“Six Men Dressed Like Stalin,” now at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago and directed by dado, draws upon the true story of Felix Dadaev, drafted in 1942 to stand in for Josef Stalin, Premier of the Soviet Union.

The character Soso (Estaban Andres Cruz) is based on Dadaev. Like him, Soso is a juggler, ballet dancer and magician; bore a striking resemblance to Stalin; and was mistakenly declared killed in action in WWII. What became the KGB snapped up Dadaev, but this was to be no ordinary stand-in for the Soviet leader. Dadaev was carefully educated, so that he could credibly play Stalin in high-level discussions with other government leaders, and prepped to mimic Stalin’s tone and movements.

Playwright Dianne Nora uses this history as a jumping off point, imagining how the Stanislavsky Method, which demands the actor become the character emotionally and psychologically (and originated in Russia), might have been applied to polishing Soso’s performance. She takes another real-life figure, Alexie Dikiy (John Judd), one of the Soviet Union’s foremost actors, as the basis for her character Koba, who in the play trains Soso in Stanislavsky techniques.

Now we’re at the heart of the action: the Method mentor Koba reshaping the inner Soso to become Stalin. Having been declared dead at the war front, Soso presents fertile ground for recreation as the Soviet leader. For two grueling years, Soso reported daily at 6 a.m., and Koba instructed him. Soso hadn’t really acted before, he was a stage performer. Eventually, he has trial runs - walking across the street as Stalin - and returns elated, developing confidence in his role.

There are vibrant moments. At the opening the actors break the fourth wall, describing the setting and their characters before settling into the performance. Placards with time and date are hung before us, providing a timeline. And in a striking bit of avant garde showmanship, we witness state secrets being divulged to Soso as he and Koba gesticulate wildly under strobe lights and blaring operatic themes.

The intensity of the relationship between the two - Koba, an actor's actor, trying to force feed stage excellence into Soso, a street performer - is a constant: Kobo frustrated, Soso struggling. Gradually we understand that Soso has, indeed, become Stalin. But for me, there is not much in the emotional engagement that might be expected. Mostly, I came away bewildered.

A timeline in the lobby of A Red Orchid tells the remarkable backstories of Felix Dadaev and Alexie Dikiy, and gives context for “Six Men Dressed Like Stalin.” Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction, and perhaps even more interesting.

“Six Men Dressed Like Stalin” runs through June 22, 2025 at Chicago’s A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells. 

*Extended through June 28th!

You’ll want to join this “Neighborhood Watch," a fast-paced comedy having its world premiere in Jackalope Theatre’s performance space in the Broadway Armory. Harsh Gagoomal plays Mo Rizvi with deft emotional range, a bearded, swarthy Middle Easterner who has moved into a house in white suburbia, in the weeks just after Donald Trump's return to the presidency.

Unfortunately for Mo—short for Mohammed—his bothersome next door neighbors are the widowed GenX-er Paul (Frank Nall), who wears his excessively liberal credentials on his sleeve (literally, a Bernie Sanders sweatshirt) with a Harris-Walz sign in the yard; and on the other side, Shawn (Victor Holstein) a 30-something ever-Trumper.

The broad comedic interplay between these opposites could lead one to believe ”Neighborhood Watch” is a lighthearted farce. Even the bouncy scene segue music keeps the situation-comedic vibe going.

But playwright Rehana Lew Mirza, who was commissioned to write "Neighborhood Watch" by the National New Play Network has more in store for us, using the laughter to slyly lure the audience into deeper matters, gradually, though not too deep. It's funny, first and foremost. Kudos to Karina Patel, Jackalope's darmaturg, for snagging this lovely script.

Shawn is suspicious as he eyes Mo unpacking household goods—a pressure cooker, electronics, a tank of propane and a mysterious black backpack, laughably obvious memes of terrorism, all in plain view. But ever-nosy Shawn feels compelled to draw Paul’s attention to the “danger” lurking from the new neighbor.

After he blithely disregards Shawn and introduces himself to Mo, we cringe at Paul’s virtue-signalling as he holds Mo hostage to a ham-handed, somewhat oblique “supportive” conversation. Paul is so caught in his conundrum of trying not to offend that he becomes even more offensive. Mo finally figures out this neighbor has cast him in the role of suffering minority, a moment of tokenism that’s laughable too, because it’s so exaggerated. As Harsh Gagoomal conveys Mo’s internal dialog so effectively, we can see him bemused on the inside as he figures out Paul’s designs on establishing a relationship—Paul the white savior, Mo the suffering minority. That’s how unconscious racism exhibits itself in the liberal camp.

Mirza imparts a comic air on all this, reminding me of TV’s “All in the Family,” if Archie Bunker were a liberal, with his Meathead son-in-law the bumbling Shawn next door. The assertive Gloria character would be Becca, Paul’s 22-year-old daughter Becca (Jamie Herb). After Paul advises her to dress more modestly, in deference to what he imagines are Mo’s Islamic religious leanings, Becca goes to meet Mo for herself, and we find both as their truest selves: mutual date material. Sparks fly.

Reporting back later to her dad, Becca gives us a laugh-filled take on how GenZ handle their GenX parents’ social missteps, excoriating him for “man-splaining, then coaching her father with that query I hear frequently enough from my adult son: “What have we learned?”

We also see Paul and Shawn partnering on common ground, as they spy on Becca to see what she’s up to with Mo. Shawn has his own romantic design on Becca, while Paul is just a run-of-the-mill helicopter parent of his generation.

Mirza brings us something deeper as the plot thickens around the core of the drama: the unexpected arrival of Mo’s “cousin” Javed at the end of Act I. Fresh out of federal jail, and now a devoted Muslim, Javid’s domineering relationship to Mo fills Act II. Avoiding spoilers, we learn there is much more between Mo and Javed than we might have guessed. We also get a small recount of the emotional dynamics involved in Javed’s journey to and from extremism, as he alights on a deeply held spiritual connection to Islam.

In “Neighborhood Watch,” Mirza scores light-hearted laughs at the expense of white liberal culture and the racism of a different sort that can thrive among. Stereotypes abound. And it’s funny. Comedy is all in the timing and director (and casting director) Kaiser Ahmed nails it. Nothing drags.

Also notable are the sets (Tianxuan Chen) and in particular the lighting (Maaz Ahmed), who instead of merely darkening areas that are inactive, casts them in a bluish light, a small thing perhaps but I thought it innovative.

“Neighborhood Watch” runs through June 28 at Broadway Armory Park, 5917 N Broadway in Chicago

Riots of laughter greeted the City Lit Theater world premiere of “R.U.R. [Rossum’s Universal Robots]” Wait. Could this be the same 1920 science fiction play by Czech Karel Čapek? His 1937 science fiction piece at Trap Door Theater “The White Plague” was a serious treatment of public reaction to a very AIDS-like disease seemed to anticipate current history. He was a serious writer, not a comedian.

Yes, this is Čapek’s “R.U.R.,” credited for putting the word “robot” in our lexicon. And this story revolves around that same scientific genius who has figured out how to make advanced automatons, some of which we would call androids. 

But still suspicious, I flipped to Čapek’s original script and found a fast-paced 1930s melodrama that, played straight, would probably have come across as ludicrous. Faced with generating unintended laughter from the original, City Lit Theater opted for a comic version freely adapted by Bo List, one that maintains all the major plot points of the original, but plays them for like a screwball comedy. well directed by Brian Pastor.

Harry Rossum (Bryan Breau) has inherited an island factory where robots are churned out by the millions, and exported around the globe, intended mostly to supplant servants and factory workers. Harry Rossum's late father, a mad inventor, created the robot formulae, but his son has also innovated, creating the first cordless phone - it weighs 80 lbs. - no problem when you have a robot available to carry it for you.

Robot Radius (Sean William Kelly) ferries an 80-lb. portable phone wherever its inventor Harry Rossum (Bryan Breau) needs it.

As robots crowd out humans there is, needless to say, a public reaction. Rossum’s factory receives a visit by two advocates on the societal concerns: Nana (Shawn Tucker) who thinks robots should be removed from the globe; and Helena Glory (Madelyn Loehr) who believes the sentient robots should be given rights.

The playwright Bo List has incorporated AI into the storyline, and we meet more advanced, thinking robots like Sulla (Alex George) and Marius (Brendan Hutt) who learn on the go. Helena also happens to be the daughter of the mythical country’s president, and Harry is smitten with her. Romance ensues, and the comedy kicks in.

Unfortunately for the automatons, they have a limited lifespan and cease operating under this planned obsolescence after two years. Eventually Sulla and Marius lead a robot rebellion, seeking the secret formula that would allow robots to replicate themselves. Humor abounds.

Some of the jokes are inherent to the retro-science fiction premise. Robots operate typewriters, with precision typing at ungodly speeds. Or robots communicating with each other via telegram. In one gag that is flogged to death onstage, humans require a long explanation of why an intercepted robot telegram closes with LOL. The robots demonstrate what it means by laughing mechanically in unison. While I found some of the gags sophomoric, the conceptual humor had me laughing frequently.

Scenic design by Jeremiah Barr is quite successful, as are costumes for robots and humans, by Beth Laske-Miller.

“R.U.R. [Rossum’s Universal Robots]” runs through June 15, 2025 at City Lit Theater in the Edgewater Presbyterian Church, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr in Chicago. 

Brendan Hutt (left) is Marius and Alex George is Sulla in City Lit Theater's "R.U.R. [Rossum’s Universal Robots]” running through June 15, 2025.

*This review is also featured on https://www.theatreinchicago.com/!

Lisa Sanaye Dring’s play “Kairos,” which just opened at The Edge Off Broadway theater, is one of the most thought-provoking and enjoyable productions I have seen lately. Set in the near future, the 90-minute play (no intermission) is as good anything you might see in streaming shows ("Black Mirror" comes to mind.) Directed by Clare Brennan, “Kairos” is in the midst of its rolling world premiere with the National New Play Network. 

As the play opens, David (Johnard Washington is really good), a somewhat detached and scholarly fellow, and the all-business Gina (Tamsen Glaser) meet one rainy night via a mall parking lot fender bender. David is only lightly concerned about his car's damage, as he’s smitten with Gina, who blames him for the accident. During a practical exchange about insurance, police reports and such, Gina discovers she is charmed by David as well. “Here’s my number,” she says. “Not for the accident. For sex….maybe?”

The scenes cycle rapidly through their evolving romance, and they discover more and more appeal in each other. But this fast-paced affair is only a prelude to the core of the story. A few weeks in, they are lounging around, when arresting news crosses their screens: medical science has discovered a treatment, dubbed “Prometheus,” promising eternal life.

What a remarkable premise for a drama. A developing relationship meets a decision about living everlastingly. Way beyond, “Should we get married?” That’s only until death do us part.

Because of its likely appeal, the Prometheus treatment is offered by lottery, and is restricted to those aged 25 to 34, who are also, once treated, prohibited from bearing children. The playwright has upped the ante with that. Candidates apply online, and once selected, must undergo a psychological screening.

David wants in immediately, while Gina figures she’ll just see if she qualifies, and then decide. Their relationship progresses while they await the news, with the usual ups and downs, and matters like meeting family playing out in the background.

As we await the lottery results, we get a feel for the likelihood of David and Gina's relationship surviving on its own terms. David seems more in touch with his feelings, and a bit more empathic. Gina is more self-centered, seemingly waving away the life challenges her partner encounters. When David’s father leaves his mother suddenly after 40 years, he is distraught. Gina doesn’t quite get it. “I’m sorry about your father,” she says, “but he can’t be where his heart is not.”

At the risk of a spoiler, Gina wins the lottery first. I felt my heart racing as she prepared to open the communication. David still hasn’t heard. And when he too is eligible for Prometheus, there is instant elation. “We’re not going to get old together!” he exclaims.

Soon enough we find out it’s not that simple. These two weren’t quite ready for marriage, let alone eternal life. And David must still undergo a psychological exam, which we gather Gina has passed.

The world around them also shifts as society spins into an upheaval, and protests against Prometheus arise. The world is split between “agers,” and those who, because of Prometheus, won’t age.

We soon see fissures in their relationship. David becomes depressed, partly about his parents’ divorce, and we suspect, also about this massive life change. Gina prods him to pull himself together for his psych exam: “They might not want immortal sad boys running around.” I think the heft of the play would be greater if there had been a little more depth to the emotional dynamics of the relationship. It felt a little too once-over-lightly to be convincing. But the storyline is so interesting, it’s not consequential.

“Kairos,” the Greek term for “the right time,” when an alignment of circumstances presents an opportunity, is a recurrent theme in the play, from their very first encounter in the mall parking lot, to opportunity for Prometheus as their relationship gets rooted. An epilogue to the play, dated 2068 A.D., lets us know how things turned out for Gina and David. Produced by Red Theater “Kairos” runs through May 18 at The Edge Off Broadway in Chicago.

*This review is also featured on https://www.theatreinchicago.com/!

“Henry Johnson,” David Mamet’s new play running at the vintage Biograph Theatre, is like many of his works, enigmatic and demanding of his audience. With Mamet one must pay close attention to the dialog, packed with foreshadowing and reveals. Miss a line or even a word, and you’ll miss out.

This focus on the dialog is the essence of what Mamet’s works are about - plumbing the interior workings of the characters, as they face their lives. It also allows Mamet to examine in depth the forces at play in any human interaction, which in my take the playwright sees as transactional.

Expectations were clearly high for the Midwest premier of “Henry Johnson” by the Pulitzer winning Chicago playwright (“Glengarry Glen Ross,” “American Buffalo”) and screenwriter (“The Untouchables,” “Hoffa,” “The Postman Always Rings Twice”).

The biggest letters are Mamet’s name on the marquee at the Biograph. This is Victory Gardens Theater's home, where it is celebrating 50 years with this show. Its legendary founder, Dennis Zacek, takes executive producer credits on the production.

The promise of a rare new stage work by Mamet (as well as its planned release this summer as a film starring Shia LeBoeuf) drew a strong team of pros as well:
Directed by Edward Torres (co-founder of Teatro Vista), it stars Thomas Gibson (TV’s “Criminal Minds”), Keith Kupferer (“Ghostlight”) as a prison guard, Al'Jaleel McGhee (“A Soldier’s Play” Broadway tour) as Mr. Barnes and “Chicago PD” character Daniil Krimer as Henry.

“Henry Johnson” has what people come to David Mamet for - the thinking script, the demands on audiences to fill in the dots, the mystery, the unexpected reversals. For me, what is most intriguing about “Henry Johnson” is how Mamet explores a character, Henry, a beta male who is readily susceptible to being dominated by alpha male personalities.

It opens as Mr. Barnes, Henry’s boss, questions him on his unusual request: to find a job for a parolee that Henry once knew in college. McGhee’s Barnes digs into Henry’s motivation, asking him “What attracted you?” Henry’s answer: “He had this power over women,” relating how he could pick up women in bars and go home with them easily.

Barnes is hard driving, suggesting to Henry that he is under the spell of this one-time college buddy (who never appears in the play), now a convicted felon. Barnes gets Henry to state he is not physically attracted to this guy, just under his thumb.

Henry can accuretly relate back to Barnes his assessment of him - that Henry is putting the welfare of a past friend ahead of the interests of the company. Henry can hear it, but presumably he is so much in thrall to this “friend” he cannot be persuaded to discard him.

“You saw him after college?” Barnes asks.
Henry: “Before he went to prison.”
Barnes: “He was grooming you.”

The unseen friend was also a steady winner in card games, inexplicably lucky. Barnes ventures that the other men, also dominated by the friend’s charisma, let him win. “They were paying him rent.” In my experience, this is really how the dynamics of unhealthy male social hierarchy can work. When Barnes asks what he thought about his friend’s conviction, Henry replies, “I had no opinion. I thought it was my responsibility to have no opinion.”

In an abrupt change of scene, we now find Henry newly arrived at a prison cell - Barnes caught him embezzling, presumably for this unseen friend, and the audience must conclude he’s been convicted. Henry’s cellmate, Gene (Thomas Gibson) digs into Henry enough to determine his untoward fealty to his friend. Then he lectures him continuously, and Henry offers only desultory replies. As with Barnes, Henry is able to relate back to Gene, “You think my interest {in him] is an addiction.”

The setting shifts to the prison library, and the guard in charge is played by Kupferer. And then finally, a climactic scene, also in the prison library, where Mamet ties up the story for us, in a shocking end..

True to Mamet, the dialog doesn’t lead us through a plot - but an examination of where the characters are emotionally at key points along a timeline. Abrupt shifts in the setting are unexplained - Mamet expects us to figure it out, and we like him for that - but he’s not giving much to go on in each quadrant of the play: an inquiry in an office; a prison cell; a prison library; and a closing setting that spoiler concerns will leave undescribed.

The script seems less a play, than an extended treatment for a screenplay. The dialog  is less compelling than Mamet’s signature works, which take a lot of rehearsal to refine the playwright’s intended cadences. Kupferer and McGhee come closest to getting this down. With all that, it’s Mamet, and so “Henry Johnson” comes highly recommended. It runs through May 4 at Victory Gardens Theater.

*This review is also featured on https://www.theatreinchicago.com/!

Early in the first act I whispered to my companion and said “I love this!” Extremely well written by Joshua Hartman with stellar performances directed by Jeremy Wechsler, “Prayer for the French Republic” (a Northlight Theatre Theatre Wit co-production) attempts to reveal the soul-searching and angst among a Jewish family in Paris amid the recent rise in antisemitism in their country.

After generations of security in the comfort of acceptance by their countrymen, the Salomon family encounters violent attacks by newly emergent antisemitic factions in France. How can this be happening?

In three acts we see the sweep of history across five generations of Salomons, who manufacture and sell pianos.
The opening scene is in a Paris apartment in 2016, where Marcelle Salomon (Janet Ulrich Brooks is sensational) welcomes a newly arrived American cousin, Molly (Maya Lou Hlava is perfect, brimming with Francophile excitement). We are given to understand their conversation, and the entire play, is all in French—though delivered in English.

Raised as a secular Jew and not very observant, Molly is something of a renegade. “My parents didn’t want me to come, because of the, you know, terrorism.” Despite her fluency, Molly is largely ignorant of French culture, but it’s love at first sight, expressed largely by her preternatural fixation on croissants. A little cringeworthy, maybe, but Hlava perfectly captures the tone of a good hearted American in Paris. I've been that way. 

After Marcelle delivers a comical machine-gun paced recitation of the family tree outlining their familial connection—one that has Molly nodding but bewildered—Marcelle goes on to explain that her husband, Charles Bertharnou (Rom Barkhorder) is a Sephardic Jew, his family having emigrated from North Africa as France withdrew from its colonies in the 1960s. And the added horror that Nazis did away with 25 percent of the Jewish population during the war. 

Larence Grimm as Patrick Salomon in "Prayer for the French Republic."

“Most Jews in France are Sephardic,” explains Marcelle. “Why is that,” asks Molly in her abject ignorance. Marcelle's brother, Patrick (Larence Grimm), appears periodically as aloof narrator, and in the family drama as well. He has shed his Judaic heritage even as his nephew Daniel leads his family to renew their embrace of it. 

The action is interrupted with tragedy. Marcelle’s husband returns with their son Daniel (Max Stewart in a magnetic performance), bloodied by an attack on the street. Suddenly, Molly, the secular Jew, is confronted with a violent anti-semitism that she has not experienced before. In the course of the play, she will be adjacent to the profound impact this has on the Salomon family—her character something of a device, the naive observer, for the script to examine these challenging issues.

Playwright Hartman then jumps through time artfully, with a vignette of 1944 as an earlier generation of Salomons weathers the Vichy government’s persecution of Jews under Hitler’s dominion. Adolphe and Irma Salomon (Torrey Hanson and Kathy Scambiaterra) are the perfect odd couple, whose sons Lucien (Alex Weisman) and Young Pierre (Nathan Becker) have fled without warning. Adolphe and Irma themselves are spared by a sympathetic policeman, and they suffer the war physically unscathed, selling pianos now to German Nazis, though beset by angst over the welfare of their sons.

Rae Gray as Elodie and Janet Ulrich Brooks as her mother Marcelle.

Then we’re back to 2017, where Rae Gray turns in a compelling performance as Elodie, Daniel’s manic depressive sister—a familiar and haunting presence in the Paris apartment, she sleeps until noon and shrugs off her mother’s hectoring diatribes urging her to get a life. In one manic moment, Gray launches into a monologue always nearing but almost never quite reaching its concluding "My point is" that rivals the showstoppers familiar at the Steppenwolf stage. Accoloades are due the playwright, and Gray, for pulling this off so very, very well. 

Meanwhile the family has been ruminating on the cloud of antisemitic fervor sweeping across their homeland. Charles weighs emigrating, while Daniel and Molly have other things on their minds: they have fallen in love.

All this comes to resolution in Act 3, where the promise of the first two acts is delivered upon, unsatisfyingly in my view, but it pleased the audience, which rose to its feet as the curtain dropped.

What’s not to like? The set for an upscale Parisian apartment didn’t measure up, nor the language and demeanor. to my mind. did not evoke the refinement one might expect - much more Manhattan than Paris. And the storyline unravels at the end as the script devolves into more preachy and polemic than the thinking and convincing leading up to the final act.

Strings were tied up perhaps too neatly in a packaged ending. Daniel might have made a different choice than what seems to have been foreordained by the playwright. And about the piano: it seemed out of tune. And would the fifth generation owners of a piano manufacturer be reluctant to ship an instrument due to weight? I think not.

Nevertheless, this show is recommended for the pure joy of excellent performances, and the intellectual and emotional processes that lead to the resolution, unsatisfying as it might have been for me. “Prayer for the French Republic, co-produced by Northlight Theatre and Chicago’s Theater Wit, runs through May 18 at Northlight Theatre in Skokie, IL.

*Extended through May 25th

*This review is also featured on https://www.theatreinchicago.com/!