Displaying items by tag: Tim Hopper

Love is often jokingly referred to as a socially acceptable form of insanity, but in Sam Shepard’s ‘Fool for Love’ – social acceptability is an afterthought. Steppenwolf is especially known for their revivals of Shepard’s plays, and under Jeremy Herrin’s direction, their revival of ‘Fool for Love’ is as good as you can get.

‘Fool for Love’ is a gripping drama about two unstable lovers battling for control in a seedy, desert motel. The fools, May and Eddie played by Caroline Neff and Nick Gehlfluss are an equal match, dancing over the thin line between love and hate.

The one-act play opens on a hauntingly abandoned motel room somewhere in the Mojave Desert. May and Eddie cling to one another like feral animals. As the play barrels along they reveal the perverse intertwining that led them to this moment. Caroline Neff gives a wrenching and gritty performance that’s nothing short of electrifying. Nick Gehlfuss’ hulking appearance is hard to ignore, but in this version, his character is almost goofier than threatening. For that reason, their desire feels more understandable.

‘Fool for Love’ is said to live in the same universe as Shepard’s ‘True West’ and ‘Buried Child’. This play is certainly the most straightforward of the three. Here Shepard refined his exploration of brutality with a more universal central question: what makes a relationship toxic? And of course, there’s a touch of the mystic. Tim Hopper is nearly unrecognizable as The Old Man but makes for some of the most intense moments of the show.

Steppenwolf’s revival of this erotic thriller feels perfectly timed considering the success of last year’s ‘Babygirl’ and ‘Challengers’. If there’s any truth to the old adage ‘sex sells’ then the current pop culture landscape is only proving it. For years the erotic thriller seemed all but extinct as a genre which once dominated the 80s and 90s. Today there seems to be a renewed hunger for stories with sexual taboos as their subject matter.

Part of what makes this play so engrossing is the production itself. The thoughtfully designed set by Todd Rosenthal paired with Raquel Adorno’s perfect costume styling, achieve Jeremy Herrin’s vision. Every small detail tells part of the story and provides context otherwise not in the short script.

Steppenwolf’s first show of 2025 is going to be hard to top. Between the cast and the shocking script, ‘Fool for Love’ is sure to leave a lasting impression on those who see it. In confident hands, Sam Shepard’s romantic dark comedy continues to unsettle audiences even 40 years later. 

Extended through March 23 at Steppenwolf Theatre Co. 1650 N Halsted St. 312-335-1650

“Together we created this nothingness,” says Audrey Francis in Steppenwolf’s production of Larissa Fasthorse’s ‘The Thanksgiving Play’. Hot off its Broadway run, this madcap comedy cuts right to the bone. Under Jess Mcleod’s direction, the intimate cast leaps right off the stage.

‘The Thanksgiving Play’ is about three elementary school teachers and one sassy actress who come together to devise a children’s play that illustrates the first Thanksgiving. In a fast-paced one-act, emotions and hypocrisies run amok.

Logan (Audrey Francis) plays the director, a role the actress and Steppenwolf Artistic Director Audrey Francis is used to playing. What a treat it is to see Francis on stage in her element. Francis is a masterful actor, and this play is but another entry in a long list of perfect performances.

Logan is dating her New Age-y coworker Jaxton (Nate Santana) who is also enlisted to help with the Thanksgiving play alongside Caden (Tim Hopper). Thinking they’re being progressive, they hire who they assume is a Native American actress, Alicia (Paloma Nozicka). Without a script, the four theatre artists must work together to tell a story that pays deference to Native American culture. Though well-intentioned, the all-white creative team exposes everything wrong with today’s supposed “woke” ideals.

At its core, ‘The Thanksgiving Play’ is a scathing satire of the “white savior” complex. Though Logan’s heart is in the right place, it’s perhaps her over-education on race-related issues that finds her with her foot in her mouth throughout the play. Larissa Fasthorse’s play suggests that some allies are more concerned with the outward appearance of racism than they are with true authenticity.

As we’ve been told, the very first Thanksgiving was a breaking of bread between settlers and natives to commemorate their collaboration during the harvest season. We can likely agree this probably was more fiction than fact, but for the sake of a children’s play, maybe the gruesome truth isn’t appropriate. Fasthorse’s play asks the audience is there a better way to tell this story with both respect and truth?

Things quickly fall apart between the creatives as they all battle to enact their own will. Sound familiar? ‘The Thanksgiving Play’ is as much an allegory as it is a comedy. Paloma Nozicka’s character Alicia, who is there to be the token Native American character presents an interesting observation: smart people are often not content. The white characters in the play make their lives more complicated with rules and propriety which leads to their unhappiness. Whereas Alicia lives simply and seems really happy. With these parallels established, Fasthorse could be seen as making an argument that European settlers brought neuroses with them to the New World. 

It’s a remarkable thing to hear a crowd of intellectuals be able to laugh at themselves. A lot of the dialogue will leave you with your jaw open because it’s chock full of ideas you know better than to articulate, such as “why isn’t there a white history month?”

‘The Thanksgiving Play’ is not a show for the humorless. It’s a blistering send-up of how bleeding-heart white people can find themselves twisted in knots trying to appease political correctness, and at what cost.

Through June 2 at Steppenwolf Theatre Co. 1650 N Halsted. 312-335-1650

Matthew Paul Olmos is a playwright on the rise, and under the direction of Laura Alcalá Baker we have a chance to see a beautiful production of an exceptional work in its world premiere at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. As the vernacular title suggests, “A Home What Howls (or the house what was ravine)” is not a staid work, not a constrained “Cherry Orchard” where emotions are buried between the lines.

Instead, Olmos’ work is poetic, magical, and musical as well, and the characters, though poor, are living rich, happy lives in their homes. In the first act, realism rules in many scenes, and Olmos shows a mastery of dialog and detail.

The play opens with a married couple—Abrana (Charin Alvarez) and Manuel Vargas (Eddie Torres) asleep on a bed. In the adjacent room their daughter Soledad (Leslie Sophia Pérez) is hard at work on papers scattered around the floor, perhaps her schoolwork, or maybe something else.

Her parents are awakened by sounds of trickling water running outside. Soon after, sound of a helicopter roars by, and we hear earth moving equipment as well. “There are nightmares around this house,” says Manuel as he and Abrana jump from the bed, and he begins fiddling with a trap door in the floor—an escape hatch?

We begin to piece together that this family is illegally living in a home condemned to make way for a reservoir, one that will allow housing and other development nearby ravine , through which a river flows. By means of a kind of inferential exposition, Olmos paints a portrait of what happens when families are driven from their homes by development—not from the outside looking in, but from inside the homes and families.

Olmos departs from this style to solid realism filled with exposition in one crucial scene: a public hearing at which the now adult Soledad challenges government official Frank over the process by which these families in the way of development have been displaced. It is certainly the best representation I’ve run across of a marginalized community challenging the validity of an eminent domain claim by city officials to displace homeowners dwelling in an area coveted by developers.

As the ravine along which they live is being flooded, and their homes taken, Soledad challenges the city establishment at a public hearing, outing all the tropes which society accepts as the rules of the game—the original seizure of the land from indigenous people by treaty and ceremony; the surveys of businesses showing broad support for the development; Tim Hopper in the role of Frank is exquisitely obtuse. After all, he argues, a ceremony was held in which a “citizen” of the indigenous “transferred” rights to development to the city. “How was this representative procured?” Soledad asks.

The question flies over his head, as Frank goes on to describe, in all sincerity, a ceremony that he found moving—but it highlights the suggestion that the indigenous individual may have had no right to speak for his people. “You’re using the term ‘peace offering,’” Soledad says. “But Public Works uses the terms ‘relinquish’ and ‘transfer.’”

And what about the original homeowners who settled for generations in this indigenous land. ”They were not asked, but they were considered deeply,” Frank says. ”Only businesses” were surveyed, admits Frank, who is beginning to realize he has aquite an adversary in Soledad. Frank says the homeowners displaced were compensated for the value of their homes, which were dilapidated and brought them little. But a home is much more than a building, Soledad points out. How were they compensated for the loss of happiness and memories, and the dispersion of their families, she asks. Market value can’t equal that kind of loss.

“A Home What Howls” runs about 90 minutes, no intermission, and is part of Steppenwolf's Young Adults theater program. But as with other such works in the Young Adults series, it is profoundly good, so I try to see them all.

I will say that I couldn’t always follow the magical parts of the second half, as the old woman resident Syera Lama (Isabel Quintero) appears. She teams up with Soledad in a quest for the rights of the people, encountering a menacing train conductor, also played by Hopper. Quintera also appears numerous times disguised as a magical figure Coyote. Despite my own confusion, the audience was clearly digging it, and the laughter at comical scenes was quite full. “A Home What Howls" runs through March 2 in Steppenwolf’s new in-the-round Ensemble Theater. It’s a great chance to see the work of a playwright we will doubtless be hearing from more and more.

“Downstate” is a bit of a dog whistle for Chicagoland, suggesting a cultural distinction between urbanites in the north, and the vast agrarian expanses to the south – downstate - where trash goes, sewage flows, and where the state government builds prisons.

The word becomes generalized in Downstate, a new play by Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Norris, which looks at the fraught issue of finding housing for convicted pedophiles after they serve time for their crimes. During parole, these men are returned to the” community,” but not to their home.

Instead they live in halfway houses operated by non-profits, sited in carefully proscribed areas that must be so-many hundreds of feet away from schools and other areas children may gather. The inhabitants are not allowed to go online, or possess a smartphone, keep alcohol, use Facebook, or move about freely.

Norris takes the less politically correct position of empathy in showing the suffering imposed on these pariahs, who in the world of #MeToo are unlikely to get a second thought. They are subject to regular inquisitions by parole officers, and a concatenation of rules and restrictions means there are few locations for them to live in such transitional halfway houses. So, they are shipped Downstate.

“I started doing a lot of reading about the things paroled sex offenders increasingly face– registries, residency restrictions, neighborhood watches, self-appointed vigilante groups,” says Norris. “These are post-incarceration punishments, that don’t exist for any other category of criminal.”

That in a nutshell is what Downstate is about: four men holed up in a house run by a Lutheran social service agency. They can go to work and come home, and that’s about it – even the local IGA grocery store is only 2,450 feet from the elementary school. They are indeed strange bedfellows, and Norris gives us the nuance of the caliber of their individual violations:

• the piano teacher Fred (Steppenwolf stalwart Francis Guinan) who had sex with two adolescent male students. Guinan, in an understated performance, shows the range that can be expressed within a very constrained character.

• Gio (Glenn Davis in an amazing, hyperbolic performance) a frenetic man on the make with a plan in his hand, whose crime was considered Category 1 (lower level) statutory rape of a young woman below age.

• Felix (Eddie Torres) who was convicted of incest with his daughter. Torres conveys the abject suffering and torment as he loses access to his family.

• A Broadway choreographer and accomplished promoter and musical artist, Dee, who fell in love with a 14-year-old boy in a road show of Peter Pan.

As Dee, K. Todd Freeman gives what will certainly become a definitive expression to the role. He is the settled voice of reason and a nurturant center of gravity within this ad hoc family of men, shopping for them and helping to make a home for them. As audience, we listen to Dee: he dishes and gives back as good as he gets – and he becomes our guide and the closest thing to a voice of reason.

Norris may be toying with us, then, by making Dee a very sympathetic character, while at the same time making him an unrepentant advocate for man-boy love – the movement that sees adult male love of minor boys as a victimless crime, and which advocates for release of those convicted of it. 

“There’s not many cases of death by blowjob!” Dee asserts. Gio, for one, abhors Dee both for his gayness and for his pederasty, with some violent outbursts in the house as a result.

Norris focuses this tension with the introduction of Andy (Tim Hopper), a Northshore suburbanite who with his wife Em (Matilda Ziegler) comes to visit Fred to seek redress, to “process” the issue and obtain formal emotional closure by getting him to sign an explicit statement acknowledging his wrongs. Norris contrasts Andy’s suffering with the experience of Dee, who comes to the defense of Fred, while revealing that he, too, was abused as a child – and claims to be none the worse for it. Fred and Em bring all the conventional middle class psychological expression to their claims - but framed within the context of Downstate, it begins to sound more like "white people's problems." 

Norris seems fearless in treading into such troublemaker territory. His Pulitzer winning Clybourn Park visited historic efforts in 1959 to block African Americans from moving into a white Chicago neighborhood, then returned 50 years later to watch a reversal of prejudice as whites tried to gentrify the same now-black area. Downstate will test its audience even further, since pedophiles are largely today's lepers.

Downstate is directed by Pam MacKinnon, and she had her hands full to balance the energy emanating from this remarkable company of performers. A call out to Cecilia Noble as parole officer Ivy - it's almost a thankless role to play the character who has a thankless job, in a play like this. But thank you, Ivy, for very good performance. 

Of particular note, the production is a joint effort by Steppenwolf and the National Theatre of the U.K. It may surprise you to learn the cast is transatlantic. The flawless, broad, working class accent of extreme south suburban Effie (played by Aimee Lou Wood, a Manchester, England native) and the dulcet Kenilworth articulation of Em (played by Londoner Matilda Ziegler) were learned right here on Halsted street, under the tutelage of Gigi Buffington.

Downstate plays through November 18 at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. After that it moves to the National Theatre London in January 2019.

By now we all know who’s coming to dinner. Based on the 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn, Court Theatre presents a new stage adaptation of ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ Written in 2013 by Todd Kreidler, this fresh look points at the progress America has made regarding interracial marriage, as well as the progress that still lies ahead.

Marti Lyons directs this quickly-paced comedy-drama. The scenes are trimmed with a sweeping score that recalls the golden era of 60s television. The mid-century mod set by Scott Davis drops us square into 1960s suburban San Francisco. A solid white house on a hill, obvious symbolism. Kriedler’s script begins on an impossibly rosy note, a sure sign that trouble is afoot for these fine looking white folks.

Christina (Mary Beth Fisher) and Matt Drayton’s (Tim Hopper) upper middle class, pseudo-liberal lifestyle is upended when their adult daughter Joanna (Bryce Gangel) brings home an acclaimed African American doctor, John (Michael Aaron Pogue). The two naïve lovers wish for their parents’ blessing before they proceed with a hasty marriage. In asking, Joanna and John call into question everything they’ve known about their so-called progressive parents.

In today’s world, some may see an interracial marriage as no big deal. And largely, for most parts of America, it’s not a big deal. That’s what’s so interesting about this script. The characters don’t spend much time debating if it’s right or wrong for races to intermarry. What’s at stake for them is how the world will perceive their coupling and whether it’s actually putting them in danger.

This is a prickly little play about the nuances of race. That is not to say it’s not funny. In fact, it’s the sit-com style set-up of jokes and physical humor that make this show so fun to watch. Mary Beth Fisher is a gifted physical comedian. It’s a real treat to see her quickly twisting facial expressions, she’s able to get so much across without dialogue. Working off her is Sydney Charles in the role of the Drayton’s maid, Tillie. Sydney Charles has some of the best one-liners of the evening and really brings her character to the focal point.

The young lovers portrayed by Bryce Gangel and Michael Aaron Pogue are what this show comes down to. There’s so much chemistry between these two and that is key. The audience has to believe in this love in order to believe in the parent’s eventual coming around. Gangel so aptly captures the stubborn optimism of her character through an almost lilting speech pattern. In her final monologue, Gangel goes from school girl crush to a woman seriously in love.

The Court Theatre’s area premier of Todd Kriedler’s stage adaptation of ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ is very cute. It’s strange to say a play about tense race relations is cute, but it’s a play about love. It’s also incredibly sleek. The costumes and sets are like an episode of Mad Men. While the direct themes may not be entirely relevant in a post Marriage Equality world, there are still indirect themes that must be discussed. This play is making a bigger point about the subtler forms of racism that are present in even the most liberal minded places.

Through April 15th at Court Theatre. 5535 S Ellis Avenue. 773-753-4472

Maybe we can chalk it up to a mid-life crisis…or, maybe, Wheeler is just a self-loathing man who’d just assume sabotage his own happiness rather opting to wallow in self-pity. In Steppenwolf’s Linda Vista, a new play debut by Tracy Letts and directed by Dexter Bullard, we get a very funny, and highly realistic, account of a man who has seemingly given up on life and love.

Wheeler (Ian Bradford) has moved from a cot in his wife’s garage to his own apartment in the Linda Vista apartment complex. With a soured marriage and an estranged relationship with his son coming to an end, Wheeler has the opportunity to start fresh, but that’s much more difficult than it sounds – at least it is for him. As we get to know Wheeler, a former Sun-Times photographer with promise who now holds onto a routine job as a camera repairman, we see someone who has been riddled with repercussions that have stemmed from a series of poor choices. Wheeler resents his soon-to-be-ex-wife for having him leave his Chicago life for California to be closer to her family. He resents his son for - well, just getting in the way of his life. He resents happy people. Hell, he resents Radiohead. But Wheeler has accepted his current situation – a cynical alcoholic that shoots down other people’s hopes and dreams, believing he is a “piece of shit” who “doesn’t deserve to be happy”. 

Wheeler’s best friend Paul (Tim Hopper) and his wife Margaret (Sally Murphy), friends from their college days, haven’t given up on him. They want to find him a partner who can bring out the old Wheeler who once had dreams and ambitions himself. When Paul and Margaret set Wheeler up with a friend of theirs, Jules (Cora Vander Broek), who is bright and bouncy, Wheeler reluctantly accepts and, as you can probably imagine, he has a few skeptical things to say after finding out she is a life coach. This, of course, threatens a man who wants a simple, joyless existence. Complicating matters for Wheeler, he takes in Minnie (Kahyun Kim), a twenty-four-year old rockabilly enthusiast recently kicked out of her own apartment in the same complex by her abusive boyfriend. 

The play is very truthful. It is about regret, wrecked opportunities and the consequences of unfortunate decisions. It is about letting oneself spin out of control, essentially giving up, and the struggle to choose happiness - a challenge when becoming so distant. But is also about hope and the chance to change for the better. In Wheeler, we are given a lovable “asshole” that we must root for. 

Ian Barford is tremendous as Wheeler. Barford quickly draws in the audience, grabs them and never lets go. Convincing, humorous and often decidedly heartfelt, Barford captures the essence of his self-deprecating character so well, we can’t help but think of a few “Wheeler’s” we know ourselves. Tim Hopper does fine work and is believable as Wheeler’s tolerable, but supportive, best friend as does Sally Murphy, both nicely adding to the play’s humor (I’ll just say karaoke bar scene). 

While Kahyun Kim is brassy and nails the too-cool-for-school attitude as Minnie, Cora Vander Broek is sparkles as Jules, perfectly pairing with Barford as his counterpart in a true positive/negative kind of relationship. We are also taken to the camera shop where Wheeler plugs away all day fixing one camera after another under the supervision of his crass boss Michael (Troy West), who is just waiting for a sexual harassment lawsuit to be filed against him as he repeatedly gawks and spews inappropriate comments at his clerk, Anita (Caroline Neff).

A revolving set takes us inside Wheeler’s California apartment, his workplace and to a bar. He lives simply, and that’s all he wants, DVDs of Stanley Kubrick littering his media stand and a refrigerator most likely only filled with a couple six-packs and a box of Arm & Hammer.   

Linda Vista is a well-acted ride into Wheeler’s uncertainties on turning fifty with the realization that his best years have long since passed. It is a play equipped with a stellar cast, a very funny script that is also genuine and even moving at times and direction that is so precise we can easily identify with each of Letts’ characters. 

Very highly recommended. 

Linda Vista is being performed at Steppenwolf Theatre through May 21st. For tickets and/or more show information visit www.steppenwolf.org. 

*Note – This play does contain full frontal nudity and sexual simulation. 

*Extended through May 28th 

In 2010, Goodman Theatre Artistic Director adapted "The Seagull" by Chekhov. An all-star cast, a stellar script and unique staging made for a memorable production. For this season, Robert Falls returns Chekhov to the Goodman with a new adaptation of "Uncle Vanya" by Annie Baker. This production of "Uncle Vanya" could be seen as a companion piece to 2010's "The Seagull." There's a stylistic similarity and another all-star cast breathing new life into this classic work. 

Like any Chekhov play, "Uncle Vanya" is about the everyday boredom and sadness of bourgeois Russians living on a country estate. Vanya (Tim Hopper) and niece Sonya (Caroline Neff) have toiled away their youths keeping the estate afloat and subsidizing the academic career of Sonya's aging father Alexander (David Darlow). When Alexander and his much younger wife Yelena (Kristen Bush) decide to move in with Vanya, their simple lives reach confrontation. 

Chekhov has a knack for dynamic female characters. "Uncle Vanya" is no exception. Caroline Neff's performance as Sonya sneakily becomes the focal point. Neff infuses Baker's already modern dialogue with an almost tangible sense of emotion.  Playing off her in the role of Yelena is Kristin Bush. This character is complicated and cold but Bush deftly shifts between moods without ever losing her audience. 

Adapter Annie Baker won the Pulitzer in 2014 for her play "The Flick." Her interpretation of "Uncle Vanya" was based on a literal word-for-word translation as she wanted her version to sound as fresh to a modern American audience as the original Russian had in 1900. To that end, Baker is successful. The script is quiet, but the dialogue seamlessly flows into our century. There's a timelessness to the entire production. Certain conventions, costumes and set pieces span generations, yet are of no specific historic era.  This stylistic choice only reinforces the ever-relevant themes of Chekhov's complex works. 

"Uncle Vanya" can neither be described as a comedy or a drama. There are moments of lightness and even dark humor, but overall the play is not particularly funny. On the other hand, while there's a well of unhappiness just beneath the surface, nothing truly cataclysmic happens. In the end, Chekhov makes his nihilistic point that perhaps none of us are happy and that death is the only respite we'll know. 

Through March 19th at Goodman Theatre. 170 N Dearborn St. 312-443-3800

David Rabe’s Visiting Edna is everything you expect from Steppenwolf Theatre: a work of depth and significance, actors rendering studied characters, and production values of the highest order. 

Rabe’s writing also displays another Steppenwolf hallmark: plays that mine the power and drama in the ordinary language of daily life. Edna (Debra Monk is sensational) is an Iowa widow soldiering through a litany of ills – heart failure, colostomy, colitis, diabetes and cancer – all conspiring to come in for the kill. Her middle-aged son Andrew (Ian Barford gives what will surely be a definitive performance) visits to check in on her, and decides to see if better medical advice might improve her condition. 

This may sound grim, or even boring. It is anything but. Though Edna babbles endlessly - as mothers may – her almost hypnotic patter is laced with incisive reflection and homespun wisdom, engaging her son (and the audience). She also begins settling accounts, handing off possessions and revealing scars from her own upbringing from which she sought to shield Andrew and his sister. Edna vividly relates the impact on her own childhood of the fraught circumstances of her older sisters’ teenage miscarriage and battle with tuberculosis. 

Edna’s end of life scenario affords moments of reflection, recall, and bonding with Andrew. Edna, born in 1926 to a world devoid of social media - or psychotherapy, for that matter - regrets in hindsight the physical discipline she inflicted on Andrew, and worries over her own careless decision to bring Andrew, age four at the time, to watch a hotel fire at which guests jumped to their deaths.  "It's just so different now, that's all," Edna says. 

The play also hums with a magical realism, as the dying Edna is pulled between two polarities familiar to anyone who has tread the path of serious illness: a distracting television, and the illness itself. In Visiting Edna, Actor One (Sally Murphy in a beautifully crafted and inspired performance) plays a channel-flipping Television, breaking the wall to address the audience in her opening monologue. She even relates the playwright's reflections on whether to wear rabbit ears or a dish antenna.)

Tim Hopper as Actor Two, plays Edna’s cancer through most of the play. (Note to Hopper fans: this is one his best roles.) Hopper’s knowing, insidious cancer recounts Edna's ailments, and telsl the audience, "Yet, she is desperate to live." Cancer offers gloomy reminders to Edna ("It's a dark hole you're in.") and competes mightily with Murphy’s sprightly Television for attention. In fact, neither wins it. As Actor Three (in a stunning walk-on role), Michael Rabe is at once frightening and believable as an angel of death. 

The stage itself is quite awesome: a sky tunnel right out of Magritte hovers above a split level living room. Stormy weather was so convincingly portrayed I was surprised the streets were dry when I left the theater. Kudos to David Zinn for set design, Marcus Doshi on lighting, Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen for  music and sound design. Artistic director Anna Shapiro, famed for August: Osage County, oversaw the show and guides this season at Steppenwolf. 

This wonderful production has just one drawback: the ending, which seems to drag, as Andrew addresses the audience in a lengthy, tearful soliloquy about Edna’s final moments. 

That aside, Visiting Edna is as good as it gets on stage. It runs through November 6, 2016 at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre.

Marie Antoinette by David Adjmi opens with a spectacular video presentation of the massive gardens and castle of Versailles along with a full on catwalk style fashion show by the queen, her girlfriends and the rest of the royal cast. I loved the staging of this show by a six person design team including Clint Ramos (scenic design), Dede Ayite (costume design), Dave Bova (hair and wig design), Japhy Weideman (lighting design), Lindsay Jones (sound and composition) and Jeff Sugg (projection design). The mirrored stage, combined with giant Vegas style flowers above it and the ever changing video projections worked together wonderfully to give us a glimpse of the largesse and majesty of that time period. Truly, the fashion of the time was something that separated the rich from the poor but also enslaved those able to afford it because it was impossible to dress and style yourself without a huge staff.

Alana Arenas is stunning as Marie Antoinette and does a great job portraying the doomed queen with both biting sarcasm and the occasional childlike grasp of the violent events unfolding all around her and because of her but not within her control at all. She, like the rest of royalty, is completely out of touch with the real world. We really see this as they try to pass as farmers during their escape after revolutionaries have taken over yet they are completely incapable of holding a normal conversation with approaching peasants (worse yet, they actually try to flee in the royal carriage thinking no one will notice them!). It is also very interesting to see the many parallels from Marie Antoinette that exist today, such as the inappropriate distribution of wealth, power in the hands of people that should not have it and the lack of power in those that should.

I like that Adjmi mentions twice in the play that Marie was only 14 years old when she was married to the imbecile King Louis the Louis XVI (Tim Hopper) – because most people assume she was an adult when she entered the realm of marriage and politics which was not true. You can really see in his text how similar the situation is for celebrities and their children today that their every move is first exalted and then diminished and eventually degraded as the social and political climes about them change. It is also pointed out how gross the invasion of privacy is when a human being feels they cannot even leave the confines of their home or do anything normal in public at all without it being analyzed and ridiculed by thousands of strangers whose opinions should not matter at all.

In a way we all have a little Marie Antoinette in us, that confused and excited teenager who is thrust into adult circumstances and is forced to “conform and perform” or sink under the weight of disappointment of family and society around us if we do not produce the hoped for successes in finances and family life, i.e. having children.

I highly recommend this elegant, eye popping and thoroughly modern interpretation of the life of a woman who was born and bred not to have her own life but the life prescribed for her by her parents and their political advisors.

Tickets and information:

When: Now through May 10, 2015

Where: Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.

Contact: www.steppenwolf.org