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‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’ at Raven: A young man’s fancy swings from baseball to – sex!

‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’ at Raven: A young man’s fancy swings from baseball to – sex!

May 20, 2013 – 11:22 pm | No Comment | 39 views

Review: Eugene Morris Jerome, age 15, has two things on his mind: baseball and girls. He knows baseball. This summer – it’s 1937 in Brooklyn – Eugene is seriously committed to learning everything about his latest subject of interest. This is the famously irresistible setup of Neil Simon’s quasi-autobiographical comedy “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” a heart-warming delight in its current staging at Raven Theatre. ★★★★

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Australian drama troupe transcends handicaps with serio-comedy full of backstage laughter

May 19, 2013 – 6:12 pm | No Comment | 26 views

Review: “Ganesh Versus the Third Reich,” created and produced by Australia’s Back to Back Theatre, performed May 16-19 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago ★★★ 

By Lawrence B. Johnson

If the title “Ganesh Versus the Third Reich” provokes more than the usual curiosity about fresh dramatic fare, the play itself — presented by the ensemble that created it, Australia’s Back to Back Theatre – leaves one hardly less perplexed upon emerging from the experience. “Ganesh” displays a singular aspect of beauty, even sweetness, until it takes a bitter turn and dissipates as if into a vacuum, into nothingness. Read the full story »

Sparked by belief in music’s healing power, Civitas lights up hospital and concert hall

May 18, 2013 – 4:35 pm | No Comment | 157 views
Sparked by belief in music’s healing power, Civitas lights up hospital and concert hall

Concerts by the chamber music ensemble Civitas are as likely to take place at Lurie Children’s Hospital as they are on a concert stage, and perhaps that focus helps to explain the particular warmth and humor of the group’s programming sensibility. Its performances radiate joyful vigor, a happy blend of virtuosity and camaraderie. ““The last thing we want to be is stodgy,” says founder Yuan-Qing Yu.

Latvian Andris Nelsons follows James Levine as Boston Symphony Orchestra music director

May 16, 2013 – 1:02 pm | No Comment | 108 views
Latvian Andris Nelsons follows James Levine as Boston Symphony Orchestra music director

Report: Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons was named Thursday as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Nelsons will become officially installed as the BSO’s 15th music director effective with the 2014-15 season, but meanwhile will act as music director-designate for the 2013-14 season.

Role Playing: Eva Barr explored two personas of Alzheimer’s victim to find center of ‘Alice’

May 15, 2013 – 3:24 pm | No Comment | 72 views
Role Playing: Eva Barr explored  two personas of Alzheimer’s victim to find center of ‘Alice’

Interview: To watch Eva Barr play out the progressive, early-onset dementia of the woman at the center of “Still Alice” at Lookingglass Theatre is to forget you’re looking at the subtle, skillful work of an actor. Yet hardly less remarkable is the way Barr arrived at the role: She began, in first readings with playwright-director Christine Mary Dunford, by taking a different part, an alternate Alice – a separate character Dunford identifies simply as Herself.

CSO Rivers Festival explores the enchantment of waterways, their impact on human history

May 9, 2013 – 4:29 pm | No Comment | 180 views
CSO Rivers Festival explores the enchantment  of waterways, their impact on human history

Preview: Literally and metaphorically, rivers seem to flow in every direction across our lives; indeed, across life. It’s not hard to see how the Chicago Symphony Orchestra might have hit on the concept of its Rivers Festival, a multifaceted month-long exploration and tribute that opens musically May 9 at Orchestra Hall.

It’s a pianistic happening as Evgeny Kissin treats adoring listeners to a musical bounty

April 28, 2013 – 11:34 pm | No Comment | 393 views
It’s a pianistic happening as Evgeny Kissin treats adoring listeners to a musical bounty

Review: After the third encore in pianist Evgeny Kissin’s recital Sunday afternoon at Orchestra Hall, the hundreds of listeners still on hand switched into an insistent, stentorian applause. The Russian virtuoso came through with one last bonus, a thundering roll through Chopin’s Prelude in D minor, Op. 28, No. 24; and with that, another phenomenal exhibition was over. ★★★★★

Day in Rhineland: Muti, Chicago Symphony translate Schumann Third into vivid travelogue

April 26, 2013 – 12:32 pm | No Comment | 219 views
Day in Rhineland: Muti, Chicago Symphony  translate Schumann Third into vivid travelogue

Review: Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat isn’t known as the “Rhenish” for nothing. I felt very much like Schumann’s Rhine-journeying companion Thursday night, listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s radiant performance of the Third Symphony conducted by music director Riccardo Muti. ★★★★

‘Still Alice’ at Lookingglass: When dementia seizes a woman’s life, a family is measured

April 25, 2013 – 5:06 pm | No Comment | 250 views
‘Still Alice’ at Lookingglass: When dementia seizes a woman’s life, a family is measured

Review: In her play “Still Alice,” author and director Christine Mary Dunford employs a graphic metaphor to illustrate the disintegrating world of Alice, a victim of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Throughout the play, now in its world premiere run at Lookingglass Theatre, Alice’s kitchen appliances disappear one by one, until nothing remains – until the locus, the defining “here,” of this woman’s life is no longer there. ★★★★

Role Playing: Darrell W. Cox sees theater’s core in closed-off teacher of ‘Burning Boy’

April 24, 2013 – 5:50 pm | No Comment | 583 views
Role Playing: Darrell W. Cox sees theater’s core in closed-off teacher of ‘Burning Boy’

Interview: The central character Larry, an English teacher, in David West Read’s “The Dream of the Burning Boy,” is a smart, inspiring mentor to the kids around him. But when they need him as consoling father-figure, after one of their classmate’s dies, Larry can’t engage their pain or embrace them emotionally. For Darrell W. Cox, who delivers a wrenching portrait of the teacher at Profiles Theatre, such a closed-off, deeply complicated soul is the touchstone of great drama.

Love, loss and broken souls framed in tangos: COT etches dolor of ‘María de Buenos Aires’

April 23, 2013 – 4:51 pm | One Comment | 234 views
Love, loss and broken souls framed in tangos: COT etches dolor of ‘María de Buenos Aires’

Review: Bittersweet remembrance with a tango pulse hangs over the surreal mindscape of “María de Buenos Aires,” the operatic love story created – perhaps the right word is insinuated – by composer Astor Piazzolla and poet Horacio Ferrer, and staged with bold, evocative imagination at Chicago Opera Theater. ★★★★

As dancing dame on high seas, Rachel York heads up motley tour crew of ‘Anything Goes’

April 22, 2013 – 3:16 pm | No Comment | 260 views
As dancing dame on high seas, Rachel York  heads up motley tour crew of ‘Anything Goes’

Preview: Rachel York, slyly sinful Reno Sweeney in the Roundabout Theatre production of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” headed for Chicago, sees herself in the proud line of those indomitable dames of 1930s Hollywood.

With Muti back at helm, Chicago Symphony applies classic touch to Mozart, Beethoven

April 19, 2013 – 3:30 pm | No Comment | 255 views
With Muti back at helm, Chicago Symphony applies classic touch to Mozart, Beethoven

Review: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mozart-Beethoven concert Thursday night with music director Riccardo Muti felt like one long “aha!” moment. Here was the full measure of finesse, composure and pliancy the orchestra had expected to put on display for audiences in Southeast Asia with Muti at the helm, but in his absence never entirely achieved. ★★★★★

Alison Balsom, mistress of Baroque trumpet, will flash that golden sound at Logan Center

April 17, 2013 – 4:20 pm | No Comment | 242 views
Alison Balsom, mistress of Baroque trumpet, will flash that golden sound at Logan Center

Preview: Alison Balsom, the British classical trumpet star who brings her blazing sound to Chicago in a concert with the Scottish Ensemble, knew which instrument had her name on it the first time she heard Dizzy Gillespie on a recording. She was 8 years old.

Youths at detention center set lives to music with aid of CSO musicians, praise from Muti

April 17, 2013 – 11:17 am | No Comment | 433 views
Youths at detention center set lives to music  with aid of CSO musicians, praise from Muti

Report: The first time Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti visited the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, in September 2012, it was to offer a concert to more than 100 youths awaiting trial for serious crimes. For his return visit on April 14, the music was provided by juveniles with help from CSO musicians, and it was Muti who took a turn in the audience.

Riccardo Muti honors Boston Marathon victims with dedication at Chicago Symphony concert

April 16, 2013 – 10:16 pm | No Comment | 390 views
Riccardo Muti honors Boston Marathon victims with dedication at Chicago Symphony concert

Asks silence before Bach Mass

‘Big Fish’ star Butz calls the fanciful story-teller his dream role — and that’s no exaggeration

April 15, 2013 – 1:00 pm | No Comment | 384 views
‘Big Fish’ star Butz calls the fanciful story-teller his dream role — and that’s no exaggeration

Preview: Norbert Leo Butz plays Edward Bloom, a Herculean story-spinner who supersizes his own legend in the musical “Big Fish.” We caught up with Butz at the Oriental Theatre, where the two-time Tony winner is trying this fabulist father-son story on for size. Butz talks about his role in the Broadway-bound musical, now in Chicago previews. We sneak a listen, too.