part, expresses her longing for better days gone by with a fixation on her runaway pup Sheba. Though Sheba went missing quite a while back, Lola still dreams of her return, and periodically calls for her puppy from the porch. An eternal optimist, she is ultimately the likeable center of the action. Marie and Turk love her. To show Lola through others’ eyes, Inge gives us two other characters, Elmo the Postman (William Anthony Sebastian Rose) and Milkman (Cisco Lopez). Whiteside’s Lola is so lonely she tries almost too hard to engage them, but nevertheless, her open heart compels their empathy and she wins them over. Everyone seems to love Lola except the next door neighbor Mrs. Coffman (Joslyn Jones), who derides Lola over her unkempt house.

In the last third of the play, mayhem breaks loose, and you will be stunned, shocked and glued to your seat by the culmination of this stunning drama. As Tolstoy put it, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And “Come Back, Little Sheba” shows how true this is. Highly recommended. 

“Come Back, Little Sheba” runs through March 22 at American Blues Theater in Chicago.

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

“Hamnet,” a stage play adapted by Lolita Chakrabati (known for Life of PI and Red Velvet), and directed by Erica Whyman is in its U.S. debut at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. This production originated and performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company for its U.S. tour, has generated a lot of excitement, heightened further by the many Oscar nominations for a film by the same title, though it is a very different adaptation of the same book.

Both were drawn from Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling novel “Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague” speculating on the life of William Shakespeare and his wife and family. The story line delves into the family life of the couple, the first act devoted to William and Agne’s birth families and their love affair and eventual marriage.

The second half revolves around their children, and traces Shakespeare’s ascendancy into the upper echelons of English theater. He draws the attention of the queen, is celebrated on the stage in London for his prolific stage works and his published poetry.

We meet actors Burbage and Kempe. Bert Seymour and Nigel Barrett, who play other roles too, are excellent as the real historic actors who were the definitive contemporary interpreters of Shakespeare’s scripts on stage. (Chicagoans who saw “The Book of Will"  had a thorough introduction in that rendering of the development of the First Folio in the years following Shakespeare’s death.)

At “Hamnet” on Navy Pier, though, there are a few problems with the production that detract from the interesting story. Like “Shakespeare in Love,” which generated a fictional hypothesis about a love affair that inspired the Bard to pen “Romeo and Juliet,” in “Hamnet” it is the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, that is posited to have fed the emotional plane of “Hamlet.” And that is an intriguing theory, drawn from the book.

Saffron Dey as Judith and Ajani Cabey as Hamnet

“Hamnet” dutifully recounts the marriage of Agnes (she is generally known to us as Anne but historically she was Agnes) and William, she 26 and pregnant, and he just 18. The first child Susanna (Ave Hinds-Jones) was born a few months later, and a few years hence twins—Judith (Saffron Day) and Hamnet (Ajani Cabey)— sprang forth. Historically Hamnet died in 1596; four years later “Hamlet” hits the stage.

The book and play adjust this time frame, to have Shakespeare at work on the debut of “Hamlet” as his son contracts an illness and dies. That’s reasonable creative license, especially in the interest of drama. (Harper's Magazine offers an excellent contrast of the history as it's adapted for "Hamnet.") And the performances are quite excellent. Agnes (Kemi-Bo Jacobs) gives us an intense performance of a character devised to explain her genius husband’s attraction, and perhaps his inspiration by her. William (Rory Alexander is excellent throughout), though the script forces an unlikely maturity at just 18 as he coaches and counsels Agnes toward their marital fate.

What was jarring was the fact that all the actors wear microphones, with a uniformity of volume set by the mixing board, presumably, that is unnatural, especially for Shakespeare. The unfortunate effect was an echo chamber, in Chicago Shakespeare's handsome The Yard which simulates the interior of the original Globe. Also two screens at either side of the stage provided subtitles, which are quickly explained by the diversity of English dialects used by the actors. Some would be unintelligible to American ears without them—but I found myself reading, at the expense of watching the action center stage. Perhaps supratitles as used in opera would have been better.

And it’s probably necessary to comment on the incidental and transitional music, composed by Oğuz Kaplangi. Some pieces were quite lovely, evocations of the late 16th century. But fast-paced scene change music, sometimes with a Latin beat, was overbearing, and the percussion especially excessive. Was it compensating for the slow pace of what was on stage?

And for a play about Shakespeare, why did we hear so little from the subject's original work? The excellence of “Shakespeare in Love” was the celebration and display of many slices from his actual writing that advanced the case for its explanation of the origins of “Romeo & Juliet.” In this Royal Shakespeare company’s “Hamnet,” we’re given just a tiny bit at the end, as Agnes witnesses the play for the first time, a scene meant to tie up and resolve all the loose ends. They loved this in London’s West End, but in Chicago it's just not enough. See if you agree. “Hamnet” runs through March 8 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier.

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

If you can imagine “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf” being played for laughs, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s in store at Steppenwolf Theatre's production of “The Dance of Death.” Written in Swedish by August Strindberg in 1900, the remarkably comical show is loaded with laughs in Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s 2012 version presented here. Directed by Yasen Peyankov with truly wonderful scenic design by Collette Pollard, it is thoroughly enjoyable 125 years after its debut.

The action is set at a military installation on a Nordic island. We learn the island is a short ferry ride away from Copenhagen, but its exact location isn’t named. Here the military officer and his wife live alienated from their military colleagues, their servants, even from their children, subsumed as they are in a 25-year marital war between each other. 

Jeff Perry and Cliff Chamberlain

Steppenwolf’s production opens powerfully in a silent tableau: the soaring interior of a massive, tapering round granite tower more than three stories tall. With rows of arched windows across the second and third levels, the military fortification widens as it descends to a great drawing room on the main floor that runs the full width of the stage.

A late middle-aged officer in military garb sits stage left—the Captain (Jeff Perry). Gradually our attention is drawn to the figure of a woman, Alice (Kathryn Erbe) hair swirling up in piles Edwardian style, wearing a high-collared long sleeved dress, her full skirt grazing the floor. She stands contemplatively in silhouette against the lingering evening light, framed by a gothic French doorway.

This scene, so reminiscent of an Ingmar Bergman film, grounds us in the Nordic setting, but as soon as the characters Captain and Alice open their mouths, we encounter the casual American English that Irish playwright Conor McPherson has chosen for his scintillating version of Strindberg’s battle of the sexes.

Jeff Perry and Kathryn Erbe

Perry in particular shows his comedic chops, and Perry and Erbe together display that special stage mastery we associate with Steppenwolf. It was so fresh and funny that I set about reading Strindberg’s 1900 original. There I found that McPherson tracks it very closely. But oh how he sharpens the humor, heightens the dramatic line, and injects the venomous choreography that marks this couple’s intimacy. Dark it is, yes, but light also, and just plain funny. 

In the run up to their silver wedding anniversary, Alice and Captain express openly the regret they have over being shackled to each other. They charge each other with having dashed their dreams. Add to that another combustible—a difference in age and vitality. The Captain’s health is clearly unstable, while the younger Alice pants for emancipation by any means. Soon enough a third character arrives—the much younger Kurt (Cliff Chamberlain)—with whom both have a history.

Not having seen this pair for 15 years, Kurt arrives on assignment to the island on which this tower is situated. So we get to see in real time how Alice and the Captain each work their wiles on Kurt to lure him to their respective sides in the marital discord. In the course of this, Alice and the Captain are both revealed to be manipulative, unapologetic liars. At first the Captain seems to bond with Kurt, though its really more of an effort to manipulate him for allegiance. Soon enough Alice is ahead in the battle for Kurt’s affections. This is not really a love triangle, but much more an unstable atom ready to explode.

Alice claims to long for the Captain’s death—or a divorce or other legal means—to set herself free. With Kurt soon under her spell, Alice initiates communications with the Captain’s superiors that could see the Captain relieved of his command, and perhaps incarcerated. As that moment of truth arrives, the infatuation with Kurt withers, and we find the Captain and Alice really are in love, and love to hate each other. It’s at least part of what has made this marriage work!

Without question, McPherson improves on Strindberg, not only making the play accessible to audiences over a century later, but turning it into something immensely more entertaining. Humor is a fragile thing, and comedy is all in the timing of the delivery—the pauses, the quick breaks, the fast retort. McPherson has deftly heightened the impact of the core of Strindberg’s work, finding the key to the characters and dynamics much of which honestly I could not see in the original.

Early in a run, the director is still getting a bit of that timing nailed down, so by the time you see it it will be even funnier. But as it was, there are many, many moments that are over the top funny. Perry and Erbe are masterful in their deliveries, kind of shock and awe hilarious at moments. Chamberlain gives a full-throated energy to his performance as his character Kurt is driven to distraction when he finds himself sucked into the toxicity of the relationship.

“The Dance of Death” runs through March 22, 2026 at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, and comes highly recommended.

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

“

“Salome” is an opera with an amazing backstory, and comes to us at the Lyric Opera with a content advisory (“adult themes, brief nudity, and disturbing imagery”), especially novel considering this work was first mounted in 1905. No wonder, given the beheading and necrophilic kiss that are at the center of the action.

A remount of a "Salome" production developed by Sir David McVicar directed at the Lyric by Julia Burbach, its underlying story is drawn from the New Testament recounts by Mark and Matthew of the beheading of John the Baptist (Johanaan in the German libretto)—the prophet who prepped the public for the arrival of Jesus. This telling was expanded upon by playwright Oscar Wilde for his French stagework, “Salome.” Wilde drew on Baudelaire, Roman historian Josephus, and significantly his imagination, to create dramatic tension.

The Lyric production, relatively short at one hour and forty minutes (no intermission), sets its Roman Judea characters in pre-war fascist Italy. (Guillermo del Toro used that as a backdrop for his version of “Pinnochio”). It’s a good parallel world of greed and entitlement of a debauched Roman aristocracy.

The sets were quite wonderful, centered in a lower stone vault down a sweeping staircase from the banquet hall above. The fascist neoclassic design rests comfortably on stonework evoking Roman foundations, a telling blend of a Roman-era storyline and its placement in pre-WWII Italy.

Throughout, we have a birdseye view of the goings on at the banquet above, while the main action takes place in this lower level, where Jochanaan (baritone Nicholas Brownlee) is held prisoner in a cistern, and which Salome (soprano Jennifer Holloway) chooses as an escape from the untoward overtures of her stepfather Herod (tenor Alex Boyer in the opening performance). He does really creepy things, like ask her to nibble fruit so he can bite where her lips and teeth have touched. Ugh.

In the lower plaza Salome is intrigued by Jochanaan, who rants inside the cistern. A little turned on, Salome asks to meet him. But he refuses her advances, and Salome is offended by his critique against her mother, who he declares to be in an incestuous marriage to Herod. Wilde gives us this as Salome’s motivation for Jochanaan's eventual beheading.

The opera by Richard Strauss compresses Wilde’s play in a German libretto by Hedwig Lachman: a Page (Catherine Martin) lusts after a military officer, Narraboth (tenor Ryan Capozzo). He in turn lusts after Salome, as does Salome’s stepfather Herod.

Herod has promised to behead Jochanaan, Salome’s requested payment for performing “The Dance of the Seven Veils,” a seductive “striptease” incorporated by Wilde in his play. Herod is repulsed by Salome’s demands, but makes good on his promise after the encouragement of Salome’s mother and Herod’s wife Herodias (mezzo-sopranoTanja Ariane Baumgartner). Jochanaan’s bloody head is delivered on a platter to Salome, where she extracts that kiss he’d refused while alive.

A subplot, and a significant portion of the opera, revolves around arguments among Jewish religious leaders (Jews 1 - 5 in the opera) over Jochanaan, who they believe may be the prophet Elias resurrected. Two Nazereen’s disagree, and proclaim they have seen the arrival of the Messiah, who Jochanaan is foretelling.

Surprising for me was the rather lengthy religious discourse among the Jews about the prophet Elias, since it had no bearing on the action of the mostly melodramatic story. Even more surprising is the modernity of the music by Richard Strauss, who is widely known today for “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” the striking tone poem associated with “2001: A Space Odyssey.” He’s also known for Der Rosenkavalier, a conventionally melodic comic opera.

For “Salome” Strauss ventures into what is now regarded as a first foray into a dissonant, modernist score. More like Schonberg than Mozart. That also makes “Salome” especially musically noteworthy. But as a listener, this opera was not my cup of tea. The storyline takes a lot of drilling down to appreciate, and the music is warm but not melodic. Still, Lyric gives us a fine production even if it was something I could not fully enjoy.

"Salome" runs through February 14, 2026 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

With the mesmerizing hold of a Moth Hour radio story and the visual creativity of the (late, lamented) Redmoon Theatre show, Trap Door Theatre’s production of “A Devil Comes To Town,” is so incredibly good that I urge you to stop reading this review and just get a ticket.

Here’s why.

First: there is the source material., adapted and directed by Jeremy Ohringer from a novel by Italian author Paolo Maurensig from his elegantly crafted 2018 page-turner (from the English translation by Anne Milano Appel). This gripping yarn and its magnetic charm is distilled creatively into Ohringer’s script - maintaining the dramatic tension of the original book, concentrating it into a 60-minute elixir of a story that moves with compelling interest to its satisfying resolution. The promotional thumbnail captures its well: “In a town obsessed with writing, the arrival of a mysterious devilish publisher sets off a sinister chain of events, as literary ambition turns feral.”

Second: The tiny Trap Door Theatre becomes, through ingenious stagecraft, a magical window to one delightful scene after another - sometimes worlds away. Simple practical effects with lighting, puppetry, scale models, and even a shadow lantern delight in their simplicity, pulling our attention despite our surfeit of exposure to perfect CGI recreations in film and gargantuan stage machinery on Broadway. Credit Ohringer in his direction, Karen Wallace for lighting design, Saskia Bakker for puppet design, Finnegan Chu for costumes, and Oskar Westbridge on sound design and as stage manager.

The play, like Maurensig’s novella, is set in Switzerland, opening at a conference in Kusnacht for professional psychologists at which a parish priest, Father Cornelius, delivers a paper on the prevalence of human manifestations of Satan. Afterward he returns to his home village of Dichtersruhe, population 1,000, where indications of an inordinate interest begin to appear among many townsfolk - the butcher, the baker, children, shopkeepers, a senescent cleric - all begin writing manuscripts for publication by major book publishers.

A subplot on a rise of rabid foxes adds zest to the storyline, and a shadowy past for Father Cornelius adds intrigue. The fixation by the townsfolk with being published mirrors in so many ways the passion for TikTok influencer status, while the presentation of the publishing storyline reminds us of the cunning self-publishing hucksters that abound.

In the stage adaptation of the book, Ohringer gives us five actors playing Father Cornelius, with Shail Modi in a stunning performance as the principle one. Ohringer has inventively choreographed the performances of these Father Cornelius characters, at times having them march and prance in lockstep together. The four other Father Cornelius figures (Dina Berkeley, Juliet Kang Huncke, Lydia Moss, and Y’vonne Rose Smith) serve as a kind of chorus that doubles as the author’s omniscient voice and general exposition. These four at various points take on other roles as well, Y’vonne Rose Smith particularly notable as the devilish publisher, Dr. Fuchs, and Lydia Moss as the decrepit cleric Father Christoforo. Dinah Berkeley is a manic delight in several roles.

Indescribably good, really, “A Devil Comes To Town” comes highly recommended and has already had its run extended, playing through December 6 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W Cortland St in Chicago. Don’t miss it.

In 1971, Nicki Giovanni was a young Black poet already risen to prominence when she and the celebrated Black author James Baldwin met for a two hour conversation broadcast from London on PBS. Baldwin, 47, an éminence grise, answered the poet’s questions at length and Giovanni, 28, offered her own commentary as she asked a range of things, from the factual such as, why did he move to Europe, to queries on African-American creatives, writing and about the world at large - all in the context of the Black experience of life.

“The Baldwin | Giovanni Experience” at Evanston’s Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre attempts to capture the essence of that conversation, in a 90-minute world premier of the theatrical work at Evanston’s Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre. Directed by Tim Rhoze who co-authored it with Bria Walker-Rhoze, the work includes music, poetry and dance woven into the discussion, and appropriately so. Especially given that we have Nikki Giovanni (Rachel Blakes) on stage, who is poetry personified.

“To be African-American,” Baldwin tells Giovanni, and the camera, “is to be African without any memory, and American without any of the privileges.” That incisive assessment incredibly forthright for broadcast television in its time. The show was “Soul!” produced by WNET in New York from 1968 to 1973.

Baldwin told Giovanni he felt he had to go to Europe and get away from the U.S. to find his voice, but found he brought many things with him. Away from his home turf Baldwin discovered he carried along the emotional baggage born of systemic racism, one that he realized he had internalized and which imposed on him cultural constraint. “The world is not my only oppressor,” Baldin relates. “I was doing it to myself.” He offers an example of Black internalized limits on behavior. “You don’t eat watermelon or fried chicken in public.”

The conversation goes much deeper in the course of the show, touching on the role of Black churches (“The Church is always in me as a Black man,” Baldwin says), family violence, and laments the loss of Black leaders assassinated.

“What do you say when the chosen few are gone too soon?” Giovanni offers. “Whatever it was, we found a way to love through it,” she says.“We, who were enslaved, found a way to cook, to dance, to laugh”

Both Giovanni and James Baldwin (Sean Blake) talk at length, the poet mostly providing the prompts that lead to lengthy erudite, deeply reflective discourse from Baldwin - as was his wont. With sections drawn directly from the 1971 PBS video (available at YouTube), Sean Blake gives a fully realized performance when he is recounting the words of Baldwin: literary and cultivated, polished and worldly, yet rooted in his origins in Harlem, NY - his utterances salted musically with the vernacular of his birthplace. Blake’s Baldwin is completely convincing.

It is amazing on viewing the original PBS tape how consistently “The Baldwin | Giovanni Experience” represents key points from the original - yet it gives us more. Giovanni speaks up, offering her reflections on life as a Black poet - just like the original.(The show also reminds me of the Baldwin-focused staging earlier this year, “Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley,” also based on a television encounter, this one at Cambridge in 1965.)

But the stage version also diverges, for good, though also in some ways not so much. Giovanni gives us snippets of poetry, and Baldwin on stage adopts periodically a more poetic version of himself, speaking at times in meter and rhyme - letting us know he is being influenced by Giovanni as they speak. Eventually the two are up from their chairs, and we have song and dance - the playwrights offer an imagined Baldwin, in red framed glasses voicing a hip-hop passage. It all seems natural and true, probably relying more on Giovanni in her later years for styles that arose after Baldwin was gone.

Where I felt some disappointment was in how Giovanni is portrayed as though she is lesser than Baldwin, placing him on a pedestal - where he belongs, for sure - but where she should be too. On the PBS video, she is more expressive, more self-possessed and serious, not just a foil for Baldwin the star. On stage, Giovanni becomes more of a worshipful cheerleader, interjecting “I can dig that” multiple times after an elegant and sharp monologue by Baldwin - making the performance more about him than her. To be sure, Giovanni on stage gets her words out, but on the whole seems to stand in Baldwin’s shadow.  

On opening night, a lovely lagniappe was offered in a warmup before the show, as Isaiah Jones, Jr. soloed at the piano and accompanied vocalist Mardra Thomas. 

“The Baldwin | Giovanni Experience” runs on weekends through November 16, 2025 at Evanston’s Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre.

In an opening scene of “Duck Soup,” a new adaptation by The Conspirators of the Marx Brothers 1933 film, the wealthy heiress Gloria Teasdale (Hayden Hartrick), has been asked to increase her financial support of the deficit-ridden, mythical nation of Freedonia.

“Just loan us $20 billion dollars, so we can lower taxes,” they exhort the dowager widow. She agrees, but with one condition: they must appoint as president with unlimited power her chosen candidate, a whimsical reform-minded television star, Rufus T. Firefly (Mitchell Jackson).

Before this scene unfolds, however, playwright Sid Feldman artfully tips us off that we may see parallels to current events - wealth disparities, autocratic leadership, former TV stars in power. We witness a plaintive rendition of “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” by a hobo veteran (Tucker Privette). “They used to tell me I was building a dream…why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?”) And then appears a red and white MAGA cap, the G covered over with F - for Freedonia.

Back in Freedonia, the ministers agree to Teasdale’s terms. And in short order, Firefly appears.
In the film version of “Duck Soup,” Firefly is played by Groucho Marx, who was indeed a television star. Is this beginning to sound familiar?

Jackson channels Groucho's style, representing in the playwright's film adaptation his penchant for a fast-paced barrage of throwaway jokes and puns, many of them bawdy. Hartrick is perhaps even more remarkable in the role of the dowager Teasdale, matching that aristocratic mid-Atlantic accent Margaret Dumont brought to the film, and like Dumont decked out in formal gown, crowned with a glittering diadem.

This memorable scene between the two captures Dumont’s obliviousness to Firefly’s degrading overtures:
Rufus T. Firefly: Not that I care, but where is your husband?
Mrs. Teasdale: Why, he's dead.
Rufus T. Firefly: I bet he's just using that as an excuse.
Mrs. Teasdale: I was with him to the very end.
Rufus T. Firefly: No wonder he passed away.
Mrs. Teasdale: I held him in my arms and kissed him.
Rufus T. Firefly: Oh, I see, then it was murder. Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? Answer the second question first.
Mrs. Teasdale: He left me his entire fortune.
Rufus T. Firefly: Is that so? Can't you see what I'm trying to tell you? I love you.

If Groucho is onstage, trust that Harpo (Sarah Franzel as the film character Pinky) and Chico (Deacon Leer as the film character Chicolini) are not far behind. We’re treated to classic sight gags and verbal puns drawn from the Marx Brothers’ treasury of schtick that is both laugh-inducing and readily recognized by fans. As in the film, a scene where the three appear in bedshirts and nightcaps, mimicking each other, is very funny. Many other scenes from the film, and the core structure of its plot is transplanted to live action. Kudos to director WM Bullion, for in comedy timing is everything, and under his baton the performers don’t miss a beat.

While so many of the performances are noteworthy, Sarah Franzel in the role of Pinky is truly memorable. Franzel gives the silent Marx Brother, the one who speaks only by honking a horn, a sharp intensity, almost bird-like looking here and there, and reacting just so to the surrounding action. Deacon Leer likewise is remarkably funny as the fake-Italian Chicolini, the name referencing Mussolini. (The film “Duck Soup,” notably, was banned in Italy during Mussolini’s years in power.)

In addition to transplanting events from a 1933 film, this “Duck Soup” makes them current, setting them in contemporary times amid a retro landscape. A famous routine from the film, for instance, which takes place as a bedroom phone conversation between Firefly and Teasdale, is updated to a texting exchange that becomes borderline sexting. Playwright Feldman, and the cast, pull it off, even funnier than the original. Likewise some of the just plain comical scenes - Chico and Harpo gabbing with a government functionary while driving him bananas with their antics - are timeless hilarity.

But an additional complexity comes with the unique acting approach used by The Conspirators, which eschews naturalism for a highly stylized approach known as The Style. Developed by Tim Robbins for The Actors Gang in Los Angeles, it’s a blend of 16th century Commedia dell' Arte, Kabuki, Looney Tunes and a high-energy punk-rock aesthetic. Actors, made up in thick white greasepaint with dark browlines and furrows drawn in, express but four emotions, all in the extreme: fear, anger, happiness, and sadness. Lines are delivered full throttle, and a percussionist on-stage adds drum rolls, cow bell, etc. in response. Anthony Soto performed on opening night, and was decidedly hilarious, especially taking on the duties for a garbled voice on the telephone receiver in several scenes.

In previous shows, The Style has dominated delivery. In “Duck Soup,” it’s softened a bit, as the comedy is more reliant on the funny lines and comic timing. The formula works well for this “Duck Soup,” though I missed the extremes The Style can deliver as we’ve seen in The Conspirators’ takes on Shakespeare in “Chicago Cop Macbeth” and Dario Fo’s “Accidental Death of a Black Motorist." Nevertheless, this is time well spent in the theater, and is a lot of fun.

The original “Duck Soup” was a satire of the rising fascism in Europe. This “Duck Soup” brings that message home. "Duck Soup" extended through December 7th at Stars & Garters, 3914 N. Clark in Chicago.

“Strange Cargo: The Doom of the Demeter,” is a compelling proposition for a stage play. Now in its world premiere in a Black Button production with City Lit Theater, Timothy Griffin’s original two-act script draws on Chapter 7 of Bram Stoker's novel “Dracula,”  .

That chapter in the book “Dracula” is sparse on details. It opens with the crash of the Demeter into the wharf in Whitby, England, with no one found alive on board (This is the point in time where Griffin's play ends.) The book chapter is mostly filled with details of the ship’s route and descriptions of weather—but salted with incidental references to a crew growing demoralized, brought on by unexplained disappearances of their fellow sailors as the month-long journey from Varna, Russia to Whitby, progresses.

The minimal details in the book gives the playwright free rein to fill in things not described in the Demeter’s log—ostensibly translated hastily from Russian for a journalist in Whitby, who is the narrator of the chapter.

Playwright Griffin adds in the tale of Yorga (Herb Metzler is compellingly sinister and cloyingly evil), as he transits from Transylvania in Eastern Europe to England, accompanying his “strange cargo.” In Griffin’s telling, it lists on the ship’s manifest as “50 sealed crates of earth” but we suspect it also carries something more wicked.

Some disambiguation may be in order here: in “Strange Cargo,” Yorga appears to be either a ghoul who acts as consigliere for Dracula, who perhaps is sealed in one of the crates in the hold? We’re uncertain. The Yorga character does not appear in the book “Dracula,” but was created for a 1970 Dracula film, so the playwright may be giving a nod to that piece.

Directed by Ed Rutherford, “Strange Cargo” opens as the crew of the Demeter confront a last minute booking on the Russian cargo ship arranged by Yorga, who wrangles space for the crates of not fully disclosed contents. The audience might suspect (it isn’t explicitly revealed in the play)—and those familiar with the Stokers’ tale or its recent depiction in Robert Eggers’ 2024 film “Nosferatu”—this cargo is the necessary support for an unknown entity who remains sealed for the journey, at least most of the time.

Though the steward Abramoff (Andrew Bosworth in a very good performance) objects there are no cabins or food for civilian passengers, Yorga makes the case he needs little, that he carries his own victuals, and is willing to bunk in the hold with his cargo. Grateful for the business, Captain Gorodetsky (Brian Parry is strikingly good) signs off after it’s already loaded, and Yorga is doubtless hanging from a nearby beam by this time.

Much of Griffin’s script focuses on the life of the crew and the minutiae of operations, mind-numbingly so at least to my mind, but filled with realism. As the ship makes its way through the month-long journey - supratitles periodically tracking the day count and maps of its progress - the Demeter must put in mid journey for a customs inspection in Turkey. A variety of other nautical events recounted in Stoker’s book are dutifully recounted by Griffin, to the detriment of the audience’s interest.

What the playwright does accomplish, furthered by very good performances, is the establishment of memorable characters: Guza (Jennifer Agather), Basarab (Alex Albrecht), Digeren (Riles August Holiday), Munir (Cameron Austin Brown), Bucatar (Ross Compton), Post (Robert Howard), and Petrofsky (Nathaniel Kohlmeier). Thus as these characters one by one meet their unhappy fates in the next act, we know who they are. 

When Act II opens the play takes a more sinister turn, and crew members start disappearing regularly. So frequently does this happens that it becomes tedious, and repetitious. “Captain!” shout various crewmembers in repeated scenes of alarm, and Captain Gorodetsky is forever being warned that individual sailors have fallen into depressive stupors. After each of these warnings he promises to “keep an eye on him.” Sailors on watch simply disappear nearly nightly, which Gorodetsky addresses by searching the ship from stem to stern.

But the action warms up as the Demeter finally reaches the English coast, crossing the Channel and navigating in the final events that lead to the decimated ship reaching port. Monstrous puppetry and silhouettes of terror-filled action below decks bring a culmination to the show.

The excellence of the performances outshine the meager script. And Brian Parry, an acting powerhouse, manages to stabilize the production with the weight of his performance. Some software-driven technical glitches opening night were rapidly set right, so no complaints should be lodged on that score. But the repetitiveness of the loathsome sufferings inflicted on the crew detracted from the effect the playwright doubtless intended. With some script polishing, this has the makings of a great recurring seasonal show for Halloween. And overall it’s still fun to watch.

“Strange Cargo: The Doom of the Demeter” runs through November 23 at City Lit Theater in Chicago.

Jojo Jones’ “Veal,” premiering at A Red Orchid Theatre in Old Town, is among the recent wave of plays set in a post-apocalyptic near future - the better to show how core social values and structures might play out for individuals placed abruptly in a clean-slate setting. The increasing frequency with which this plot line appears on stages and screens tells us much about the trending thoughts of playwrights, who likely are voicing societal angst about the state of things - and reasonably so.

Directed by dado, the apocalypse in “Veal” is loosely defined but certainly political in nature, a revolution that has reset things. We do know this much: it has resulted in the character Chelsea (well played by Alexandra Chopson) to be installed as Queen of North America. That simple fact packs loads of information: that the U.S., Mexican, and Canadian governments have fallen, their respective Constitutions trashed, and a monarch now rules.

That Queen Chelsea is likely a despotic type is suggested immediately by her regal demeanor in royal array, on a throne, and by her side a servant, Unnamed Male Concubine (Jasper Johnson) who sits silently a step below. When Chelsea descends from her throne to walk upon the floor below her, the silent Concubine unbidden gets on his hands and knees, and with infinite care wipes up the floor where Chelsea has trodden, then resumes his vigil on the step below.

Soon enough three characters arrive: Franny (Jojo Brown), Lulu (Carmia Imani) and Noa (Alice Wu), all of whom were in middle school with Chelsea 13 years ago. In fact, we learn, this setting is the very middle school they attended, a place this monarch has chosen as the site for her palace. She has resurfaced the floor with imported marble and demolished the gym.

“My advisers kept telling me to use the White House, but I’d never been there,” Chelsea lets her classmates know, and they all offer obsequities as they converse with her. Their fear and trepidation is palpable as they try to avoid taboo subjects or potentially incite Chelsea's anger.

“The Revolution was weird,” offers Franny, as Chelsea benevolently asks if they are hungry, then orders her Concubine to provide a repast for the visitors. This ends up being Lunchables that are 13 years past their expiration date, still sitting from their school days. This tips us off that Queen Chelsea harbors some resentments from those days.

Gingerly, they decline the food, except for LuLu, who having allowed that she was hungry, is now ordered to eat, and Chelsea shows her tyrannical side. After this set-to subsides, Franny reveals the reason for this visit: to petition the Queen of North America for medicine for her sister and she begins gingerly on her sibling’s behalf. “We all knew you would be successful,” Franny says of their middle school days. “But Queen of North America?!”

After that, a bit more groveling. “The revolution - huge fan - kinda messed up the supply chain,” Franny says, and lets Queen Chelsea know she cannot find insulin for her sister, a Type 1 diabetic, to which Chelsea replies, indirectly, that she is always being asked for things.

“You know, it is so hard. I keep getting people telling me I’m like Nero, or Caligula.” Though the subject of “Veal” is completely absorbing, every now and then I found myself thinking of current events and another despot who rules by whim, and loves to surround himself with sycophants.

As the action advances, Queen Chelsea dispatches the Unknown Male Concubine to look into insulin availability, but signals there will be a price to pay, and the play moves into territory somewhere between “Mean Girls” and “Carrie.” The dramatic tension hinges on whether and how much Queen Chelsea’s former classmates will debase themselves in the hopes of securing the insulin for Franny’s sister. Queen Chelsea forces them to re-enact the classroom scenes in which she suffered their bullying and ostracism. But eventually the trio reaches a limit, each on their own terms, and ultimately Queen Chelsea tires of the game.

The performances are really excellent, especially Alice Wu as Noa, and Jojo Brown, who does the lion's share of the dramatic heavy lifting as Franny. Accolades for the most intriguing character go to Jasper John as the Unknown Male Concubine, a largely silent role with huge stage presence.

“Veal” runs through November 9, 2025 at A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells in Chicago.