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Chicago Tribune
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- 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
Boston Globe
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Martin Izquierdo, 83, dies; costume designer who specialized in wings
At the conclusion of 'Angels in America: Millennium Approaches,' the first part of the two-part play, the angel of the title makes an impressive entrance, crashing through the ceiling of an AIDS-stricken gay man's New York apartment and proclaiming, 'The great work begins.' It was Mr. Izquierdo's ingenuity, and his flamboyant imagination -- assisted by a certain amount of technical wizardry -- that allowed Ellen McLaughlin, who played the angel on Broadway, and Emma Thompson, the angel in the HBO version, to hover convincingly some 30 feet overhead, framed by prodigious wings that were illuminated from behind. Those wings became a symbol of the production itself, an indelible part of its 'astonishing theatrical landscape,' as Frank Rich of The New York Times described the show in a 1993 review. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Their creator arrived in the United States in the 1940s, a young immigrant without legal status from Mexico who had been recruited to do agricultural work in California. Advertisement Mr. Izquierdo, who never became a citizen, eventually gravitated to a career as an artist, painting scenery for the theater before becoming a costume designer. In 1978, he left California for New York, where he opened his own studio and spent nearly four decades making costumes and props for film, theater, and the music and fashion industries. Advertisement He was best known, however, for the oversized appendages he created for 'Angels in America,' which combined genuine and fake feathers that were glued to a steel frame and then attached to a corset worn by the actress playing the angel. 'Wings symbolized the total imaginary world that Martin created for himself with his studio,' Austin Scarlett, a fashion designer and one of Mr. Izquierdo's many proteges, said in an email. 'Martin was all about making the fantasy come to life in a tangible way. What could only be dreamed of, he made real,' Scarlett added. 'He was a guardian angel to me and countless other artists he took under his 'wings.'' Mr. Izquierdo also conjured the large gossamer wings worn by Victoria's Secret models in the company's fashion shows, as well as custom regalia for celebrities. His clients included supermodel Heidi Klum, who commissioned Mr. Izquierdo to create a shockingly lifelike Halloween costume in 2011 that resembled a skinless body, and designer Marc Jacobs, who, thanks to Mr. Izquierdo, arrived at his annual holiday party in 2006 dressed as a life-size pigeon. Martin Nunez Izquierdo was born Jan. 30, 1942, in Mexico City, one of three sons of Rodrigo Izquierdo, an amateur painter who worked in a brewery, and Amaliz (Nunez) Izquierdo. When he was a young man, he moved to California under the Bracero program, which brought Mexican men to the United States during the labor shortage of World War II. In the late 1940s, the rest of his family joined him in California; they settled on Mandeville Island, near Stockton. Advertisement After graduating from Edison High School in Stockton, he briefly served in the Navy in the mid-1960s. He then enrolled at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts) in San Francisco, where he received a bachelor's degree in fine arts in the late 1960s. His first job as a designer was creating window displays for Macy's in San Francisco. In his mid-30s he moved to New York, where he found a one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village. He lived there for the rest of his life. Mr. Izquierdo spent several years working as an art department supervisor for the Brooks-Van Horn Costume Co. before 1981, when he opened his own studio, where he was the creative director and Anne Marie Alessi ran the business side. The studio closed in 2020, during the COVID pandemic. Throughout his long career, he worked on the costumes for some two dozen Broadway shows, including the most recent revival of 'Gypsy,' in 2024, and a number of films and music videos, including the 2002 movie 'Spider-Man' and Kanye West's 2010 'Runaway' video. He also worked on costumes and scenery for concert tours by David Bowie, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, among others, and on window displays for retailers like Ralph Lauren and Armani. In addition to Glaser, Mr. Izquierdo is survived by two brothers, Roberto and Rodrigo. Asked once by Twelv magazine what he would choose to embody if he could be transformed into anything, Mr. Izquierdo picked a bird of paradise. But while he spent most of his life designing costumes for others, he told New York magazine in 2013 that he rarely wore one himself. Advertisement 'When you work in this world all year round, Halloween isn't that exciting,' he said, adding: 'I was once in a costume contest at Studio 54. I was a mummy -- but I didn't win.' This article originally appeared in
Korea Herald
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Yoo Seung-ho returns to stage as Brutus in reimagining of 'Julius Caesar'
Actors Yoo Seung-ho and Son Ho-jun, who last shared the stage in the Korean production of "Angels in America," are reuniting for "Killing Caesar." The new theatrical project will run from May 10 to July 20 at Sogang University's Mary Hall in Seoul. The actors shared that their return to the stage — less than a year after their last performance — was driven by what they described as 'a longing that overpowered the fear of the stage.' "The stage is a place of learning for actors. And I wanted to experience the joy of breathing with an audience once again," Yoo said at a press conference Wednesday at Chungmu Arts Center in Seoul. Yoo reflected on the challenges of his stage debut in "Angels in America," in which he portrayed Prior Walter, a gay character and drag queen, who becomes a victim of social prejudice and self-hate after being diagnosed with AIDS and is abandoned by his lover. 'I know I didn't receive great reviews. I recognize that I was lacking. It was my first time performing in front of a live audience, and everything felt overwhelming,' he said. 'After the show ended, my fellow actors told me, 'Someday, you'll want to do theater again.' Strangely enough, it didn't take long before I missed being in rehearsal.' "Killing Caesar" is a reimagining of the Shakespearean tragedy "Julius Caesar," adapted by playwright Oh Se-hyuck and directed by Kim Jung. Unlike the original, which builds toward Caesar's assassination, "Killing Caesar" opens with the murder and shifts its focus to the power vacuum and political fallout among the conspirators. The production foregrounds Brutus' idealism and the moral ambiguity between principle and betrayal. In a casting twist, Yoo and Son — who previously played the same character in "Angels in America" — now face off in opposing roles. Son plays Caesar, while Yoo steps into the role of Brutus. 'There's a stereotypical image of Caesar and Brutus, and also of the actors Yoo and Son,' the director said. 'We wanted to break that mold. Seeing how these actors challenge expectations will be part of the fun.' The star actors' previous collaboration has also forged a lasting offstage friendship. In March, Yoo joined Son's newly founded management company, 333, after leaving YG Entertainment. The two continue to meet regularly with "Angels in America" castmate Yang Ji-won to talk about their craft. Yang joins "Killing Caesar" as well, taking on a dual role as Mark Antony and Cassius. Playwright Oh revealed that the project began with a message from Yang in the winter: 'Three passionate actors want to do a passionate play.'' 'To be honest, I was scared to take on theater again. But working with people I trust gave me the courage to try once more," said Yoo.
New York Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
In Two New Works, the Power of Generational Connections
Adam Gwon's new musical, 'All the World's a Stage,' is an unassuming, 100-minute marvel that follows a closeted math teacher at a rural high school in the 1990s. Like some of that decade's gay-themed indie movies, including the earnest 'Edge of Seventeen' and 'Trick,' this musical is not looking to reinvent the wheel with its storytelling, but is charming, specific and appealing in its rendering of gay life outside the mainstream. 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.
Los Angeles Times
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A new revival of Suzan-Lori Parks' ‘Topdog/Underdog' misses the beat at Pasadena Playhouse
A new revival of Suzan-Lori Parks' 'Topdog/Underdog,' even one as tepid as the one at Pasadena Playhouse, provides an opportunity to reflect on the work's strange, eventful history. The play transformed the career of a playwright who, until that time, had been an Obie-decorated darling of New York's downtown avant-garde. A writer of experimental collages on the manifold nature of the Black experience, Parks contended in a style guide to her tricky, unorthodox early work that 'language is a physical act.' And indeed, words in her plays have the force of whirling objects. From the start, her innovative thinking on form connected her more to the theatrical traditions of Adrienne Kennedy and Richard Foreman than those of Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson. Quite unexpectedly, 'Topdog/Underdog' catapulted Parks to Broadway. When the play won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, she became the first Black woman to receive the award for drama. The glory hasn't diminished in the intervening years. In 2018, a panel of New York Times critics, surveying the great works of American drama since Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America,' ranked 'Topdog/Underdog' No. 1 on a list of 25 plays. An interesting footnote to this illustrious history is that when the play had its premiere at New York's Public Theater in 2001, there was great consternation in the downtown theater community that yet another Bob Dylan was going electric. How dare Parks dabble in discernible narrative! In the more rarefied reaches of this coterie world, the mainstream embrace of 'Topdog/Underdog' implied selling out. What was perhaps most ironic about this critique was that there's such a clear throughline between 'Topdog/Underdog' and its predecessors. The notion of a Black man impersonating Abraham Lincoln in an arcade inviting customers to take a shot at the president a la John Wilkes Booth — an audacious conceit of 'Topdog/Underdog' — was tried out by Parks in 'The America Play.' Unquestionably, 'Topdog/Underdog' has a more classical structure than Parks' work up to that point. The play revolves around two modern-day brothers, Booth and Lincoln, whose fate may be determined by the names their profoundly neglectful parents saddled them with as a joke — a joke with an archetypal punchline. But the play's ferocious verbal music — the true engine of the drama — unmistakably bears the linguistic signature of Parks' adventurous early plays, such as 'Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom' and 'The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World.' George C. Wolfe, who directed the off-Broadway and Broadway premieres of 'Topdog/Underdog,' was an ideal interpreter at this stage of Parks' career. A showman who, as the author of 'The Colored Museum,' was fully at home in more abstract realms of playwriting, he knew how to balance radical theatricality with more conventional storytelling panache. The enduring vibrancy of 'Topdog/Underdog' was apparent to me in a 2012 South Coast Repertory revival that may not have retained the play's syncopated rhythms but found enough jazz in the character dynamics to hold us under Parks' spell. A critically heralded 2022 Broadway revival directed by Kenny Leon left little doubt about the play's standing as a 21st century classic. All of this brings me to the latest production, directed by Gregg T. Daniel, at Pasadena Playhouse. If I had never seen the play before, I might be questioning its pedigree. It's a lesson in how even subtle miscalculations in casting and directing can distort one's impression of a time-tested work. I recall a starry revival of 'A Doll's House' many years ago that made me want to dismiss Ibsen's play as creakily obsolete. But then not long after, I saw the astonishing 1997 Broadway production, directed by Anthony Page and starring a blazing Janet McTeer, that compelled me to reverse course and declare Ibsen's drama an evergreen wonder. What went wrong at Pasadena Playhouse? Not the glorious physical production, which creates a theatrical world unto its own in a manner evocative of an American Beckett. Tesshi Nakagawa's basement apartment set made me imagine an 'Endgame' relocated to urban slum housing. The superb lighting designer Jared A. Sayeg, who incidentally worked on Alan Mandell's 2016 production of 'Endgame' at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, endows the scenic picture with a painterly aura. The visual precision lifts us into a heightened aesthetic realm beyond realism. The setting simultaneously situates the play in a rich theatrical history. If Athol Fugard's 'Blood Knot' is a forerunner of Parks' creation, then Tarell Alvin McCraney's 'The Brothers Size' is a direct descendant. But the production doesn't live up to its three-dimensional canvas. Brandon Gill as Booth and Brandon Micheal Hall as Lincoln are talents of striking sensitivity. They bring a new generational sensibility to their characters, embodying a millennial version of Booth and Lincoln, a milder tack than the Gen X example of Jeffrey Wright and Mos Def, who starred in the Broadway premiere. (Wright played opposite Don Cheadle's Booth in the play's off-Broadway launch at the Public Theater.) The actors tune into the traumatic history of the brothers but at the expense of the play's theatricality. Abandoned at a young age by their parents, Booth and Lincoln are still stuck in survival mode. Their desperate living conditions — no bathroom in the unit and only one bed — are a constant reminder of their broken upbringing. But they act out their past more than they brood over it. The apartment belongs to Booth, who doesn't work and seems incapable of holding down a job. He's practicing his slick three-card monte moves and patter, wanting to pick up his brother's old line of work. Lincoln, who has been in limbo since his wife dumped him, is trying to hang on to his new job as a Lincoln impersonator at the arcade. Pretending to get shot might not seem like a step up in employment, but Lincoln is relieved to be off the streets. Booth glamorizes the hustle, but Lincoln lived the dangers. He also appreciates being paid to sit around all day with his unsettled thoughts. He needs time to put himself back together, but time is a luxury these brothers have never been able to afford. Gill underplays Booth's mental challenges, perhaps forestalling a diagnosis that could make it easier for us to distance ourselves from the character. But there's a tentativeness to the portrayal, a watering down of the fraternal volatility that ultimately makes Booth so dangerous. Hall's Lincoln wears a sweater in the second act that looks like it came from Saks Fifth Avenue. It's the one noticeable design misstep in Daniel's production, but it reflects the character's desire to become part of a world that has always seemed ready to forsake him. His three-card monte skills are storied in the neighborhood, but he's determined to proceed down the straight and narrow. Lincoln's trajectory is the mirror image of Booth's, but eventually their paths tragically converge. The psychology, however, needs to be more boldly theatricalized, and for Parks that inevitably means verbalized. These characters are fluent in three-card monte rap, no cards required. The plot is motored by their deft, defiant mouths. But Daniel doesn't draw from these fine actors the scale of performance that Parks' drama demands. His restrained direction keeps the brothers in check and underpowered. Instead of a modern reworking of the Cain and Abel story, this revival offers something more subdued — a TV movie pleading for sympathy.
