Hot plays for the cold months
By CATEY SULLIVAN Contributor January 3, 2012 5:12PM
Niall McGinty stars in "Accidental Rapture" at the 16th Street Theater.
Updated: January 3, 2012 8:59PM
Back in Ye Olden Days, which I like to call the late 1980s, things slowed down in the theatrosphere in January.
But that was before the likes of Michael Halberstam started shoe-horning shows into bookstore closets and BJ Jones took Northlight from barebones Chicago blackbox to opulently-appointed 342-seat Skokie thrust stage.
A decade ago, Oak Brook’s First Folio Theatre simply wasn’t. Neither was Lake Forest’s Citadel or Waukegan’s Clockwise or Berwyn’s 26th Street or the Metropolis Performing Arts Center in Arlington Heights. Yes, there have been casualties. RIP, Apple Tree Theatre. Ditto Oak Park Village Players.
Still, there is much to celebrate with the New Year in Theater. January is no longer reason to leave town. Here, our list — in no particular order — of cold weather comforts worth braving the elements and heading to the box office for.
‘Hesperia’
Jan. 25-March 18
Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe. Call (847) 242-6000 or visit www.writerstheatre.org.
When Right Brain Project did playwright Randall Colburn’s bittersweet love story in the summer of 2010, it was universally acclaimed. This isn’t your average boy- meets-loses-gets-girl in the happily-ever-after end sort of romance. It’s about the brutal elements of love; the parts that leave you scarred and scorched long after the last embers of fire and passion have died out. Or at least moved on. Or at least tried to.
Colburn’s protagonists are soul mates from childhood, two hearts cleaving together as one. And so they continue, as both become partners in making pornographic films. And then one leaves the industry, achieving a wholesome transformation, finding Jesus and leaving behind destruction, battered trust and a shattered heart. Among Colburn’s many gifts — he doesn’t judge. Evangelical Christians are easy targets and usually seen on stage as stupid or naïve or rigidly judgmental. Porn stars are equally easy marks, people who can be wholly objectified and reduced to a few throbbing body parts.
Colburn makes no such reductions. “Hesperia,” like sex and friendship, is complex, compelling and without an agenda other than to tell a really good story about some incredibly complex people in a heartbreaking situation.
‘Black Pearl Sings’
Jan. 13-Feb. 19
Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. Call (847) 673-6300 or see www.northliight.org.
The Voice is back. And if you already can conjure the alternately raw, raucous and velvety, molten-gold soul sound of E. Faye Butler, you need no further info from me. The star of Northlight’s record-breaking “Dinah Was,” this time stars as a 1930s prison inmate (think Lorena Bobbitt) whose voice captures the ears — and the ambitions — of a song collector for the Library of Congress (Susie McMonagle, no slouch herself in the vocal department). She’s recording songs from before the dawn of slavery and hoping to win a cushy post at a prestigious college, and just maybe fame and fortune in her field.
Of course the two women initially see each other with resentment and mistrust. Of course they eventually bond. The point in Frank Higgins’ musical play is the music. It’ll be interesting to see how Northlight handles the two-pronged set: Part of “Black Pearl” takes place in a prison, part in a Greenwich Village apartment. But with Steve Scott directing and McMonagle and Butler starring, we’re pretty confident “Black Pearl” is going to gleam.
‘Gypsy’
Jan. 19-April 1
Drury Lane Oak Brook, 10 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace
Call (630) 530-0111 or see www.drurylaneoakbrook.com.
The signature blockbuster song belongs to Mama Rose (“Everything’s Coming Up Roses”), but our favorite has long been the stripper trio, in particular the part about how you have to “bump it with a trumpet” if you want to get ahead.
Cheryl Avery gets the, er, horn-ey part, but Drury Lane’s “Gypsy” also has an A-List Mama Rose in Broadway vet Klea Blackhurst. The story (based on truth) follows the ultimate showbiz momager (Seriously, Rose makes Dina Lohan look like Donna Reed), as she tries to make a star of her younger, cuter, daughter Dainty June while her older, far more introverted daughter always gets stuck playing the back end of a cow.
But it’s the older girl who morphs from awkward bovine rear to world-class, and totally classy, burlesque queen, her starry career eventually leaving her mother in the dust. There’s some truly upsetting mother/daughter conflict in here, wrapped around a razzle-dazzle roster of fantabulous showtunes including “Let Me Entertain You,” “Some People,” and the aforementioned absolutely killer anthem of defiance, dreams and despair. We’re anticipating Rose is going to bloom.
‘Accidental Rapture’
Jan. 12-Feb. 18
16th Street Theater, 6420 16th St., Berwyn
Call (708) 795-6704 or see 16thstreettheater.org.
When Eric Pfeffinger’s drama premiered three or so years ago, the playwright managed a tricky feat. He filled the stage with religious zealots and religious skeptics and then (like Randall Colburn and “Hesperia,”) refused to make fun or condescend to either demographic.
With Oak Parker Kevin Christopher Fox directing a cast that includes Stephanie Diaz and Rob Fagin, we’re expecting the complexities of “Accidental Rapture” to be rich and provocative. The premise: A decade after all were friends in grad school together, two couples meet for a weekend gathering. In the intervening decade, however, one couple has been born again, while the other has gone a more agnostic-ish route.
By the time the baby blanket with the dinosaur pattern on it shows up as a gift for a new baby, things have gotten, shall we say, contentious. And what with the Mayan Calendar forecasting The End in 2012, “Accidental Rapture” couldn’t be more au courant.
‘Legally Blonde’
Jan. 18-April 1
Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Dr., Lincolnshire
Call (847) 634-0200 or see www.marriotttheatre.com.
Go ahead. Call me vapid and shallow. But here’s the thing: “Legally Blonde” has all the same girl-power under- and over-tones as that little show about the witches from Oz, and nobody dumps on that show for being brainless and twitty. So Elle Woods has a limited pink wardrobe and whines about her boyfriend dumping her. But then she does something, rather than spending the rest of the show eating Haagen-Dazs and kvetching about the One Who Got Away. So yes, OMG, there’s some like totally annoying language in the script. But girlfriend ends up at an Ivy League school as a potentially powerhouse litigator. All without a broomstick.
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