Author Archives: Kerry Reid

The Terrible Girls, About Face Theatre. Rebecca Brown’s episodic 1990 novel about women in love (and out of it) has drawn comparisons to the work of lesbian high priestess of high modernism Djuna Barnes. And Brown’s view of romantic love as inherently obsessive, occasionally abusive, and consuming to the point of cannibalism does share some […]

NEED, Half Cocked Productions, at the Space. Writer-director Arik Martin’s new black comedy reminds me a lot of Quentin Tarantino–before he began taking himself too seriously and became a bloated celebrity-machine joke. Some of Martin’s staging of this tale about hoodlums, junkies, and just plain weirdos recalls classic Tarantino setups. But what really makes the […]

NIGHT VISIONS, Flush Puppy Productions, at Heaven Gallery, through April 21. The landscape of dreams is the thin unifying thread for this second festival from Flush Puppy Productions (their first, “Gonads,” was on the theme of sex). Four playlets and one song examine subconscious states and daydreams. The turgid, repetitive films in Matthew Osmon’s Nocturnal […]

The Action Against Sol Schumann Victory Gardens Theater By Kerry Reid David Horowitz’s name doesn’t come up once in Jeffrey Sweet’s taut, moving, intelligent play. But in the difficult issues Sweet raises I felt the weighty presence of this vociferous and controversial opponent of slave reparations. How do we forgive the unforgivable? More to the […]

EACH IN HIS OWN WAY, TinFish Theatre. “Life,” Thomas Hardy observed, “is a series of seemings.” In Luigi Pirandello’s 1924 comedy, the serial seemings come fast and furious, inside out and upside down. Dragan Torbica directs a solid revival of this absurdist version of a revenger’s tragedy: a beautiful but fickle actress inspires infidelity, suicide, […]

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE JOURNEY, at Second City, Donny’s Skybox Studio. A couple of things make this musical sketch-comedy show distinctive: the large cast of 15 and the fact that some of these folks can really belt. But despite some standout numbers, most of the material feels tired: a Telemundo sketch, a takeoff […]

BETWEEN DOORS, Ravenous Productions, at the Athenaeum Theatre, through March 24. This trio of pieces curated by Joseph Ravens focuses on identity, transience, and stasis, with limited success. In the title piece, inspired in part by Charles Ludlam’s The Mystery of Irma Vep, Ravens creates a challenging premise and set for his cast of five. […]

Sketchbook ‘One CollaborAction Theatre Company at the Viaduct Theater By Kerry Reid CollaborAction Theatre Com-pany describes its second annual festival of short plays as “a progressive mixed-media theatrical bazaar.” That’s just the sort of verbiage that makes me fear a theatrical cocktail made up of one part incoherence and two parts pretension, served with a […]

SAINT JOAN OF THE STOCKYARDS, Prop Theatre Group, at Bailiwick Repertory. Bertolt Brecht’s transmutation of the Maid of Orleans’ struggle to the harsh underbelly of Chicago’s meatpacking industry in 1904 receives a thoughtful but occasionally stilted revival for Prop’s 20th anniversary. Adapter Stefan Brun directs an intelligent cast, including Jenny Magnus as a fiery Joan […]

NELSON ALGREN: FOR KEEPS AND A SINGLE DAY, Lookingglass Theatre Company, at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. Adapter-director-filmmaker John Musial’s unconditional love of Nelson Algren and deft understanding of the writer’s thorny relationship with Chicago drive this jazz-infused collage of 12 Algren pieces. Thom Cox brings an understated ruefulness to the narration, and […]

Jennie Richee Ridge Theater at the Museum of Contemporary Art By Kerry Reid Henry Darger, a Chicago custodian who died in 1973 at the age of 81, led a life shrouded in secrecy and obsession, his psyche a battlefield of conflicting forces that drove him to write and illustrate Realms of the Unreal–at some 15,000 […]