Steppenwolf’s Laurie Metcalf gives us a tour de force performance in playwright Samuel D. Hunter’s masterful “Little Bear Ridge Road.” But you might find this is a little different than the roles from Ibsen and Albee for which she won Tony’s on Broadway.

As Sarah, the 60ish cranky nurse living alone in backwater Idaho, she may remind you a bit of Roseanne Barr (whose sister Metcalf played on TV): brusque and sometimes mean, but her remarks are more reflective, less scattershot than the commedienne's.

Set in the outskirts of Troy, Idaho during COVID, the play opens with Sarah in rubber gloves cleaning around her three-seat, motorized recliner sofa - the only thing we’re given in the way of a set. But to what amazing use Metcalf and director Joe Mantello will put that recliner.

Soon Sarah’s nephew Ethan arrives, (Micah Stock is excellent), and after the briefest of pleasantries his aunt castigates him for arriving at eleven pm, three hours past her bedtime. “You should have started earlier,” she says. “I’m doing chores to keep myself awake.” Sarah finally offers condolences and we learn the reason he is visiting: to settle the affairs of his late father, a meth addict who died the week before.

Our sympathies go right to Ethan, but that will change. Hunter’s masterful and subtle script unfolds and unfolds these two, peeling back the layers of who they are and how they got that way.

Metcalf’s performance as Sarah is striking. Tony winning director Mantello, who partnered with the Steppenwolf actress to commission Hunter’s script, has Metcalf roaming the stage, exiting left and right but still shouting dialog back to Ethan. Stock is every bit as good, but his character is wounded, emotionally stunted, and ultimately less likable. His mother, we learn, ran away when he was young, probably because his father was an active addict throughout his upbringing.

Another wonderful thing about “Little Bear Ridge Road” is the freshness and immediacy of the dialog. The playwright, through Sarah, gives us the things we really talk about today: the grind of punishing jobs, details of medical conditions and attendant bills, and especially, picking apart streaming video series as we binge through meals ensconced in our recliners. The playwright (Hunter wrote the stage version of “The Whale” which won an Oscar in its film adaptation) indicates where actors’ lines overlap, the way we naturally talk over each other. And he gives the cast three volumes for delivery: explosive, normal speech, and implied lines in enduring silences. Oh does it work!

Metcalf’s Sarah, in particular, puts this guidance to amazing use, especially as we listen in on her side of phone conversations. When she dresses down a work scheduler, her voice is hellfire, like she flipped open the door of a blast furnace. As she abruptly ends the call, Sarah resumes a conversation with Ethan, all collected and nice as you please. At a few points she toggles back and forth between these voices quickly, and suggesting this is how she battles for survival with the outside world.

As the scenes advance, we advance in time, and to other locations, all portrayed with lighting (Heather Gilbert) and this simple set of a recliner sofa on a turntable. We’re at Ethan’s father’s house, where we watch as he flits through his late dad’s effects; a bar in Moscow, Idaho where men hook up with men and Ethan meets James, an astrophysicist grad student; a hillside where the two look up at the stars and James names and describes them.

A year after selling the house, Ethan somehow is still in that recliner with Sarah. In one remarkable scene Sarah and Ethan debate the merits of a streaming show— a particular preoccupation of our COVID sequestration that still endures. The two rise and fall in their individual seats, moving from supine to sitting, and back, leg rests rising and falling, one character ascending another descending, as they sallie and joust in the discussion. If barcaloungers have body language, this is surely it.

And James begins to appear on the sofa as well. Sarah and James forge their own relationship, and the gradual revelations—Ethan’s mother abandoned him to his father, who was addicted to methamphetamine (the drug in the streaming series “Breaking Bad”), Sarah had miscarriages, and daunting medical challenges.

The playwright’s smartphone voices in particular merit our consideration. They are Sarah’s lifelines to real relationships, two of them credited as Kenny and Vickie, whom we never see. But Sarah does, on Facetime. These voice characters recur, a kind of chorus of commentary that advances the action. Facetime Vickie (played by Meighan Gerachis) calls out Sarah’s co-dependency on her brother, and now with her clinging nephew Ethan. Gerachis is also onstage at the end in a spot-on performance as a nurse, Paulette.

A play that takes us along new paths into unexplored terrain, “Little Bear Ridge Road” comes highly recommended. Its run has been extended until August 4, 2024 at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.

“Die Hard 4 Your Luv” by Kirk Pynchon and Mike Beyer at The Factory Theater is a great send-up of boy bands, those popular generators of light-pop ear worms that drew masses of devoted followers for the music, or the sexy styling. Groups like Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, One Direction and the like.

Tracing their roots to the Jackson 5, and now evolved into K-pop, these boy bands (and the parallel girl groups) were largely manufactured by recording studios or promoters, and come and go in every decade. They also launched individual star careers—Justin Timberlake, Nick Carter, Harry Styles—perhaps a testament to the quality of the talent recruited.

An amalgam of these bands forms the basis of the fictional Boyz Will B Boyz, the band at the center of “Die Hard 4 Your Luv,” also the name of a mock pop song that opens the show and gives a credible representation of what boy band music is like.
The band, replete with vacuous, venal personalities, is almost one character in the action, and like the real boy bands, there is a selection of looks and styling. all of them false: Jeffrey David Thomas plays J Swizzle, the “handsome one” and ostensibly the leader; Liam Ryan plays Chuckie Bones, the thuggish bad boy of the group; Matt Chester is Authentic, the sensitive loving one. 

And then there is Todd (Chase Wheaton-Werle) whose character rises apart from the rest, who consider him untalented and unrelatable, and relentlessly pick on him and relegate him to errand boy. We learn later Todd had been studying engineering and was forced into the band (by unlikely circumstances) when a predecessor quit in the middle of an album recording. Research had shown four boys out-pulls three.

The album was a hit, and now they were playing the big New Years Eve show in 1999—as the expected Y2K computer meltdown looms. This brought another unlikely scenario and the crux of the plot. The band is taken hostage by terrorists who hold them ransom, in exchange for the Y2K code fixes developed around the world. All except for Todd, who had been sent to get ice just before the terrorists struck. Unlikely as the story reads, all is in the effective service of a successful comedy and parody—not just of boy bands, but also thriller action films, as Todd teams with a security guard to save the day. Brittany Ellis plays to the hilt Yana Petrovian, the leader of the terrorists; Brandy Miller as Alyssa Tattinger, the band’s manager, is relentlessly scheming and manipulative; and Marissa Macella is marvelous as Meg, the security guard and real hero of the action.

It’s admittedly lighthearted, and there are many funny moments. Directed by Becca Holloway, with inventive staging by Spencer Gjerde+ (scenic design), there are a few rough edges, and one or two extended action battles (Jillian Leff is fight director) that may have been superfluous, but on the whole, a lot of fun and a good way to while away an evening.

“Die Hard 4 Your Luv” runs through July 13, 2024 at The Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard St. in Chicago.

Crowds will flock to see “Judgment Day,” having its world premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. While many will be drawn by its star, Emmy and Tony-winning actor Jason Alexander of “Seinfeld” fame (George Costanza), and he is definitely a draw—but just one of many—in this remarkably funny, highly polished play by Rob Ulin.

With perfect comedic delivery, Alexander plays Sammy Campo, a craven lawyer who has gained riches continuously by winning cases at any cost, ethics be damned. From the moment Alexander begins his audacious performance, fueled by the razor wit of Ulin’s smart script, the audience was laughing and we knew, this is a comedy.

Yet “Judgment Day” treats serious subjects, a truly thoughtful discernment of weighty values and living a purposeful life. We hear throughout the play an important conversation going on, the laughter taking down barriers to really listening. This is a morality play, and a good one, in the mold of Moliere blending serious matters with fun. Sammy goes through a spiritual journey, not so different than Dicken's Ebenezer Scrooge. But "Judgment Day" has the added power of swimming in contemporary mores and values.

Jason Alexander stars as a corrupt lawyer attempting to make amends with the help of a conflicted priest, played by Daniel Breaker, in the world premiere comedy Judgment Day at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. 

Sammy may soon be disbarred—for seedy practices such as suborning perjury from witnesses. As his secretary Della (Olivia D. Dawson is marvelous) delivers a world-weary litany of the sketchy legal methods for which Sammy may lose his law license, her droll deadpan is interrupted repeatedly by Sammy’s frantic interjections, after each of which she resumes undeterred, eliciting big laughs.

Della lets us know Sammy once convinced a client to saw off his own leg to win a claim. “It almost worked,” says Sammy, revealing his breathtaking depravity and lack of moral compass with such complete unselfconsciousness the only response we can have is to laugh. It’s clear that Della has seen it all, and knows Sammy’s MO only too well.

Working from Golden Globe winner Ulin’s extremely witty script, Tony-nominated director Moritz von Stuelpnagel coaxes split second timing from Della and Sammy, establishing the standard of interplay among actors that we will enjoy all evening. Without spoiling the fun, let’s just say Sonny passes out and falls to the floor.
“You dead?” Stella queries. And we laugh.

Not quite dead, it turns out, and following the ensuing near death experiences, the recovered Sammy decides to straighten up his life. But he hasn’t changed one iota. Always calculating, he goes to confession and meets Father Michael (Daniel Breaker is superb), putting it to him baldly: “What’s the least amount of good I can do to avoid going to hell?”

Father Michael, a conflicted priest in a crisis of faith, is the perfect pairing with Sammy, and much of the rest of the play is the two jousting abouty moral values, and whether good works for selfish reasons merits a heavenly reward. The heavy intellectual lifting falls to Father Michael, as he guides Sammy in his moral quest. (Breaker played Aron Burr in "Hamilton" and originated the role of "Donkey" in Skrek the Musical.) A lengthy scene puts the two together in a car during a stakeout. Bantering about issues personal and moral, Father Michael's inner struggle is revealed. The scene would have been at home on "Seinfeld," except unlike the series famed for being "about nothing," this one is about something. 

As we get to know Father Michael—and for that matter the rest of the cast including the wife Sammy walked out on (Tracy Bofill) and his young son (Ellis Myers); Angel (Candy Buckley) Sammy’s deceased teacher (now in wings and a habit); a struggling widow Edna (Meg Thalken); Father Michael’s superior (Michael Kostroff as Monsignor); even the Principal (also played by Dawson)—each of these characters are so intriguing I wanted to see more of them, perhaps in another setting (spin-off shows?).

Notably, most of the cast and creative team make their Chicago Shakespeare Theater debuts in this show, many cast from New York. Chicago is a good setting for testing out this play, which like the city is very Catholic (no less than three scenes are in confessionals) but this is neither off-putting nor irreverent. In fact, it's a study in the transformation of the Catholic Church since the 1960s, beautifully expressed. And tt's another home run for CST's new artistic director, Edward Hall. 

Presented in The Yard, Chicago Shakespeare’s newest, state-of-the art space, the stage itself allows large audiences to have an intimate theater experience. Scene changes (Beowolf Boritt does scenic design) whisk in and out as fast as camera cuts in the movies.The adaptable Yard, which can when needed replicate the courtyard stage of Shakespeare’s Globe, here simulates a proscenium space, with upstage and downstage, stage left and right all part of the action. This gives an immediacy and presence to the performance for the audience that surpasses anything I have seen in New York, London, or elsewhere in Chicago. You are drawn into the show, and the experience is captivating.

Suffice it to say, “Judgment Day” comes highly recommended: an excellent play, performed and directed beautifully, and a story that will stay with you. “Judgment Day” runs through May 26, 2024 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

*Extended through June 2nd

For the final show of its 30th anniversary season, Trap Door Theatre—the little company that could—has selected a sure-fire hit with a production of “Nana,” a play based on the 19th century melodrama about an actress and bordello courtesan, Nana, by French author Emile Zola.

Adapted for the stage by the late Olwen Wymark, and co-directed by choreographer Miguel Long and managing director Nicole Weisner, this reimagining of the original 2002 production at the tiny theater—tucked away behind a restaurant at 1655 W. Cortland—was flawless on opening night. It’s a cabaret style musical, and the premise of the story gives us a Parisian cabaret that doubles as a bordello, allowing occasions for song and dance that fit the storyline perfectly.

As the audience arrives, the actors are already in character, welcoming us as patrons of the establishment. At curtain time, the anticipation builds among onstage patrons—mostly emotionally overwrought, palavering males—all hoping for a glance of recognition from Nana when she arrives.

After this artful build-up, which heightens the expectation of the audience as well, drapes are snapped opened for the big reveal: Nana (Maryam Abdi is miraculous) emerges on a swing as a vision of Venus—long blonde tresses, and a gossamer robe opened to barely cover her breasts, minimally hidden by glittery clamshell pasties. It’s all very nineteenth century, and the men fit exactly in our expectations of swooning romantic gestures salted with salacious innuendo.

Amber Washington in "Nana"at Trap Door Theatre through May 19. 

We also meet the coterie of sophisticated ladies in orbit around Nana. There is Sabine (Amber Washington) just too too, all wrapped in a gorgeous gown and chapeau, waving a cigarette holder while delivering bon mots and pithy observations. And her dresser Zoe (Emily Lotspeich), who carefully manages the arrivals of suitors, parceling them out to every room until Nana’s apartment is filled. And Satin (Emily Nicholson), Nana’s BFF and occupying the same role, just at a lower echelon than our diva.
The song and dance numbers were quite good, and flawlessly performed.

Dan Cobbler, Emily Nichelson, and Emily Lotspeich in "Nana" at Trap Door Theatre through May 18, 2024.

Always in need of cash, Nana is pursued by a chorus of snarling creditors, who snarl in unison, to powerful effect on stage.Yet there is a substantial core to Zola's story: Nana, as she rises in stature as the object of desire for wealthy men, extorts them in their ardor, then walks all over them when their funds are depleted. She does this with greater rapidity, yet their generosity never falters. For example, Steiner (David Lovejoy is terrific) has given her a country retreat amid a high society and royal enclave, yethe never receives thanks or very much of Nana’s attention, who only escalates her demands for cash and orders this paramour to surrender his own key to the house he bought for Nana.

Indeed, Nana plays all her many suitors to the limit, relenting only enough when she senses she has pushed too far, an incredibly adept dominatrix.

Yet amid all this, Nana has a private life, and we learn where her earnings go. She retains her maiden aunt (Tia Pinson is the essence of propriety) to care for her infant. And she also has a significant other, Fanton (Caleb Lee Jenkins is the playful, yet mercenary scoundrel). We soon see that Fanton does to Nana what she does to her suitors, though far worse, as he is also physically abusive.

Nana, whose reputation has preceded her, is rejected by the "polite" society around her country home, though local suitors visit surreptitiously. And ultimately, Nana  meets her fated downfall in full expression of melodramatic justice. 

Costumes (Rachel Sypniewski) are spectacular, as are wids (Igor Shashkin) and make-up (Zsofia Otvos). Most amazing in this Trap Door Theatre production is the performance of Maryam Abdi as Nana. Abdi dominates her suitors, and the stage. She is fully in the role, inhabiting Nana’s character in a star-is-born delivery that would fit comfortably in an Off-Broadway, or even Broadway. So too for the entire cast. The Trap Door Theatre has outdone itself with “Nana,” a jewel in its 30th season celebration. “Nana” runs through May 19 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland St. in Chicago.

*Extended through May 25th

Author Percival Everett is having his moment, and Exile in Bookville gave us a chance to meet him up close and personal, part of the bookstore’s ongoing Authors on Tap series at the lovely Studebaker Theater in Chicago.

Everett is the author of “Erasure,” which was adapted for the Oscar winning movie “American Fiction” starring Jeffrey Wright of the “Westworld” streaming series. After watching “American Fiction,” a send-up of book publishing in general and the particular challenges Black writers face, I ran out and bought “Erasure,” devouring it quickly.

Everett specializes in irony, and the book is immensely funny—the story line follows an author not unlike Everett himself (a literature professor, wood craftsman, fly fisherman) who is nonplussed by having his works shelved under Black authors, and by being far outpaced in sales by Black writers whose works focus on the struggles of ghetto life—like catnip for many White book buyers.

In “Erasure” (and the movie adaptation) he adopts a pen-name, then dashes off in just week, a parody of such books, “My Pafology,” which his agent quickly sells for a six-figure advance, and soon after a multi-million dollar movie option. There is an incredible irony in that Everett’s real-life experience is mirroring this, giving an extra level of meta-quality to the original work.

After reading “Erasure,” I picked up his short-story collection, “Damned If I Do,” and now I am a full-fledged fan.

Everett’s appearance at Exile in Bookville’s Authors on Tap coincides with the publication of “James,” a retelling of “Huckleberry Finn” from the slave Jim’s point of view, already receiving wide acclaim. And fitting, because as we learned at the event, Twain is among Everett’s favorite authors.
The audience might have expected Everett to read a bit from this or another of his more than 30 books. But no, Everett doesn’t do readings And he doesn’t sign books for devotees lining up at tables. (One could purchase pre-signed copies, so I bought “I Am Not Sidney Poitier,” said to be his funniest book.)

Everett is also considered a challenging interview, so his author colleague Gabriel Bump had his work cut out for him. Bump finessed Everett’s disinclinations by doing brief readings himself of provocative passages from a selection of books. And he asked the right questions, provoking Everett to speak entertainingly, and with great humor, and clarity.

Much of the conversation centered on the art of writing, and the author's experience in publishing. “I write fiction to make a living, which is itself ample evidence of mental deficiency, so to come to me for any direction in life?” Why does he write? “That’s the way addiction works,” he said to great laughter.

His first three books were with large houses: Viking (“I didn’t like the idea of finally being published—by Mobile Oil,” the owner); then Hyperion, a unit of Disney, which he didn’t care for.

Everett published with Grey Wolf for 29 years and gained something of a cult following. His long-time agent (“She was five feet tall in all directions and her voice was hoarse from whiskey and cigarettes”) advised him, “If you moved houses, you would make more money. She was right,” he said, and with Doubleday (“the publicists are slightly more fanatical and insane”) came the newest work, “James.”

Everett greatly appreciates Mark Twain’s classic, which is a product of its time in some of the objectionable language (by today’s standards) but was the first popular work to begin to humanize a Black slave character. .“That’s the beauty of Huck Finn: an adolescent representing young America, wandering through the landscape.” But Everett says his retelling in “James” examines more fully who Twain’s character Jim is. “It’s not about slavery. It’s about an enslaved person.” And this same quality is what is so compelling in Everett’s writing.

After the two authors finished their conversation, the audience could line up at a microphone, and Everett fielded questions. As to Everett’s daily routine for writing, he works in small bursts, but continuously, sometimes disappearing down rabbit holes of inquiry only loosely tied to the manuscript in hand.

“I work all the time, and I don’t work at all. I feel like the laziest person in the world.” His craftsmanship in woodworking and tying fly fishing lures inform his approach. “I’m not a perfectionist,” Everett says. “You have to be satisfied that nothing will be perfect.”

He commented that he does not worry while writing his works during writing or after publication, for that matter.
“I don’t really feel stress,” Everett says His “friends who are authors feel stress, and it gets in the way.” Once a book is published, he is on to the next, driving the book out of his life like a bear cub entering the world. “I call it the mother bear school of art.”

“The Penelopiad” is a zesty romp and very entertaining. With a script by a writer I adore, Margaret Atwood of “The Handmaid's Tale” fame, and based on her novella by the same name, it tells the story of Odysseus’ wife Penelope (played stunningly by Jennifer Morrison)—and how she occupied herself during the long odyssey recounted in Homer’s Greek epic poem, “The Odyssey.” I had recently finished reading a new translation so that story was fresh on my mind.

Of course, this being Atwood, it is a reset of the tale, told from the woman’s point of view. And it is very scholarly, perhaps a bit cerebral in the first half, relating in more detail than Homer’s work the origins of Penelope, and how she ended up married to Odysseus, the King of Ithaca. We also see what life was like in the palace from Penelope’s perspective, and that of her dozen maids.

Odyseus went off to fight in the Trojan War. He was gone such a long time, 20 years, that princes of his realm presumed him dead, and vied to marry his supposed widow Penelope, and claim the throne. As the years wore on, they didn’t behave nicely—living on the palace’s largess and hitting on the maids relentlessly. It was an unapologetic patriarchy, to be sure.

In Homer’s version, Penelope is celebrated for being steadfast and true. And Atwood gives us this too, but without the male gaze. Penelope constantly thwarts and outwits the obnoxious suitors, and her corps of maids switches genders and roles to show what that was like. With an all female cast, and set with frequent music and dance, “The Penelopiad” relates many of the high points of the original poem. The first act, then, is a recitation of the Odyssey revisited.

Without question, “The Penelopiad” under the direction of new artistic director Susan V. Booth gives the best ever and very understated caricature of male behavior by women actors: the boasting stance, the lack of self-awareness, the entitlement, and the varieties of ways this is displayed by classically awful male personality types. It’s a bracing and edifying experience for a man to see.

This corps of maids also plays identifiable characters (though not credited in the program): the growing Telemachus, evolving from whiny teenager critiquing his mother Penelope’s behavior, to self-empowered accomplice when his father does finally return; the oldest maid, who carps at Penelope and the sisterhood she forms with the young maids. She soon recognizes the disguised Odysseus by his scars when he returns, and selects at his request the maids who will be punished for fraternizing with the suitors.

We also see a maid as Odysseus himself, a pompous braggart at times, who certainly did not make rushing home to Penelope his priority. These transformations in gender are aided by artful breastplate costumes (costume designer Kara Harmon).

Atwood describes “The Penelopiad” as most akin to a cabaret along the lines of Kurt Weill. The music and scintillating choral singing is composed by Samuel Davis and directed by Jeremy Ramey.
While in the first half we get mostly a poetic oration in a series of scenes—Penelope being cast heartlessly into the ocean by her father, surviving and gaining stature as a demigoddess; Penelope’s first encounter with the immature Odysseus—the second half gives rise to real drama. As the years wear on, Penelope develops one final ruse to avoid the suitors: she will weave a shroud for her father-in-law, and when it is done, will select one of the group to marry. Famously she unweaves the shroud each night, and eventually the suitors catch her. 

Luckily, Odysseus is back, and the Odyssey plot grinds quickly to its well-known conclusion. Odysseus slays the suitors, and then horrifically hangs the maids as well. Penelope examines herself in Atwood’s retelling of the epic, and how she has survived only because she sacrificed the maids to the suitor’s unwanted advances. She was powerless to keep Odysseus from hanging the maids, though to her credit, Odysseus kept his intent from her. It’s a truthful and sad conclusion, set in a wholly entertaining frame of music and dance. Kudos to the dramaturg Neena Arndt for her role in bringing us this lesser known work.

”The Penelopiad” runs at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre through March 31