They do abuse the king that flatter him

For flattery is the bellows that blows up sin

These days, fireplace bellows tend to be a specialty item. But most of us know that blowing the hot air of flattery into leaders comes to no good. With the presidential election just days away and the globe exploding in violence, Pericles’ nobleman Helicanus reminds us that the habits of powerful people and their sycophants have changed little in 400 years.  

In case you missed Pericles, the Prince of Tyre in college lit class or on stage, you can now fill in the gap with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s visiting production at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. The Bard’s message about power in this play is as strong as in more familiar works like Macbeth and Richard III. However, its authorship remains in dispute – scholars suspect another writer contributed the first two acts – and its dramaturgy presents some challenges.

Tamara Harvey, recently appointed co-artistic director of the RSC, directs Pericles with a sure hand that brings clarity to its intricate plot and cohesion to its stylistic disparities. Flowing yet unfussy costumes by Kinnetia Isidore and a set of sweeping ropes by Jonathan Fensom match the pace established by Harvey. She often places ensemble members in frozen tableau upstage during a downstage scene and lets action from one scene continue silently on the outskirts of another, thus bouncing the story along quickly.

Still, Pericles is a rough ride, beginning with an appalling sin: a king having incestuous relations with his daughter. This could happen in the humblest to the grandest families, but King Antiochus turns it into a competitive royal sport. Whoever can solve a riddle will win the hand of his nameless and wordless daughter. Though many suitors have previously failed and lost their lives, Pericles decides to give it a shot and, in solving the riddle, exposes the king’s depravity. To escape Antiochus’ murderous plan for him, Pericles begins a journey involving strange lands, major storms and wayward ships, a beloved wife and daughter lost and recovered, men using earthbound force and women wielding priestly powers that ultimately result in a happy conclusion.

No surprise, the RSC’s legendary ensemble shifts roles as naturally as breathing, inhabiting each character simply and fully. Zach Wyatt gives a solid performance in the title role despite its limitations. The main characters of Shakespeare’s later romance plays – specifically Prospero in The Tempest and Leontes in The Winter’s Tale – grip our imagination because of their flaws. Pericles, on the other hand, has no noticeable failings that push him into trouble. Trouble finds him without dampening his virtue or his courage. Whether solving the immoral riddle, bringing food to famished people or besting his competitors in a joust with only a worn armored vest while they hold shiny shields, Pericles triumphs. Nothing digs below the man’s smooth surface, and Wyatt doesn’t add any surprises.

The reward of this seldom-produced play is not a specific character’s path to greater humanity, but instead a timeless commentary on leadership. As we wade through this election season, enduring politicians who blow flattery into voters at home and hearing reports of sins from abroad, Pericles’ exotic narrative seems frighteningly familiar.  

Pericles, a Royal Shakespeare Company production at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, is playing now through December 7th. For tickets, go to www.chicagoshakes.com/pericles  

It’s hard to believe that Fiddler on the Roof turns 60 this year. It’s even harder to believe that the show, which opened on Broadway in 1964, can still take an audience by surprise. In continuous production around the globe, and with brides continuously walking down the aisle to “Sunrise, Sunset,” Drury Lane Theatre’s new version proves Fiddler’s mettle once again.

Director Elizabeth Margolius and choreographer Rommy Sandhu dispense with some of the standard staging choices, mostly without disturbing the spirit that animates the musical. Evocative tableaux replace folky dances right from the opening number. After Tevye (Mark David Kaplan) ushers us into Anatevka, lights come up on the townspeople in rows that initially suggest a church choir or a Greek chorus.

“Tradition” proceeds in that linear formation, bringing the village to life in a cluster rather than filling the full stage. Then, as Tevye narrates the action, the cast begins to sway and bob, the movement not of Christians or Hellenes but of worshipping Jews. Each group – the papas, the mamas, the sons, the daughters – has its verse, standing upright and illuminated while the others crouch. Roles are specified, expectations declared. Whether expressing the closeness of the community, fear of what lays beyond the shtetl or just the cold Russian climate, these people function as a bickering, intertwined unit.

At least, it starts that way. Jack McGaw’s set puts the flat façade of a house center stage, a piece of scenery that disappears, panel by panel, as the story progresses. With every personal encounter, traditions break down and push everyone towards the empty space of the future. Tevye tells Golde, “it’s a new world.” How comfortable was the old world? Projections, designed by Mike Tutaj, appear on screens throughout the show, and an historic photograph of a shabby shack reminds us that a poor man like Tevye had little in the way of comfort.

There are no props – no dairy cart beside Tevye during “If I Were a Rich Man” or a book for his daughter Chava to exchange with her non-Jewish suitor Fyedka. Though odd at first, it works especially well during “Sabbath Prayer” when the family gathers to light the shabbas candles. Instead of candlesticks, the screens that frame the action fill with images of flames. In group scenes such as this, the use of projections is stirring. During more intimate moments, when the faces of the characters are projected onto the screens, they seem less of an enrichment and more of a distraction.

Several cast members bring new attention to smaller roles, such as Joel Gelman as Lazar Wolf, the widowed butcher who sets his sights on Tevye’s first born Tzeitel. Yes, Lazar Wolf is too old and unrefined for the girl. But Gelman exudes such heartfelt joy at the prospect of marrying her, he inspires sympathy when the deal falls through. In the hands of Janet Ulrich Brooks, Yente the Matchmaker lands the laugh lines that have turned “yente” into a synonym for meddlesome gossip. But Brooks also conveys the loneliness of a woman who has no one to call her own.

What do the inhabitants of Anatevka have to call their own by the end? Not much. Their bickering, intertwined unit scatters in all directions as the Russian authorities confiscate their property. We know these people after 60 years of imagining that fiddler trying to keep his balance on a shaky roof. At Drury Lane Theatre, we meet them once again as tableaux of memory that reach through time and space.  

Fiddler on the Roof is playing now through March 24^th at Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook. Tickets are available at www.drurylanetheatre.com

Sometimes you just need to go green. No, not a vegan diet and compostable paper plates, though a little more of each would help the planet. Go green with Shrek: The Musical, which runs through the end of 2023 at North Shore Center for the Performing Arts. Music Theater Works’ production, directed by Joanna McKenzie Miller, has many offbeat delights, including green-hued fart clouds blooming onto the upstage screen. Would those count as vegan and compostable? It doesn’t matter.

Based on the Dreamworks animated film Shrek, the musical pairs Jeanine Tesori, composer of such serious fare as Violet and Fun Home, with David Lindsay-Abaire, author of equally rigorous works such as Rabbit Hole and Kimberly Akimbo (which he and Tesori recently turned into a musical). With Shrek: The Musical, the creative team stays within unremarkable territory.

Taken on those safe terms, though, the show does not disappoint. The salty fairytale follows its ogre hero Shrek – who is cast off by his parents as a child and dwells alone in a swamp – and heroine Fiona – the princess who is cast off by her parents and grows up alone in a tower – to their happily ever after. Thanks to Lord Farquaad, the nasty royal who needs a queen to make him a king, Shrek and Fiona meet and conflict and fall in love with competing farts and belches.

Dana Pike as Fiona fills the stage with her rich voice, determined personality and droll humor, all of which align with particular power in “Morning Person.” While she clings to her quest to marry her fantasy man on a steed, she’s also a pragmatist who adapts to circumstances that contradict her fictional assumptions.

Jordan DeBose lets us love him as smelly Shrek (though a few of his lines got muffled in the Scottish accent). Eustace J. Williams as Shrek’s sidekick Donkey makes his incessant jabber always entertaining. Full-sized Michael Metcalf plays pint-sized Farquaad with such finesse, it’s easy to forget the actor does it entirely on his knees. And Michaela Shapira as Pinocchio seems to have hinges in her elbows.

A word about the set, a sure sign that stage technology marches on even as love stories remain timeless. The vast upstage screen uses motion graphics to chart shifting scenes and moods, from placid sunflowers to molten lava. Media designer Anthony Churchill’s projections mostly follow traditional storybook illustrations, but they are likely, in their sheer un-trendiness, to keep audience members of all ages transfixed.

It's been a hell of a year. Time for a few “F’s” that can be printed, like family, friendly, fantasy, free parking and, okay, farts. As a distraction from dire world news for adults and a variation on Christmas culture for the kids, Shrek: The Musical does the job with lots of jolly and its own shade of green.

Music Theater Works’ production is playing through December 31^st at North Shore Center for the Performing Arts. Go to Music Theater Works for tickets and information.

Based on a book by two authors and giving playwriting credit to three authors, "The Lifespan of a Fact" speaks in a notably singular voice. Now in its Chicago premiere at TimeLine Theatre, the play takes a celebrated freelance writer, his editor at an esteemed magazine, and a newbie factchecker through a weekend clash over an essay. As the trio speeds towards a Monday morning deadline to get copy to a printing press in Kankakee, IL, they wrestle with the difference between fact and truth.

It is a fact that in 2002, a 16-year-old leaped to his death from the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas. In response, John D’Agata wrote an essay and Jim Fingal, hired to check the facts, did just that until the piece came apart at the seams. That led to a book about their process, The Lifespan of a Fact, and then playwrights Jeremey Kareken, David Murrell and Gordon Farrell fashioned a 90-minute drama by the same title that opened on Broadway in 2018.

Here in a Chicago, Michelle Moe directs PJ Powers as John who insists he is an essayist, not a journalist; Alex Benito Rodriguez as Jim, the recent Harvard graduate who challenges John’s loose relationship with facts; and Juliet Hart as Emily, the pragmatic editor trying to avoid lawsuits. As the publishing deadline approaches, all three actors cling to their viewpoints while imbuing their characters with a generous amount of charm.

A script with such complex authorship might have been a muddle but it is not. "The Lifespan of a Fact" is sharp, focused and funny. Objecting to John’s use of the phrase “traffic jam,” Jim draws a diagram of the number of cars that John claimed to be at an intersection. Later John describes the numerically precise young man as “poison to the creative process.” What the script does not do, however, is go beyond its consideration of media ethics and into its characters’ interior lives.

This makes it hard to connect with them emotionally. Briefly, though, the script edges into vulnerability with John, currently living in his late mother’s Las Vegas home. Its fusty, dated, floral décor seems miles from the Vegas Strip. It’s a house for which John bought an armchair with dimensions that didn’t match the catalog description at all points – and which, therefore, was tough for his mother to navigate with her walker. It’s also a house from which she was transported to a hospital by ambulance, her time of death no more exact than the armchair measurements.

John reveals that his mother had volunteered for a suicide hotline and that, after her passing, he worked a hotline shift, taking calls from people anguishing in Las Vegas’ dark corners. For a moment, the tone shifts from intellectual debate to deep feelings for a mother who tried to help others. Emotions, John hints, motivated him to seek the truth, not the facts, about the 16-year-old who threw himself off the Stratosphere Tower.

Had the play brought its characters to this level of authenticity, the loss of a young life might have felt truly tragic. It might have brought us closer to its public and personal meaning, and the conflict between the people onstage might have been far more disturbing. "The Lifespan of a Fact" is playing through December 23 at TimeLine Theatre.