Displaying items by tag: Jillian Leff

I’ve delighted in Babes with Blades since they began in 1997, and they are never more delightful than when slashing and sauntering their gender-flouting way through Shakespeare. Apt, that: MAGA really should condemn all the Bard’s works as rooted in cross-dressing! The Babes would thumb their noses at that, though! And here they give us a lighthearted gambol through enchanted woods in the ever beloved A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.

Lauren Katz (she/her) directed, with Assistant Kelsey Kovacevich (she/her).  Jillian Leff (she/her) is BWBTC’s premiere fight choreographer, assisted by Madison Hill (they/them). Fight choreographer is a critical role in any BWBTC production, as the Babes’ raison d'être is ‘using stage combat as a storytelling tool that elevates underrepresented identities to center stage’.  Cool, yeah?

I wondered how the Babes would pull off Shakespeare’s famously light-hearted comedy – I last saw them in their 2022 production of Richard III (stupendous!) and I usually associate BWBTC with more … well … combative productions. But the Babes are nothing if not versatile, and this MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM presents the enchanted story with the unique perspective only BWBTC can bring.

The story, you’ll remember, is a bit complicated: the wedding of Athens’ Duke Thesus (Jalyn Greene [they/she]) to Amazon queen Hippolyta (Hayley Rice [she/her])  is the central theme around which several subplots revolve. One involves two pairs of lovers: Lysander (Christine Chang [they/she]) loves Hermia (Cat Evans [they/she/him]), whose bestie Helena (Patty Roache [they/them]) loves Demetrius (Kim Fukawa [she/her]) – who’s in love with Hermia. How could anything go wrong there, huh? The two pairs plan severally to meet tonight in the Woods of Fairyland.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the wood, a decidedly amateur group of thespians rehearsed a play to perform at the royal wedding. The wannabe troupe includes over-enthusiastic Nick Bottom (Sarah Scanlon [she/her]), Starveling (Jessica Goforth [she/her]), Snout (Lauren Paige [she/her]), Flute (Cee Scallen [they/them]), Quince (Morgan Manasa [she/her]) and Snug (Logan UhiwaiO’Alohamailani Rasmussen [she/her]).  Their collective stagecraft was far more droll than depictive, especially after ….

 Oops! I forgot to introduce the Fairies!

Fairy king Oberon (Hayley Rice [she/her)) and queen Titania (Jalyn Greene [they/she]) are experiencing consanguineous confutation and botheration; specifically, Titania is in possession (?) of a changeling boy that Oberon wants  (his purpose left to the audience’s imagination nudge nudge wink wink), but Titania is disinclined to relinquish the dainty. Fuming, Oberon calls upon his ‘shrewd and knavish sprite’ Puck (Hazel Monson [she/her]) to concoct a magical juice that, applied to the eyes of a sleeping person, causes them to fall in love with the first person (or whatever) they see. Thus, he will retaliate against his ungenerous wife.

Puck happens upon the theatric rehearsals and, taking Bottom’s name to mean jackass (a reasonable misapprehension), transforms his head into that of a donkey. Puck then scampers off to his appointed task of anointing the eyes of Titania and arranges that Bottom(ass!) be the first creature whom Titania espies … and instantly falls in love with!

Puck has a bit of remaining oobleck (yes, it’s a word, it means ‘a non-Newtonian fluid’) and, finding the lovers Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena slumbering under the trees, he sprinkles it on the blokes. They, naturally, are gazing upon the ‘wrong’ lady when they wake. The resulting convolution of affections triggers a spectacular Hermia/Helena catfight (as only Babes can fight!). King Oberon is delighted that Titania is enamored of an ass but appalled at the plight of the lovers: “What fools these mortals be!”. He casts a forgetfulness spell so that all four will awake remembering the whole mishegoss as but a dream.

Act the Final has Oberon, Titania and Puck, with a bevy of other fairies, wishing blessings on the audience then leaving Puck, who slyly implies that, “as I am an honest Puck” we may have dreamed it all as well.  

Where to begin my paeans of praise?!

Director Lauren Katz reflects in her Director’s Note that the first task of a director is to decide: ‘How is this production to be different?’; a critical question for a play so celebrated as A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. 

The differences begin, of course, with the company. Babes With Blades Theatre Company is a theatrical troupe like no other and leaves its singular imprint on anything they do:  BWBTC is the world’s only company using stage combat as its primary storytelling tool. I don’t know if they’re the world’s only all-woman stage fighting company, but they’re certainly the only one in Chicago. More fundamentally, BWBTC’s mission is to bring underrepresented voices onstage. For example, in the Babes’ 2022 production of Richard III the woman playing Richard was blind and the director deaf, and that show lives in my memory as the finest theatrical program I’ve ever seen.

That inclusivity extends to the audience. The night we attended A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM was one of their ‘sensory friendly’ performances:  to accommodate people with sensory challenges the house lights remained halfway up, theater doors stood open throughout (to facilitate lobby breaks); the volume was decreased for certain scenes; and (my favorite) the box office offered ‘sensory kits’, containing noise reducing earmuffs, notebook/pen, and fidget toys. How incredibly cool is that?

Scenic Designer Marcus Klein (he/him) effectively combined simplicity with actuation. Together, Light Designer Laura J Wiley (she/her), Technical Director Line Bower (they/them), and Sound Designer Hannah Foerschler (she/her) collaborated to create a truly magical Fairyland Forest. Victoria Jablonski’s (she/her) costumes were perfectly in character, even when several actors played multiple characters! Intimacy Choreographer Sydney Cox (she/her) was not stymied by the ever-changing kaleidoscope of intimate couplings, and Props Designer Persephone Lawrence (she/they) made sure Puck had their magic potion whenever it was needed! A good dialect coach is essential to make iambic pentameter comprehensible, and Carrie Hardin most emphatically did so.  

Everyone, absolutely everyone was superb, but there are always a few standouts. I once asked a theatre-savvy friend, “Just what does a Stage Manager do, anyway?” their reply: “Everything.” Essau Andaleon (he/him) did Everything and did it well; he and Production Manager Rose Hamill (she/her) produced a smooth flow of splendiferous energy.

The cast was also globally superb, with a couple of notables to shout out. I knew I’d seen Patty Roache (they/them) before – on that very stage, in fact, as Queen Margaret in Richard III. They were equally magnificent as Helena: I purely love it (and clearly, they do too!) when they can yowl and shriek and caterwaul their fool head off!  The actors’ troupe of Snug Snout, Quince and Starveling meshed beautifully, and Sarah Scanlon was an admirable Bottom as well as a terrific ass!

I play favorites – so sue me. After all, Puck is everyone’s favorite character! And, if you’ve been reading my reviews, you know I’m a diehard, down-to-the-bone fanatic (not just fan!) of Lord of the Rings. So how could I help but be ensorcelled when Hazel Monson (she/her) played Puck as though she was channeling Andy Serkis? How could I fail to be enraptured by so Gollum-like (Gollum-ish? Gollum-esque?) a Puck? who capered and gamboled, rollicked and larked, skipped and sprang about the stage, often ending crouched before Oberon, head quizzically atilt, awaiting Fairy King Oberon’s next decree. Brava Hazel!

If you’ve never seen a Babes with Blades production before, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM is a perfect place to start. If you’ve followed the Babes for years, don’t let this one get by! And if you’ve seen A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM a dozen times already, by all means come see what the Babes can do in Fairyland!

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM plays through November 23 at The Edge Theater. You can find the schedule of special performances on the Babes’ website.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I would absolutely bomb out of jury selection cos I have a very definite bias: I’ve been a fan(atic) of Babes with Blades Theatre Company (BWBTC) forever – since their very first show in 1997. Favoritism notwithstanding, I try to always be scrupulously fair in my reviews, and it’s certainly fair to say THE S PARADOX blew my socks off! My companion was particularly impressed by the fighting, but that’s only to be expected from the Babes – BWBTC is all about women in arms telling the truth with precision and grace.

Playwright Jillian Leff ^she/her  has outdone herself; the script moves at a lightning pace yet leaves one thinking long afterward. THE S PARADOX won the 2019-2020 Joining Sword and Pen Playwriting Competition, and this production is the world premiere of the work. The script is very clever and often hilarious; all the characters are intriguing and believably portrayed.  But what the bloody hell is an S Paradox? It’s a real thing in statistics and, though I wander gormless through the world of statistics, I’ll take a stab at defining it. Simpson’s (S) Paradox is a phenomenon in which associations between two variables can change or even reverse direction when there’s an unrecognized factor that interacts strongly with both variables.

For example, take a study done in 1974 of the relationship between smoking and heart disease, which found just what you’d expect. However, recently the data were re-analyzed and found that, after 30 years more smokers (76%) were still alive than non-smokers (68%).

WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot? Does smoking prolong survival?? 

What confounded the data and produced the paradoxical finding is Simpson's Paradox – they failed to consider a third variable: age at the beginning of the study. Far more nonsmokers were over 64 – logical, because there simply aren't as many smokers who get that old – and naturally these older subjects died off sooner.  

Enough with the statistics already! let’s get back to the Babes. But the statistics are important cos THE S PARADOX is about time travel, where paradoxes abound and may have horrific unintended consequences.

Kayla Marie Klammer (she/her) and Elisabeth Del Toro (she/her) in THE S PARADOX

THE S PARADOX opens in a distant and (seemingly) utopian future: tax reforms have virtually eliminated poverty, healthcare is free, and guns are totally banned – the police are armed with (you guessed it) swords. Sounds good, yeah? Our hero is a young woman named Sloane, gorgeously played by Kayla Marie Klammer^she/her.  Through various machinations and interventions by Dez, the armorer, Sloane acquires a sword and is offered a sensational job with a shadowy government organization.

Dez is brought to exuberant life by Elisabeth Del Toro^she/her. I adored her! Funny and frolicsome, DelToro’s Dez sparkles with such droll enthusiasm that Sloane can’t resist her… and nor could I!

Sloane is pretty pumped about all this, but she gets a sharply unfavorable reaction from her partner Ava, who’s suspicious that the job looks too good to be true. More importantly, Ava is older than Sloane and remembers the times before the reforms; she wants no chance of returning to a world of guns! Cat Evans^they/she/him gives us an Ava who mounts these logical arguments but is primarily motivated by her love and concern for Sloane. This honey works better than the vinegar of logic, and Sloane agrees to return the sword.

All well and good, but she’s thwarted on numerous fronts: first, Dez is weirdly reluctant to accept the sword back. Weirder still, this woman who claims to be from the future appears and warns Sloane that she’s about to make a dreadful mistake … but disappears before she can explain herself. And who are these anonymous cloaked strangers following Sloane? Could something be happening in the future that is paradoxically non-utopian?

I can’t say more without grievous spoilers, but I do need to make a couple more introductions, as their characters will appear (and disappear and re-appear and disappear and re-re-appear and disappear again). William, the businessman who recruited Sloane, is brilliantly played by Steve Peebles ^he/him, who portrays him behaving ever more peculiar, fast approaching frankly creepy.

Sonja Lynn Mata^she/her/ella is a delightful Dez-of-the-future, a perfect sequel to her irrepressible younger self.  Mata portrays Dez as earnest and indefatigably persistent (mulish would not be far off the mark), particularly about this project she’s trying to conscript Sloane into. Thankfully, gravitas has not quelled the vivacity and ebullience of her youth, and Sloane finds her fully as engaging as before [me too!].

And for Sloane the elder, future Sloane – now simply called S – who else to cast but Maureen Yasko^she/her, Artistic Affiliate with BWBTC and stage combat maestro extraordinaire?  Yasko masterfully portrays S as a complex character, scored by grief and regret but preserving the passionate, indomitable woman of yesteryear deep within. She’s courageous, accepting without complaint the emotional pain of truth as well as the physical battering of the time leaps. And S never loses hope. Yasko manages to convey all this; admittedly with assistance from the stellar script, but these intangibles can’t be depicted by words alone.

Also brilliant were the four Nameless, the anonymous cloaked figures who inflict Sloane’s reality, and are still around to daunt the world of S: Tina-Kim Nguyen^she/her, Deanna Palmer^she/her, Jessica Pennachio^she/her, and Thomas Russell^he/they. All four of them were superb, but Russell’s performance was remarkable. Overall, the Nameless ensemble was suitably portentous and creepy.

The cast was uniformly splendid and, happily, their excellence was matched by the production team. Director Morgan Manasa ^she/her devised some amazing conceptual strategems; with Technical Director Line Bower ^they/them and Lighting Designer Laura J Wiley ^she/her, the time jumps were brilliantly accomplished; Wiley’s Light design was crucial during the many scenic transitions in time and space. Fight and Intimacy Director Samantha Kaufman ^she/her (and how fabulous is it that one woman directs both these seemingly antithetical functions?) had the finest material to work with in BWBTC, and she honed them to flawless precision. Scenic (Rose Johnson ^they/them) and Props (Evy Burch^they/she) Designers created a stage set that transformed seamlessly and believably. I loved how Costume Designer Rachel M Sypniewski ^she/her arranged Sloane’s and S’s hair! And LJ Luthringer’s^he/him Sound thrilled me: 1960’s bands Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, The Shondells … be still my heart! Stage Manager Taylor Stageberg ^she/they brought it all together superbly (and I love that they credited their cat!).

That’s the lot, and a stellar lot they are. I expect no less from the Babes of course, but it’s always a happy surprise to see how brilliantly they deliver. Their mission is to speak for marginalized voices, with stage combat a consistent storytelling tool. Rare, and fabulous!  as is THE S PARADOX!

THE S PARADOX plays Thursdays – Sundays at Factory Theatre through May 18.

Highly recommended!

CYMBELINE? CYMBELINE?? I’d not even heard of Shakespeare’s CYMBELINE. Wikipedia admits it’s “one of Shakespeare’s lesser-know plays”. There’s a great deal of speculation on the whys and wherefores of its obscurity but now I know the answer: CYMBELINE has remained largely unknown because it hadn’t yet been played by Midsommer Flight.

There’s debate over CYMBELINE’s genre – tragedy? comedy? romance? – but Midsommer Flight’s Director (and founder) Beth Wolf is absolutely certain: CYMBELINE is a comedy, and a hilarious one! While staying true to the original script, she has directed the (superb) actors to make it incredibly funny by via expressions, postures, and gestures.

The storyline is as simple and convoluted as all The Bard’s plays. King Cymbeline (Barry Irving) lost his sons Arvirargus (Juliet Kang Huneke) and Guiderius (Logan UhiwaiO’Alohamailani Rasmussen), kidnapped in infancy and raised by Belarius (Jessica Goforth). Cymbeline is therefore determined to get a true-born prince by marrying his daughter Imogen (Ashley Graham) to dreadful prince Cloten (John Drea), royal son of his Queen (Talia Langman). Imogen, however, has fallen in love with and secretly married a commoner who was orphaned at birth and therefore named Posthumous (Keenan Odenkirk) [and they wonder if this is a comedy??]. King Cymbeline learns of the nuptials and banishes Posthumous to Italy, leaving Imogen to fend off the loathsome advances of nasty little Prince Cloten.

Meanwhile, the evil Queen plots to murder both Imogen and Cymbeline using a deadly poison concocted by Doctor Cornelius (Jillian Leff), But Cornelius, no stoopnagel, suspects funny business (the wrong kind) and hands over a harmless sleeping draft. The Queen passes the potion to Imogen & Posthumus’ loving servant Pisanio (Bradley Halverson), telling her it’s a medicine.

In Italy Posthumous meets Iachimo (Shane Novoa Rhoades), a dodgy sort of bloke with whom the gullible (not to say rather thick) Posthumous makes a most imprudent wager: Iachimo bets that he can seduce Posthumous’ wife Imogen snicker-snatch (erm … sorry, snicker-snack). Imogen retains her virtue, but Macho Man Iachimo can’t accept being trounced (Italian, remember?), and presents false evidence of her capitulation to Posthumous.

When Pisiano (the faithful servant who everyone confides in} tells Imogen of Iachimo’s treachery the irate young princess determines to find Posthumous and set the record straight. Imogen shows herself smarter than her boo by dressing as a boy for safer travel. She christens her trans self Fidele, for faithful.

Etcetera, etcetera, and so forth. I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to disclose that, after various sophistry, skullduggery, knavery and chicanery, everyone is reunited, reinstated, and restored. All the bad guys are foiled, and a happy ending is had by all – all the good guys, any road.

Typical Shakespeare, yeah?

Jillian Leff as Doctor Cornelius in Midsommer Flight's 'Cymbeline'.

What’s not so typical is Midsommer Flight’s management of this gallimaufry.

This is the third year I’ve reviewed a Midsommer Flight production and I’ve been consistently impressed, but CYMBELINE was more than impressive – it was truly awesome.

Founded in 2012, it is Midsommer Flight’s mission to bring quality, accessible performances of Shakespeare to Chicago communities. Accessible is key here: too many people don’t bother to even try understanding Shakespeare’s vexatious language and convoluted plots. Midsummer Flight makes this intimidating material accessible at several levels: financially by offering all performances for free, culturally by casting diverse artists, textually by working with actors to bring iambic pentameter into comprehensible language, geographically by touring to different areas of the city, and physically by performing in public spaces – specifically, Chicago Parks. I saw CYMBELINE last weekend, July 14, in Gross Park. Each weekend they’ll perform Friday and Saturday night in a different park: Kelvyn Park at Logan Square, Nichols in Hyde Park, Lincoln Park, and Touhy in Rogers Park. Check Midsommer Flight’s website for details.

The performance is prefaced by the actors briefly outlining the plot to orient the audience to the play’s action; this Cliff’s Notes intro was really helpful. Midsummer Flight also offers musical diversion from a troupe of five minstrels (Jessica Goforth, Bradley Halverson, Juliet Kang Hunecke, Jillian Leff, Andi Muriel, and Aloha Rasmussen); there are also a few a capella songs, all composed and directed by Jack Morsovillo.

Scenic and Props Designer Jeremiah Barr manages the problems of an outdoor setting by wisely choosing Less is More. The sets, after all, will travel to several different open-air stages, so he keeps them starkly uncluttered. Likewise, Costume Designer Rachel M Sypniewski makes simple cloaks and mantles that can be donned in a tent, yet vividly distinguish the characters.

CYMBELINE, like all Shakespeare’s plays, includes quite a bit of intimacy and fighting (though the beheading occurs offstage), deftly directed by Maureen Yasko, Jillian Leff, and Chris Smith. Stage Manager Hazel Marie Flowers-McCabe, with assistant Ayla Sweet, keep the proceedings vigorous and vivacious without degenerating into pandemonium.

Special kudos to Text Coach Meredith Ernst! As I said earlier, making iambic pentameter comprehensible is a major problem with Shakespeare, but in CYMBELINE I heard and understood virtually every word. And congratulations, of course, to Director Beth Wolf and Assistant Christina Casano, who transformed an undistinguished and ambiguous play into a thoroughly successful comedy.

The actors, of course. They made innuendos and improper phrases irresistibly funny, using facial expressions, posture, gesture, and all the other tricks in an actor’s toolbox. A special shout-out is due to Jillian Leff, who made the stodgy Doctor thoroughly waggish. It takes a gifted actor to have the audience howling through her report from of the Queen’s deathbed.

Bradley Halverson’s Pisanio was also prime. Shakespeare doesn’t usually give much stage time to menial characters, but Pisiano was a key role, juggling allegiances from all-powerful King and Queen to beloved Imogen and Posthumous. 

My absolute favorite was John Drea as the ghastly prince Cloten. His comedic gestures hovered perilously close to slapstick – jumping up and down and shaking his fists like a tantruming toddler – but he remained safely high camp without descending into pratfall – hysterically funny but never Three Stooges.

Comedy was amplified by the actors often playing directly to the audience, winking to bring us in on a joke or making us complicit with an aside. This can be difficult to manage without breaking character or disrupting flow, but this cast pulled it off without a bobble – good work, Casting Director Karissa Murrell Myers!

Well, that’s about it for my review. In short: CYMBELINE by Midsommer Flight is absolutely marvelous – see it!! It’s playing through August at various Chicago Parks – find the one you want to visit and bring lawn chairs and a picnic, like at Ravinia.

But wait just a tic: in these perilous times I needs must append some commentary.

As MAGA condemns drag shows and bans books, they would do well to wipe the shelves of Shakespeare, for his plays are rife with gender fluidity. At the Globe all female parts were, of course, played by cross-dressing males, who enacted romance and desire with the other male actors – men kissing men right there on the stage OMG! Gender-swapping characters, like Imogen/Fidele in Cymbeline, are key in As You Like It, Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, and of course Twelfth Night. Gender is also critically explored in tragedies like Hamlet and Othello, and Lady Macbeth’s dominance over her husband is totally discordant with societal expectation. Her cry, “Unsex me!” hints that Shakespeare found much amiss in Elizabethan society's dictum of “the natural order”.

Same-sex romance is acceptable in Shakespeare as well. In Twelfth Night, Duke Orsini falls in love with the young man Cesario, but is undismayed when ‘he’ is revealed as Viola (though he continues to refer to her as ‘boy’ during his proposal). Boy, girl … whatever, he wants it. His wife Olivia also falls for Cesario, largely because she admires ‘his’ feminine ways, and when she marries Viola’s twin Sebastian (believing him to be Cesario/Viola), he assures her that, like ’Cesario’, he is ‘both maid and man’.

The Buggery Act of 1530 made sodomy a capital offense and punishable by death, defining the rigid expectations of heterosexuality. Still, 17^th century England saw many examples of same-sex relationships: King James I and King William III, for example, each had several male lovers. We can assume that what went on in the King’s chambers was also happening in less august beds. After all, gender fluidity was a cornerstone of the Elizabethan rule. In her oration to the troops gathered to fight the Spanish Armada Elizabeth says, “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England ....” Good ol’ Liz. I’ve always liked her.

In high school I was fascinated with Henry VIII and his desperate attempts to wring a healthy boy from his pox-ridden testicles. Then his daughter, the child he disowned and condemned (not to mention orphaned) goes on to become one of England’s most revered sovereigns. Take that Henry, you misogynistic, mistaken, misanthropic, myopic, misguided monomaniacal monarch! I’ve always loved that by the time he got to his sixth wife Henry was actually henpecked – though his brain was tapioca by then; he may not even have noticed.

But I digress.

SEE CYMBELINE!! Even if … especially if you don’t like Shakespeare.