Goodman Theatre’s staging of The Winter’s Tale, loaded with spectacle, would have seemed ridiculous and even unanchored 20 years ago. But with the surging popularity of those magical realms in the movies of the Marvel Universe – Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame - where characters die, then return, and are repeatedly transformed – well, director Robert Fall’s almost (but not quite) overwrought effort fits our times perfectly.

The Winter’s Tale was one of Shakespeare final works, and it is a unique form (perhaps why it is produced less often), neither a comedy nor a tragedy, but devised as a romance.
Unlike the powerful plays that are channeled intellectually to our emotions through telling dialog, as in the tragic Hamlet or comic Taming of the Shrew, The Winter’s Tale was meant as a theatrical confection, and entertains us more than it sways us.

In Goodman Theatre’s magnificent production, director Robert Falls has given us spectacle – five acts delivered as a series of elegant vignettes, presenting different facets of Shakespeare’s spin on several forms: Tragedy, Greek Drama, Pastoral Romance, Comedy & Clowning. At first, I admit I was suspicious of it all, wondering whether Goodman had bankrolled an overproduced folly. But by degrees I came to appreciate Falls' vision, and fell for it.

The Winter’s Tale opens with a brewing tragedy among royals – the deeply bonded kings of Bohemia and Sicilia are like brothers, who have a falling out, leading to tragic consequences and suffering. But Shakespeare uses the stuff of this tragedy as a formula: we are meant to behold the key points of very bad things happening.

For this, Falls puts the cast in contemporary evening wear and paper crowns – suggesting through what is almost a cliché in contemporary Shakespeare style, that this is a throwaway tragedy. The cast delivers it’s Elizabethan dialog persuasively. But the rather convoluted sequence of events is more like an exaggerated operatic storyline, than compelling trough of sorrow.

In a nutshell, Leontes (Dan Donohue - he was Scar in Lion King!) King of Sicilia becomes jealous of his pregnant wife Hermione (Kate Fry) and of his dearest friend, Polixenes (Nathan Hosner), the King of Bohemia, who he deems are cheating on him. Leontes shifts with inexplicable rapidity from bosom buddy to enraged adversary, though friends and advisers try to soothe him. Hermione delivers the baby, and Leontes puts her on trial, and sends the infant girl to die in the wilderness – of Bohemia. Oh and his young son Mamillius (Charlie Herman) dies, leaving Leontes heirless.

Subsequent scenes, including the trial of Hermione, now are given the look of Greek drama, or, Game of Thrones as suggested by the costume of Leontes steward, Paulina (Christiana Clark is a dramatic force). Hermione’s fate is sealed by Leontes' edict, but an appeal is made to consult the Oracle at Delphos on whether his jealousy is misplaced.

The play transitions a more pastoral setting, in wilds of the Kingdom of Bohemia, where the baby in the basket is threatened by a bear – played with convincing ferociousness by Mark Lancaster. The baby is saved when the bear chases after someone else (“Exit, pursued by bear” is the script line).

The curtain falls. And when it rises, we are greeted by a transitional interlude, with the character Time and letting us know in metered verse the clock has moved forward 16 years. This precious scene is like an elaborate decorative embellishment in an antiquarian book, letting us know we are entering a new episode.

The next parts of the play brings us to the pastoral setting of the Kingdom of Bohemia, and Falls gives us celebratory scenes following a sheep shearing, with bales of wool stacked high, and ala Nutcracker, a giant sheep and sheers. Against the setting of plenty we meet the surviving infant, Perdita (Chloe Baldwin) now a teenaged girl, and her boyfriend, Florizel (Xavier Bluell, who brings a real freshness and spark to his role). We are greeted by delightful scenes, and eventually the play makes it’s way back to the Kingdom of Sicilia, for a magical resolution in which all is forgiven, though not all live happily ever after.

For Shakespeare fans this production of a rarity makes The Winter’s Tale must viewing. But anyone who comes will find themselves richly rewarded. It runs through June 9 at Goodman Theatre.

Promethean Theatre Ensemble has brought to stage a very good production of Mad, Beat, Hip & Gone, a play that is a riff on the Beat Generation literary movement – specifically drawing from Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel, On the Road.

The script by Steve Dietz (Private Eyes) adopts aspects of the free-form writing style Kerouac called “spontaneous prose." Some of Kerouac’s works were drafted in days-long, Benzedrine-fueled writing jags. He famously typed on paper rolls fed continuously through his Underwood typewriter.

Kerouac’s On the Road tells of two young guys thumbing westward in the late 1940’s, on the make, and in search of themselves – aiming to join the Beat’s congregating in San Francisco. (These two guys would be the real life Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassaday, his buddy and fellow writer.) Like Hemingway before him, Kerouac also brought a macho flair to the pursuit of writing – he was a college football star and outdoorsman.

Mad, Beat, Hip & Gone similarly tells of two buddies who have recently graduated from high school in Nebraska – Danny Fergus (Pat King) and Rich Rayburn (Michael Vizzi), who end up on a similar sojourn, but for very different reasons. We meet the boys on their return from a local bar, where Danny was thwarted in his effort to pick up a girl when the real Jack Kerouac (unseen in the play) wows her with some spontaneous poetry – and gets her phone number. "What's the deal with guys like that," asks an astonished Danny. 

On the Road is widely considered a seminal work of 20th Century American literature. Artists including Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and The Doors credit Kerouac as a significant influence. And successive generations continue to rediscover Kerouac’s accomplishment in this and other writing such as Dharma Bums. Kerouac incorporates stream of consciousness, but with a sufficiently structured plot to bring us along on a story line.

Dietz trades on Kerouac’s tone, but delivers an interesting plot line to hold our attention – working in the back story of Danny and Rich to create a motivation as they depart on a road trip very much paralleling Kerouac’s, but for more personal reasons. (We’ll avoid a spoiler here.) Dietz also captures the post-World War II world where young American’s were hungry for purpose, and seeking themselves.

You don't need to know Kerouac at all to like this play. Dietz has mined the times and developed characters who express the views Kerouac would recognize.Danny's father, Albert Fergus (Ted Hoerl) who runs a gas station, hold's forth on automobiles and their role in the American dream. He sounds poetic, like Kerouac, calling the gas and car a sacrament. 

"A car was a little house you could take along with you," he says. "In a house, your window is your fate. In your car, your window is your vision." 

Kerouac, along with poet Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and William S. Burrough’s The Beat Generation were the seminal literary expressions of non-conformist movement that came to life after World War II, accompanied by free-form jazz, drug experimentation, and sexual liberation. This evolved into the hippie movement, and the continued streams of social change (and reactions to these changes) that brought us to our charged contemporary social landscape.

Dietz uses poetic language that harkens to Kerouac’s style, which doesn’t always provide literal clarity. But it works. 

He also injects (a welcome anachronism given the period of Mad Beat Hip & Gone) a strong female character - Honey Vance (Hilary Williams) – who like the boys is searching for personal answers by hitchhiking to San Francisco. In Dietz’s storyline we are faced with the unconscious machismo that characters like Kerouac (and anti-heroes of the period like James Dean) represent. We also get some choice "Mrs. Robinson" moments between Danny’s mom, Mrs. Fergus (Elaine Carlson) and Rich – well played by Vizzi and Carlson. I especially liked Ted Hoerl as Danny’s Dad; and Hillary Williams’ peformance was excellent.

Strong performances and a script that channels Kerouac make this worthy show, definitely recommended to get a flavor of the period and a sense of how the Beat Generation was greeted by middle America. Promethean Ensemble’s Mad, Beat, Hip & Gone runs through June 1 at The Edge Theater Off Broadway, 1133 W Catalpa in Chicago.

Too Heavy for Your Pocket at TimeLine Theatre is both an important play, and a good one. Powerful, but not too heavy to bear, with a rock-star cast directed by Ron OJ Parsons, it tells the story of the Freedom Riders – groups of blacks and whites who traveled through the segregated South in 1961 on Greyhound and Trailway's buses, asserting the new freedoms set under the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

It is written by rising talent Jeron Breon Holder, currently a writer on NBC’s New Amsterdam, who developed it while working on his MFA at the Yale School of Drama in 2016. This project was triggered by a remark his grandmother made about a young friend who abandoned college to join the Freedom Riders. What followed were weeks touring locations and studying events that transpired more than 30 years before Holder was born.

The buses were met often with violence, and the passengers beaten and jailed. As stories of the lives of black people's experiences in the South are emerging – think The Butler, Hidden Figures, Selma – our awareness of this heritage of injustice grows. This is valuable.

Evelyn (Ayanna Bria Bakari) and Sally (Jennifer Latimore).

The challenge is that however well intentioned, these stories are filtered – even unconsciously - from a viewpoint of white people’s participation. We get what is called White Gaze, or depictions focusing on White Saviors. The overarching cultural perspectives make us feel good about the values, but we miss the full story. Think of the difference between the sentimental The Green Book, and searing works like August Wilson’s Fences, or James Baldwin’s If Beal St. Could Talk.
Holder takes the Freedom Riders as a backdrop to an engaging and rather incisive portrait of two young married couples, best friends living near each other in rural Tennessee. Bowzie Brandon (Jalen Gilbert) has just won a college scholarship; his wife Evelyn (Ayanna Bria Bakari) is the breadwinner. Their best friends are Tony (Cage Sebastian Pierre) and Sally (Jennifer Latimore).

Brandon decides to join the Freedom Riders. Yet this choice is not instantly celebrated, and instead throws this small circle of friends into emotional chaos. Each embodies a facet of that period’s African-American culture. But what elevates the work is that each represents a slice of the human condition.

Sally is a church-bound social conservative, who questions whether challenging the status quo is the moral path. Hardworking Tony, the salt of the earth and Brandon’s best bro, quickly supports his buddy’s choice. Most complex is the response of Evelyn, a former nightclub singer who has settled into the straight and narrow path with Brandon, and has supported his dreams - until this one. Bowzie goes ahead anyway.

"When I get on that Greyhound bus, it's gonna be the first serious thing I've done in my life," Bowzie says.

But what begins as an exhilarating ride, turns into a grind, and Holder  gives us real people, not symbols. Bowzie is broken and he longs for home, the only jailed protester who doesn't hear from his family and friends, while back home, the tides of change, and the pressure of Bowzie's plight, impact his friends and spouse. 

His wife Evelyn cuts off communication for her own emotional protection. Finally Bowzie reaches Tony, who tells him to come home and take care of his wife, "You ain't no Martin Luther King," And we see Sally hit a breaking point, when she realizes she is mistreated in her home, as well as outside it. In a stunning scene, she laments, "Everyone treats you like a dog," she says. "I want a freedom ride for me! Where is my goddam freedom ride!" 

Jireh Breon Holder

Holder has done a great job establishing the settings and building the emotional dynamics of these characters -though at a couple points the exposition through dialog is a tad leaden. My heart was in my throat and my tears surfaced. But between the melodrama and angst, Holder drops in parodies of church life and services – in which Latimore’s gifts for mimicry, and Gilbert’s impersonation of the church pastor are priceless. Bakari’s irrepressibly beautiful voice surfaces immediately in the first scenes, as she simply hums to herself – and eventually in a nightclub scene with a scintillating song.

Shout-outs are due the dramaturg (Regina Victor) and artistic director PJ Powers) who brought this play to TimeLine; and to the scenic designer (Jose Manuel Diaz-Soto) for blending the household and its rural surroundings. And to whomever is responsible for this exceptional casting – the chemistry of these four is electric. Running at the TimeLine theatre through June 29, Too Heavy for Your Pocket is highly recommended.

Language Rooms is a convincing portrait of the hidden world of government interrogators. These individuals use cajolery and flattery, or fear and intimidation, to persuade individuals to spill their secrets – all on behalf of securing the safety of the state.

This two-act piece (one intermission) flies by, as the characters go about their work. But we see as well the impact that these information-gathering activities have on those doing the questioning. Their personal integrity is compromised as they lie to get truthful answers. It also faces us with a distasteful prospect: if our government and our society condones using intimidation and even physical abuse to gather data, are we not complicit?

Language Rooms involves two Arabic-speaking men on an unnamed government investigating team, quartered in a windowless vault with motorized doors that slide open with a whoosh at the touch of a button. Ahmed (Salar Ardebili) is a rookie, and his work is being closely watched by his supervisor, Kevin (Bradford Stevens). His co-worker, Nasser (Bassam Abdelfattah) is apparently even more fluent in Arabic than Ahmed, and is doing his best to help Ahmed with his weaker command of the language.

It soon becomes evident that the same hidden cameras and observational techniques used in questioning suspects are also trained on the men doing the questioning. They speak to each other with siielding their mouths from view, as they try to carry on private conversations. – just like any office, except that they have the continuous impression they are being watched. The manipulative techniques used on the subjects are also part of the office communication.

All of this provides a set up for a workplace wherein paranoia runs rampant. And as a subtext, these Arab-Americans feel they must not only do a good job, but prove their worthiness and loyalty to the government agency they work for - not to mention to society at large. The plot thickens dramatically as a new suspect is brought in, hooded and shackled: Samir (Bilal Dardai). This one, says Kevin, will be the great test for Ahmed, to prove both his loyalty and his competency. To avoid a spoiler here we can only say this sets up a dynamic, powerful tete a tete between the questioner Ahmed and his subject, Samir.

Samir (Bilal Dardai).

As the probe into his "suspicious" behavior goes on, Samir offers truthful answers, but not convincing ones. "You know the problem with being innocent is the facts don't serve you well," he says. "Innocence is not a good story."

This worldly, sophisticated script by Yussef El Guindi feels as though it will become a classic in the existentialist-absurdist roster, along with works like Miss Margarita’s Way or Master Harold and the Boys, plays in which a sinister undercurrent froths just beneath the surface. El Guindi provides a valuable service to us all just by telling this story. That he does it in such a timeless, universal way, will allow it to be told widely – and we hope it will be.

The production boasts extremely strong performances, especially Ardebili as Ahmed, the rookie; and Dardai, who delivers a perfect portrait of a good-hearted immigrant under a torrent of unfair questioning. I had a chance to see this show twice, April 22 and April 26 – and can say Ardebili had refined and heightened his delivery, and the dynamic between Ahmed and Nasser was even more intensely expressed. Director Kaiser Zaki Ahmed specializes in actor-driven new American plays, and has assistant director credits on two recent, illustrious productions: Guards at the Taj (Steppenwolf) and Hand to God (Victory Gardens).

The script is strong, but the first act could have been streamlined just a little, perhaps to give a stronger thrust to the dramatic rise and moment of suspense as it ends. The Broken Nose Theatre production of Language Rooms runs at The Den Theatre through May 18. It is highly recommended. www.brokennosetheatre.com.

City Lit Theater artistic director Terry McCabe brings us an inspired pairing with Two Days in Court, a double-bill of one act plays with a legal theme - and pieces not often seen.

The Devil & Daniel Webster is a 1938 play about the famed 19th century orator who reclaims the soul of a client who has ill-advisedly sold it to the devil; and Gilbert & Sullivan’s breakthrough 1875 operetta, Trial By Jury, brings us a woman who sues for breech of promise when her fiancé abandons her for another woman.

The legal themes aside, the works couldn’t be more different. Gilbert & Sullivan serve up sly wit in a marvelous parody of society, and skillful mimicry of operatic forms, in a highly polished, high caliber musical work. The Devil & Daniel Webster is interesting as a bit of Americana, a decidedly rustic and really rather primitive morality play that originated as a 1936 story in the Saturday Evening Post by Stephen Vincent Benet.

Despite being stilted and laced with phrases like “Tarnation!” The Devil & Daniel Webster is also packed with still-biting commentary on American social foibles, and a backcountry wit. (It’s set in rural New Hampshire sometime after 1830.) And it trades on the abiding respect and affection felt for Daniel Webster, whose oratorical skills were legendary – and thus the reason the character was tapped to argue the case to save a soul. The story is also a cultural meme, reappearing regularly including in a Simpson’s episode and in a video game by Cuphead.

Terry McCabe added one more insightful touch: he found a cast that could sing, dance, and mine period language for its humor. Trained voices are required for any Gilbert & Sullivan piece, and this cast has them. To bind the two works in Two Days in Court more securely, McCabe inserted two songs from a 1938 folk opera version of The Devil & Daniel Webster - a nice touch.

City Lit does a lot with limited props and sets, and successfully relies on its devoted players who turned in strong performances. The polished pro Bill Chamberlain, as Daniel Webster, displayed his notable voice in “I’ve Got a Ram,” a song from the opera version of the play. Playing the Devil – known as Scratch – with an otherworldly style, was Lee Wechman. Though at certain moments his style seemed a little bit out of synch with the rest of the players, overall it worked.

On the Gilbert & Sullivan side we had a chance to really hear some voices, with Ryan Smetana a standout as Counsel for the Plaintiff and Sarah Beth Tanner as the Plaintiff. The one-act Gilbert & Sullivan work left me wanting more – a good feeling to depart with from any production. City Lit Theatre’s Two Days in Court runs through May 26. It ‘s highly recommended for those who don’t want to miss two rarely-played works that are important cultural touchstones.

If you remember the terrible Disneyland song, “Small World,”with its annoying refrain “ It’s a small world after all,” don’t let that stop you from seeing Small World at The Den Theater.

Based on what many would call Disneyland’s most inspid attraction, this play embraces the audience as ticketholders embarking on a mechanical boat passage tunnel. Facing a blank white curtain, we’re warned to keep arms inside and stay in our seats for a ride that “will last approximately 85 minutes,” the unseen announcer capturing the Disney tone of restrained excitement.

Then following sounds of explosions and destruction , the curtain parts, revealing a disaster inside the Small World tunnel. The three Disney “castmembers,” as they are known, suffer the effects of what may be a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. The tunnel exit has collapsed; they are trapped.

All are injured, one seriously, but their wounds and disorientation to nothing to hinder their non-stop, manic discussion, as they speculate about what happened and what to do next. And the song, “It’s a Small World After All” plays non-stop, just as it did on the ride in the real world, but set, thankfully, at a low enough volume to not be distracting.

We have Becca (Jackies Seijo), a disillusioned Disney worker who was serving her lsat day when disaster; perpetually upbeat Kim (Stephanie Shum) a by-the-book Disney employee who feels she is living the dream within Disneyland; and (Patrick Coakley) a white Christian conspiracy theorist who has secretly turned on the Disney empire. Struggling in limited lighting, the crew is repeatedly thwarted in attempts to exit. Kim, the closest thing we have to a protagonist here, manages to recite chapter and verse from the Disney employee manual, despite her thigh being imp. ailed….that’s the gonzo part, and somehow it works – the energy on stage is so over-the-top the audience catches fire and laughs uproariously.

”Facing mortality, there young conscripts at Disneyland, "the happiest place on earth," mine the dark side for humor. "Now I know how Simba felt," opines Kim, to great laughter. In managing the cadaver of a friend that floats by, Donny says he is deceased, but Kim demurs: "Noone dies in Disney," tapping the Magic Kingdom's reputation for carefully managing any hint of bad news. 

All of this is adds up to a “gonzo workplace comedy,” as artistic director Fin Coe puts it, and loaded with “our signature weird humor and wild action."That is an apt description of what you will witness in Small World, but the breakneck pace of the non-stop gabbing frequently reveals an overloaded script occasionally more suited for reading than speaking. In the course of the conversation, the characters reveal themselves as an unlikely team in a quest for survival.

Small World is funny as an idea and on stage – we give it a Recommended rating. Directed by Andrew Hopgood, Small World runs through May 4 at The Den Theater on Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago.

After one sees Sarah Ruhl’s comedy, Melancholy Play: A Contemporary Farce, one will doubtless ask: Why has melancholy gone out of vogue, just when we need it so?

Melancholy is an emotional condition, like the vapors and neurasthenia, that has simply fallen out of fashion. When one is both inconsolably sad and depressed, but not quite either – that’s melancholia.

In this exceptionally delightful production, Ruhl’s conceptual comedic tone is lovingly presented. Each quirky character is thoughtfully drawn by a cast that most certainly, like me, love Ruhl’s wry view of the human condition.

A Number is an elegant, fully enthralling thought piece by one of Britain’s greatest playwrights, Caryl Churchill. Just over an hour long, it is relentlessly intriguing, keeping you on the edge of your seat as you follow the unfolding story - first in bits and pieces, then building to a torrent of revelation, and finally slamming shut, like a book cover at the end of an intense mystery.

Set in the not too distant future, A Number opens with father and son midway through an intense conversation. We can see the son, Bernard, is distraught.

We piece together that Bernard has learned that his birth was the product of a scientific intervention. But this is not the root of his upset. Rather, he has discovered that the research scientist, now deceased, employed experimental methods and went further than he should have.

With a powerful performances by William Brown as the father, Salter, and the skillful Nate Burger in the role of Bernard, this mystery puts the audience through an intellectual puzzle along the lines of Proof or Doubt.

In this case, Bernard learns that he is not alone - that there were other test tube babies cloned in that lab. More painfully, perhaps, we gather that Bernard has a whiff of suspicion his father was complicit with everything, and continues to dissemble.

“They said none of us was the original,” Bernard tells Salter. “If you are not my father, it’s fine. If you did an in vitro or whatever, just tell me.” How many were there?

“A number,” his father replies vaguely, and again we sense he knows more than he is admitting. He moves to distract Bernard from this upset by calculating the dollar value of a lawsuit against the laboratory for this violation of their trust.

In fact, Salter knows much more, but we must not spoil the plot. We can say Churchill artfully traverses the science, emotional and dramatic terrain in a unique way - exploring our tendency to all too easily surrender governance of our souls to the technological wonders surrounding us. It is also a tragedy, and Brown’s Shakespearean chops serve him well as he laments, “I did some bad things, and I deserve to be punished,” but adding a post-modern twist, “And I did some better things, and I deserve recognition for that.” Bernard rails back, “That’s how everyone feels!” And we wallow with them in our uniquely contemporary angst.

This work, written in 2002, is a precursor to the dark intensity we experience in watching Black Mirror on television. The action heightens and takes violent twists that are shocking even if unseen. The scenic design by Courtney O’Neill, with black picture windows looking out on the void, conveys an eerie spectre of foreboding.

Churchill is known for Cloud Nine, Top Girls, and Serious Money, all three of them Obie winning works - but I am sorry to say I did not know more of her. Now I will be unable to forget her. 

Plaudits to the creative team at Writers Theatre, including dramaturg Bobby Kennedy in this masterful production tightly directed by Robin Witt. We can highly recommend it. A Number runs through June 9, 2019 at Writers Theatre in Glencoe.

Bright Star, the Steve Martin-Edie Brickell show that earned musical acclaim in its New York Broadway run, is destined for a love affair with Chicago for Boho Theatre's producion.

The show opened Saturday like a meteorite, sparks flying as the company marched on stage in powerful harmony for its opening, "If You Knew My Story." Then we hear those clarion chords as Missy Wise strides into view, and into our hearts – in a penetrating soprano sailing above the chorus, tuned to a rapid country vibrato that channels Reba McIntyre, Alison Krause and Tammy Wynette, only more dulcet and beautiful. It makes you cry it is so good. And they are only one minute into the number. Phew!

Maybe in Manhattan Bright Star wasn’t approached just right, because they only liked it - or more likely New York is the wrong market. Bright Star is a serious drama, a timeless morality play and a country music operetta all at once – based loosely on the true story of a lost baby (the Iron Mountain Baby), the emotional toll for those involved, and in this telling, delivering a satisfying ending that brings redemption and healing.

The story covers decades, following teenagers Jimmy Ray (Josiah Robinson) and Alice (Missy Wise) who had a baby out of wedlock and were forced by their families to split, and give up the child. But the flame never died, and the two searched for the child and each other for nearly 20 years. 

While at times the book is flaccid and goes a little astray it does not matter - the story is inherently engrossing, and the songs so beautiful and dramatically expressive they carry the show. Treading carefully to avoid a spoiler, we can say Bright Star is exceptionally well cast, with a knockout performance by Jeff Piermont as Billy, a GI home from WWII and beginning a writing career.

Steve Martin’s hand can be seen in witty scenes, and some colorful, scene-stealing characters – including Daryl (Dwayne Everett) and Lucy Grant (Rachel Whyte), co-workers at the publishing house where much of the action happens.  

Martin and his musical partner Edie Brickell insert the band as a character, fitting for a country-inflected musical. Though the band mostly next to and behind the stage, Hillary Bayley on fiddle and other players appear with the cast at various points. 

We watch the teens become adults. Jimmy Ray is heir to a family fortune and business; Alice gets a degree and becomes a celebrated editor at a prestigious Asheville publishing house – one known for shepherding emerging Southern writers (Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Zora Neal Hurston, Flannery O’Connor,  etc.). On stage, Wise and Robinson have real chemistry together, making their story even more compelling.

Director and choreographer Ericka Mac knows her way around Chicagoland musical theater (among many credits are Parade and Company at Writer’s Theatre), but this Greenhouse Production is perhaps the most intimate space – and she has made the most of it. Scenic design is by Lauren Nichols and lighting is by G. Max Maxin. Costumes, important to the settings and action, and sometimes changed onstage mid-action, are by Robert Kuhn.

Bright Star is highly recommended. It runs through May 5 at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, Chicago.

A wondrous evening of sonorous music awaits you at The Bridges of Madison County. The story was also a 1995 film (Clint Eastwood directed and starred opposite Meryl Streep, who won an Oscar) then was translated into this Broadway musical in 2012 - all based on Robert Waller’s blockbuster 1992 romantic novel – 60 million copies sold worldwide.  

For this show, directed by Fred Anzevino, Theo Ubique’s cozy new cabaret playhouse on Howard Street gives us an unimaginably intimate performance. It is like a jewel box setting for a chamber opera, and features the immensely talented Kelli Harrington - a Broadway bel canto if ever there were one.  

The tale is really a reverie on romantic love, and paths not taken, as the married but lonely Italian-American, Francesca (Harrington) questions her life as an Iowa farm wife with two teenaged children. Her considerate, dutiful but uninspiring husband Bud brought her home as a war bride from a devastated Naples to his Madison County farm – a place as foreign to her roots and soul as the other side of the moon.

While Bud (Carl Herzog) is away at the Iowa State Fair with their teenagers Michael (Christopher Ratliff) and Carolyn (Peyton Shaffer), a National Geographic photographer, Robert Kincaid (Tommy Thurston) rings Francesca’s doorbell seeking directions. It turns out he has recently photographed Naples and happens to bring the issue featuring his photographs of her lost home. This helps triggers a torrid, four-day affair.

The drama unfolds at a leisurely pace. It is a low-key tale of self-reflection, befitting the emotional struggles of the Robert and Francesa as they weigh running away together. Just this side of becoming saccarine, The Bridges of Madison County's underlying story appealed to men and women, as does this show. It analyzes the values of duty and commitment, and where lies the duty of the chivalrous Robert Kincaid and the ultimately faithful Francesa. The lovely, harmonic music by Jason Robert Brown is more tone poems than Broadway numbers - perfectly suited to the remarkable Kelli Harrington, who teaches voice and has a string of Jeff Award honors.

In a class all by herself, Harrington sings and evokes in parallel, like a fine diva – an arched eyebrow, a furtive look, shaking her locks – it’s really quite stunning to witness. The elegant chamber music ensemble led by Jeremy Ramey emphasizes cello, violin, and keyboard. Francesca’s role dominates the musical minutes, with Robert as her partner in emotional upheaval countering with a comparably challenging song book. Tommy Thurston acquits himself admirably, in a complex role. 

Among the standouts were Shaffer and Ratcliff as completely convincing teens who sing wonderfully; and Molly LeCaptain as Robert’s ex Marian (she also plays Francesca’s sister Chiara) – backing herself beautifully on guitar in a solo. Plaudits to Kate Harris, whose performance I loved as neighbor Marge, always supportive, not too intrusive, who lives a parallel life of love and loss. Harris has a wonderful stage delivery, and played so realistically a woman aging over the years.

This is my second show at Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre, and because I like the space so much I am tempted to see everything this season. Theo Ubique allows you to order dinner in advance, and the  performers serve before curtain and during. Or you can do as I did and sit in a bar stool and run a tab (no serving during the show itself, of course.) I have two related suggestions: for ticket buyers, because the theater has no lobby, you can’t be seated after curtain. (I learned that when I was a few minutes late for a performance. So be early.) The other suggestion I have is for a minor adjustment to the sound system, which is really pretty good. It could just be my ears, but certain upper vocal ranges seemed constrained.

Recommended See The Bridges of Madison County through April 21, 2019 at Theo Ubique, 721 Howard Street, Evanston.

*Extended through May 5th