In Two New Works, the Power of Generational Connections
Ricky (Matt Rodin), a 30-something teacher with a new job, befriends a kind secretary, Dede (Elizabeth Stanley), and meets Sam (Eliza Pagelle), a rebellious student in whom he finds a kindred love of theater and simmering need to break free from societal expectations. They bond over 'Angels in America,' the new risqué play and the source of her monologue for an acting scholarship audition. But her selection threatens the school administration's conservative sensibilities.
At the same time, Ricky is striking up a romance with Michael (Jon-Michael Reese), the owner of a gay-friendly bookstore in a slightly more progressive town where he's settled down. When Ricky's two worlds inevitably collide, they do so with well-crafted wit.
Gwon's yearning, pop-classical score flows together beautifully, yet is composed of numbers distinct enough to allow the four excellent cast members to flex their skills. That balance between individuality and unity proves a key theme, expressed in the title's idea that each of us is always adapting our performance across circumstances. (He also has fun with some clever lyrics, at one point setting up 'hara-kiri' to seemingly rhyme with 'Shakespearean.')
The director Jonathan Silverstein draws warm portrayals from his troupe (matched by a quartet playing onstage) in his modest, efficiently staged Keen Company production at Theater Row.
Jennifer Paar's costumes are instantly evocative; button-up shirts and wire-frame glasses for the teacher and bomber jackets for his pupil. Patrick McCollum's movement work is gently expressive and Steven Kemp's scenic design is similarly to-the-point, with a bookcase or chalkboard rolled in as needed, a lone student desk and an American flag hanging ominously in the corner.
Gwon locates in each of his archetypal characters a unifying love of art. Whether it's Dede's penchant for schmaltz like 'The Notebook,' or the radical zines Michael sells, they all seek escape through culture. This disarmingly powerful show aims for the same, and lovingly succeeds.
At the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn, Shayok Misha Chowdhury is engaging in his own generational classroom performance in 'Rheology.' Chowdhury, a writer and director whose 2023 play 'Public Obscenities' wove together academia and deep sentiment, this time enlists his mother, the physicist Bulbul Chakraborty, for a theatrical take on exposure therapy. The short, presentational piece in which they both star is clear in its ambitions: Chowdhury cannot bear the thought of losing his mother, so decides to see what staging her death might feel like.
How this all unfolds is its own delight, with a lively structure that's a mishmash of scientific lectures, traditionally staged scenes and meditations on how the two have grown closer by seeing each other passionately pursue their work. Mother and son have a natural stage presence that prompted me to consider the nature and reality of performance. (When I saw the show, just as I thought it was all too heady, an audience member ran out crying during a frank discussion of parent mortality.)
As in 'Public Obscenities,' Chowdhury plays with form and language. The show is performed in English and Bangla, and uses supertitles, live camera feeds, singing, and a cello accompaniment, by George Crotty, reminiscent of the melodrama in both Bollywood and in Bernard Herrmann's film scores. Krit Robinson's lablike set, Mextly Couzin and Masha Tsimring's lighting, Tei Blow's sound and Kameron Neal's video designs shine in a surreal moment toward the end.
Like his earlier works, 'Rheology,' named after the study of the flow behavior of substances, combines Chowdhury's Bengali heritage and knack for rigor (his father, too, was a scientist) with his own artsier, more American tastes. For a promising artist in New York theater, it feels like a special new intervention in the sandbox he's claimed for his exploration.
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Chicago Tribune
4 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Review: With a remarkable ‘Angels in America' from Invictus, off-Loop theater roars back in Chicago
The extraordinary Invictus Theatre Company summer production of Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America' is a throwback to the long-lost glory days of Chicago's non-Equity theater scene, a time when a lack of resources, let alone experience, did not prevent hungry companies of young artists from taking audacious risks on epic works. Director Charles Askenaizer's new multi-hour, rotating-repertory stagings of the constituent 'Millennium Approaches' and 'Perestroika' in the former Windy City Playhouse, amidst the auto repair shops on Irving Park Road, stand up well against director David Cromer's unforgettable off-Loop 1998 staging for The Journeymen. In the case of 'Millennium,' the better of the two productions here, it also compares well with the first national tour of 'Angels' that debuted at the Royal George Theatre — and blew everyone lucky enough to see it halfway to Salt Lake City. I'd go so far as to say this is the most powerful non-Equity production, all in all, I've seen since before the pandemic either wrecked or compromised so many of our small Chicago theater companies. Add in the fascination of experiencing Kushner's fin-de-siecle masterwork set mostly in New York, mostly in the time of AIDS, in the context of current geopolitical events, hitherto unanticipated, the chance to wrestle with the irony of the final hopeful moments of 'Peristroika' being intertwined with the coming of Glasnost (what could possible go wrong?) and a growing sense of American unity (what could possible go wrong?), and the brain gets so many fresh yet familiar stimuli that the hours pass by like minutes. That has a lot to do with Askenaizer's pacing, which moves the action expeditiously without sacrificing the work's inherent play for grandeur. Going in this weekend, and this took most of the weekend, I frankly had expected a pared-down staging, but that's absolutely not the vibe here, thanks to both the scale of the performances and the possibilities explored by the set designer Kevin Rolfs, who seems to have conceived the play as taking place in the rubble of American democracy, Kushner's Angel offering our one last hope. The lighting, from Brandon Wardell, is remarkably complex for this kind of space. As merely one example of some of his breathtaking cues, Wardell uses uplighting to sculpt Nicki Rossi, who plays said Angel with huge wings designed by Jessie Gowens, in such a way as to get you wondering whether she's a fever dream, the seat of judgement or merely an inert statue. The presence of God is a vital part of 'Angels' but you can never know if s/he is really there. You won't know here. But you must wonder. Casting is close to everything in 'Angels,' of course, and within a uniformly strong ensemble, I thought there were three performances that root the show and make sense of arcs and journeys that often get lost in productions of this play. One is from Anne Trodden, who plays Harper, a young Mormon woman betrayed by her closeted conservative husband, Joe. Not only does Trodden, who put me in mind of both Mary Louise Parker and Kate Fry, reflect this character's mental fragility without resorting to cliché, she builds a deeply vulnerable and empathetic character. Harper, you might know, takes a long and winding journey toward self-determined resolve, and you are with her here every step of the way. Joe Bushell's wound-tight Joe, a man who hath ever but slenderly known himself, matches her every step of the way, staying silent at the wrong times, raging when he should be listening. Yet he too remains empathetic. And then there's Ryan Hake as Prior Walter, the play's spiritual seeker and moral conscience. Prior offers up one of the year's great Chicago performances, deeply immersed in a character who has to withstand the irritating Louis (Grant Carriker, hyperarticulating as required) and confront the inadequacy of all humans, except perhaps the loving Belize (Miguel Long) and the redemptive Hannah (Renae Stone). As Roy Cohn, Michael D. Graham plunges some real depths. I lost a few of Roy's acerbic lines, as is occasionally true elsewhere, especially in 'Peristroika.' A few problems with textual articulation is the one correctable flaw here. But everything else is so raw and real, you might not notice or care. After years of watching these plays, I've come to think that some directors don't understand the importance not just of each scene but of how you get from one to the next, as imperfect humans barely in their 30s are forced to confront the reality of death without trusting religiosity. They're all in a constant crisis, which is easy to forget since they have so much to say. So they know that every new encounter with anyone or anything will bring either balm or fresh horrors. They never know which. It terrifies them. That understanding is what impressed me the most in Askenaizer's two productions this past weekend. The transitions are extraordinarily well staged and, well, what is life but a series of transitions? Review: 'Angels in America' (4 stars) When: Through Sept. 7 with 'Millennium Approaches' and 'Perestroika' in rotating repertory Where: Invictus Theatre Company at the Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Road Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes (each part) Tickets: $25-$38 (each part) at
Hamilton Spectator
4 days ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Beloved Stratford Festival actor Michael Blake dies at 53
Toronto actor Michael Blake, who spent 10 seasons at the Stratford Festival, has died. In a news release, the festival called Blake, 53, 'one of the most gifted actors of his generation. He played an extraordinary variety of parts and did so with an ability and ease that was rare.' Blake was well known at Stratford for his Shakespearean roles, which included Macduff in 'Macbeth,' Master Page in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' Don John in 'Much Ado About Nothing,' Cominius in 'Coriolanus,' the Duke of Clarence in 'Richard III,' Albany in 'King Lear' and Dumaine in 'All's Well That Ends Well.' In 2019, he played the lead in the festival's 'Othello.' In her review for the Star , Karen Fricker praised Blake's performance. 'Blake's Othello is beautifully spoken, poised and feline: in all ways attuned to the world around him,' she wrote. 'He's succeeded by contradicting in practice the low expectations that society has of him. Which is not to say he's crafty; he's savvy and principled.' Blake performed in 25 Stratford productions between 2011 and 2023, including 'Napoli Milionaria!' 'The School for Scandal,' 'All My Sons' and 'Tartuff.' The festival noted that Blake also appeared at theatres across Canada, and in film and television, including 'Due South,' 'The Expanse,' 'The Lost Symbol' and 'Murdoch Mysteries.' According to his biography, Blake was born in Toronto and graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. He played the adult Simba in the original Toronto run of the musical 'The Lion King'; was an inaugural member of the English acting company of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and was a member of the first graduating class of the Soulpepper Academy in Toronto. 'Each part Michael played was powerfully realized,' artistic director Antoni Cimolino said in the news release. 'His work was true and realistic. His portrayals had an integrity that was compelling. It drew you into his reality. 'We will all remember him both for his art and his person. He was a member of our artistic family and he will be deeply missed.' Funeral details have yet to be announced. The festival said it will dedicate a production to Blake's memory in 2026. This story has been edited from an earlier version that gave an incorrect age for Michael Blake.
Hamilton Spectator
5 days ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Beloved Stratford Festival actor Michael Blake dies at 54
Toronto actor Michael Blake, who spent 10 seasons at the Stratford Festival, has died. In a news release, the festival called Blake, 54, 'one of the most gifted actors of his generation. He played an extraordinary variety of parts and did so with an ability and ease that was rare.' Blake was well known at Stratford for his Shakespearean roles, which included Macduff in 'Macbeth,' Master Page in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' Don John in 'Much Ado About Nothing,' Cominius in 'Coriolanus,' the Duke of Clarence in 'Richard III,' Albany in 'King Lear' and Dumaine in 'All's Well That Ends Well.' In 2019, he played the lead in the festival's 'Othello.' In her review for the Star , Karen Fricker praised Blake's performance. 'Blake's Othello is beautifully spoken, poised and feline: in all ways attuned to the world around him,' she wrote. 'He's succeeded by contradicting in practice the low expectations that society has of him. Which is not to say he's crafty; he's savvy and principled.' Blake performed in 25 Stratford productions between 2011 and 2023, including 'Napoli Milionaria!' 'The School for Scandal,' 'All My Sons' and 'Tartuff.' The festival noted that Blake also appeared at theatres across Canada, and in film and television, including 'Due South,' 'The Expanse,' 'The Lost Symbol' and 'Murdoch Mysteries.' According to his biography, Blake was born in Toronto and graduated from the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. He played the adult Simba in the original Toronto run of the musical 'The Lion King'; was an inaugural member of the English acting company of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and was a member of the first graduating class of the Soulpepper Academy in Toronto. 'Each part Michael played was powerfully realized,' artistic director Antoni Cimolino said in the news release. 'His work was true and realistic. His portrayals had an integrity that was compelling. It drew you into his reality. 'We will all remember him both for his art and his person. He was a member of our artistic family and he will be deeply missed.' Funeral details have yet to be announced. The festival said it will dedicate a production to Blake's memory in 2026.
