Displaying items by tag: Audrey Francis

“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

We all have tough days at work, but when your job is in the Oval Office, a bad day at work could be trouble for the entire country. In Steppenwolf’s regional premiere of ‘POTUS or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive’ by Selina Fillinger, an all-star female cast brings comedy and hijinks to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Steppenwolf Artistic director Audrey Francis directs this new play hot off its recent Broadway run with a cast of familiar Steppenwolf favorites. The chemistry between these seven performers is worth the admission price alone. Not to mention Selina Fillinger’s hilariously biting script. If you’re a fan of HBO’s ‘VEEP’, you’ll love these stressed out, foul-mouthed, political badasses.

Sandra Marquez plays Harriet, the chief of staff for a Trump-like president. Her day is unsettled after the president publicly refers to his wife in derogatory terms. On damage control is press secretary Jean (Karen Rodriguez), and tightly-wound aid Stephanie (Caroline Neff). Not only do they have to spin the narrative, but they also have to wrangle zany first lady, Margaret (Karen Aldridge). Take all of this and add in the president’s surprise pregnant girlfriend Dusty (Chloe Baldwin) and his pardon-seeking, ex-con sister Bernadette (Meighan Gerachis), and you’ve got yourself a first-class mess.  

Borrowing elements from traditional farce comedy, ‘POTUS’ is a whacky, madcap satire of just an average day at the White House. Though Fillinger likely wrote this play during the Trump administration, there’s a lot of universal and fair criticism that ultimately begs the question, couldn’t a woman do this job better?

After White House journalist Chris (Celeste M. Cooper) accidentally injures the president, all hell breaks loose. Even though most of the satire of the president is done so in reference to Trump, the ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ theme in the second act underscores how much of our political machine is done by staffers rather than politicians themselves. It also points to the grizzly specter of age that hangs over many of our most influential Washington leaders.

It's rare to hear so many audience members audibly snap and respond with vocal enthusiasm, but the combination of strong casting, great script and near perfect direction make this a show that immediately resonates with people. While its themes are overtly feminist, there’s something for everyone. It’s a workplace comedy after all, and many of us know trouble of working in a chaotic environment.

As another presidential election year quickly approaches, plays like ‘POTUS’ ask us to demand more of our elected officials. Within a slapstick comedy, Fillinger poses some deep questions, specifically, “who’s running this show?” In her play it seems like nobody is really driving the car, so much as they’re just making sure it doesn’t catch on fire. When an administration just moves from controversy to the next, it makes you wonder is any progress being made?

Through December 10 at Steppenwolf Theatre. 1650 N Halsted St. 312-335-1650

*Extended through December 17th

Dance Nation is the story of a school dance team of thirteen-year-olds. The concept may seem to have dubious appeal, but Dance Nation quickly sinks its teeth into our attention with its opening scene.

Director and choreographer Lee Sunday Evans has put the students in sailor suits, and they rigidly perform a very well-rehearsed but uninspired tap dance number, moving just awkwardly enough through its limited steps and gestures to reveal that they are adolescents.

With that admirable bit of stagecraft by director Evans, the script by Clare Barron comes to life, firmly establishing the players (the actors range in age from their 20s to 60-something) as a believable band of pre-pubescent girls, with one like-aged boy, Luke. Kudos to these actors.

The play itself is strong, compelling enough to merit a Drama Desk Ensemble Award and an Obie Awards Special Citation this year. And it was a Pulitzer finalist. 

Anyone who has been involved with competitive middle school regional, state and national  competitions – soccer, Little League, debate team, what have you – will recognize the frenzied energy that students and faculty put toward winning. In the case of Dance Nation, the strangely imagined choreography and dance storylines are developed and directed by the dance team leader, Teacher Pat (Tim Hopper). 

The dynamic emotional lives of these students is the heart of the play. Audrey Francis is Vanessa; Caroline Neff is Zuzu; Karen Rodriguez plays Amina; Ariana Burkes is Sofia; Adithi Chandrashekar is Connie; Ellen Maddow is Maeve; and Shanesia Davis is Ashlee. Torrey Hansen is Luke. It’s a hoot to see these actors of all ages capture the physical style and the angst of these adolescents. And they do it so well!

Barron gives us, in Teacher Pat, something familiar: a bit of a tyrant, who is as at once capricious, manipulative and authoritarian. Teacher Pat is not imaginative perhaps, but he is filled with conviction and certainty in his beliefs.

Teacher Pat comes and goes on stage. Most of the time is focused on the student interactions. But when he is there, sometimes it's quite harmful, as when he tries to dissuade Zuzu from quitting the dance team telling her that she will ruin her chances of ever pursuing dance again.

We also see the appearance of some of the mothers of the students, who Barron captures perfectly in these fleeting scenes. Some mothers are amazingly nurturant, wise, supportive, while one in particular - Zuzu's mother - has an unhealthy and neurotic emotional enmeshment with her daughter. 

Teacher Pat drives the students forward for the upcoming national competition in Tampa, that they will win in dramatic stages through two smaller regional competitions before getting to the nationals. Aiming to get them fired up about the dance show he will soon reveal, Teacher Pat turns it on:

“Let’s give them something to tell them there is a revolution coming out of Liverpool Indiana!” he says. (Hopper delivers the line so perfectly, appending Indiana after just a beat.) The show that will spark this revolution is overwrought and cockamamie.  

The students struggle through insecurities, personal issues, and the competitive challenges - but are generally bonded as a mutually supportive group. Barron also affords those flashes in scenes in which we can see laid out before us the promise of a young person who is destined to achieve great things in life. 

Dance Nation runs through February 2, 2020 at Steppenwolf Theatre. Don't miss it!

Ask yourself, do you have hope that things can get better? The word itself certainly echoes back to a different political climate in America. Now it seems the very word has been replaced with fear. Jen Silverman’s new play ‘Witch’ is holding its world premiere at Writers Theatre in Glencoe. It’s an update on a seventeenth century tragicomedy but don’t let that fool you, this play has a lot to say about our modern world.

Directed by Marti Lyons, ‘Witch’ tells the tale of the devil coming to a small village. Like all plays concerning Satan, the devil is after souls in exchange for worldly goods or successes of some kind. Ryan Hallahan plays Scratch, one of the devil’s henchman. His wile body language and delivery make him a slick salesman for the master of dark desires. For the villagers already lacking good morals, his pitch is an easy sell. He quickly pits the son of the richest man in town, Cuddy Banks (Steve Haggard) against an ambitious interloper Frank Thorney (Jon Hudson Odom) in a battle for inheritance and land.

This arc serves as the main driver of plot in this 90-minute play but the real meat lies in the battle between Scratch and the town outcast, or witch, Elizabeth Sawyer (Audrey Francis). Elizabeth begins the play with a monologue that asks about hope and explains the mundane cruelties we commit against one another. Francis is captivating. The character is sarcastic and dry. Silverman’s dialogue flows perfectly through Francis’ performance and her emotional reckoning brings about one of the play’s most powerful moments.

Finally, a play about witches that isn’t ‘The Crucible’. Silverman’s script is a lot of fun. It gets to mingle in the 1600s but enjoy the freedom and accessibility of modern dialogue. The contrast is purposeful, asking the audience, has anything really changed? Whether the play is optimistic or pessimistic is really up to the viewers’ interpretation. Either way, there are a lot of laughs here that in the end build to a greater philosophical question. Is change possible or do we have to just start over again from scratch?

If it’s something spooky you’re after, ‘Witch’ will scratch your itch. Though not really a horror story, the intricate production design by Yu Shibagaki gets into the Halloween spirit. Even with the devil, and a supposed witch, this play isn’t really about the supernatural. Rather, it relies on human meanness as the haunting theme, and honestly what’s scarier than that?

Through December 16 at Writers Theatre 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe. 847-242-6000

Steppenwolf Theatre’s latest production is going to generate much buzz – quickly - and with good reason. In fact, it’s already been extended through June 2nd. Playwright Matthew-Lee Erlbach’s The Doppelganger (an international farce) is a riotous comedy that doesn’t skip a beat, boasting a cast that is as good as it gets in a script that barely allows the audience to breathe between laughter. Reminiscent of the absurdity Hollywood so often would place the likes of Mel Brooks, Peter Sellers or the Marx Brothers smack-dab in the middle, The Doppelganger successfully takes farce to the stage where an uncontained series of events that are highly exaggerated, excessive, and consequently implausible are successfully translated. Erlbach’s vision is effectively met thanks to Tina Landau’s finely-tuned direction through the use of deliberate ludicrousness and gobbledygook, broadly stylized presentations along with a whole lot of physical humor.

Rainn Wilson, who is best known for his role as “Dwight Shrute”, the competitive, over-the-top, social-skill-lacking paper salesman on NBC’s award-winning The Office, takes charge of the leading roles as the wealthy British businessman Thomas Irdley and his doppelganger Jimmy Peterson, an American seemingly fascinated with everything in life and someone you wouldn’t be surprised to find at a Phish concert. One would be hard-pressed to find a more ideal actor for the dual roles. Wilson’s transition from TV/film back to live stage is flawless.

In a whirlwind of mishaps that take place throughout mistaken identity, misunderstandings, partial eavesdropping and, “Whoops! Wrong door!”, we get an engaging story of international politics. Taking place in Bangui, the Francophone capital of the Central African Republic, the fun begins when Irdley is to host a weekend-long meeting to discuss a copper deal, inviting the likes of an American General (Michael Accardo), a Saudi Arabian prince (Andy Nagraj), and a handful of other players, including former African leader, Michel Masaragba (James Vincent Meredith) and his wife Lolade Masaragba (Ora Jones). But prior to the mini-summit, Irdley and his housekeeper Rosie Guerokoyame (Celeste M. Cooper) are preparing for another guest, Irdey’s doppelganger Jimmy Peterson, a kindergarten teacher from Quincy, Illinois. When Irdley mistakenly takes an elephant tranquilizer instead of his blood pressure medication, he is rendered unconscious, unable to participate in the weekend talks that will undoubtedly have an international effect. It is then that his housekeeper Rosie presses Peterson into action to take the place of Irdley in order to push her own agenda – that being the fair treatment of African workers. From there Rosie and Peterson become unlikely co-conspirators, the two hysterically finding themselves deeper and deeper into what can only be described as a hot mess of bargaining and back channel politics, every partaker conniving for their own selfish needs.

The humor is rapid fire and the play’s running time of nearly two hours and thirty minutes flies by. It is a quick-moving theatrical experience that is well-acted, offers one hilarious exchange after another while sprinkling in a seamless amount of intrigue to keep its audience guessing. The Doppelganger is a perfect tribute to the great farce comedies yet comes with its own unique flavor. Steppenwolf smartly provides Wilson with an airtight supporting cast of premium talent so that each character gets a serious amount of appreciation. Audrey Francis as the IBS-stricken Beatrix Geddes-Renwick is a comedic playwright’s godsend while Whit K. Lee as businessman Wen Xiaoping and Karen Rodriguez as the prince’s girlfriend, Marina, can do no wrong, also piercingly funny in several scenes.

                                                (left to right) Rainn Wilson and Karen Rodriguez in The Doppelganger (an international farce) - Photo by Michael Brosilow

If it takes the creation of a war to make everyone benefit from a copper deal, then so be it. While a comedy that supplies a laugh per minute, Erlbach also gives his audience a behind the scenes look at the perils of choreographed war not only showing the greed by its benefactors and lack of care for humanity but, in doing so, strengthens the premise that the rich will always become richer while the people who want to make a difference to better the world are often stifled and so easily dismissed. With plans to create self-induced atrocities in Africa knowing that certain countries will intervene, and certain products will increase in manufacturing (i.e. weapons), the elite group plans to meet their own agenda with the use of fake news to generate an international outpouring of sympathy and support. Though guised in an outrageous comedy, the point is made clear - political corruption exists and, unfortunately, often triumphs over good.

Brilliantly hilarious and vastly entertaining, Rainn Wilson’s superb performance certainly highlight’s The Doppelganger, though this play has so much more to offer from its sensational script to its commanding supporting cast - and a set that is a whole lot of fun in itself. But the play is also a breath of fresh air in an age where no one wants to offend or be offended. Says Chicago playwright Matthew-Lee Erlbach in an interview found in Steppenwolf’s playbill on the challenges of writing a traditional farce in today's climate, “We are provoked by reality, offended by the radical truths that shape our world. I am taking that farce and putting it on stage. I am writing the world as it has been recycled back to me, igniting those inherited devices, throwing them back at those oppressive power structures, and blowing them up on stage. Unchecked power is exploiting the human species, other species and the planet as a whole. I will use all rhetorical devices available to me to expose and disable those who are dangerous to society.”

“Also,” Erlbrach continues, “we have to be able to laugh at ourselves. If we lose the ability to find ourselves ridiculous and see the humor in those things that are painful, sensitive, nuanced, dear, we will become constipated, humorless and depleted of objectivity.”

The Doppelganger is not only a fitting homage to farce comedy, it is an eye-opening satire of today’s world-wide political happenings. This nearly immaculate, exceedingly humorous international adventure certainly falls in the “must see” category of Chicago stage works.

The Doppelganger (an international farce) is being performed at Steppenwolf Theatre through June 2nd. For tickets and/or more show information visit www.steppenwolf.org.

Some people can only see what's right in front of them. Abe Koogler explores this theme in his play "Kill Floor" making its Midwestern debut at American Theater Company. The slaughterhouse is a setting once familiarized by Upton Sinclair in his novel "The Jungle." Koogler is updating this disturbing classic for our modern era. While we'd like to think we've evolved since 1906, perhaps we haven't. Maybe because we can't see the inside of a slaughterhouse, we don't think about how horrible factory farming really is. 

"Kill Floor" tells the story of Andy (Audrey Francis) who has been recently released from prison. Rick (Eric Slater) is a foreman at the slaughterhouse and gives Andy a job after taking pity on her. A flirtation develops despite that Eric is married, and it's suggested that Andy won't be promoted off the kill floor unless she sleeps with him. B, or Brendan (Sol Patches) is Andy's fifteen year old son who lives with foster parents. B struggles with a closeted homosexual crush, and the reality that most people ignore what makes them uncomfortable. B is also a vegan, making even it harder for Andy to reconnect with him. 

Under the direction of Jonathan Berry, this ensemble cast is killing it. Audrey Francis delivers a heartbreaking performance as a woman trying to reclaim her life. She falters naturally between assertiveness and crushing trauma. There's an emotional honesty in her performance that makes for a rare theater experience. Eric Slater and Sol Patches make for an excellent supporting cast. 

Koogler's play makes some intriguing points without browbeating the audience with his message. Particularly the comparison between mass incarceration and meat processing. In a way, we're all like the cattle - blindly following one another through winding tunnels, unsure of what's ahead. There's a certain degree of understanding he expects from his viewers. The script strays away from melodrama, leaving some stories untold and ideas unfinished. What's more human than that? 

Through May 1st at American Theater Company. 1909 W Byron Street. 773-409-4125