The immensely entertaining and surprisingly complex Bernhardt/Hamlet is a must-see at the Goodman Theatre. A hit at New York's Roundabout Theatre on Broadway last year, it’s very on-trend for contemporary feminist dramas playing out in sports, the workplace, and the arts.

It is also a rather delicious backstage drama, like The Dresser or Noises Off, but has more in common with Kiss Me Kate - another work that used Shakespeare as a plot point. In this case playwright Theresa Rebeck tells the story of Sarah Bernhardt (Terri McMahon) in her quest to play Hamlet – working against the odds, gender, and the advice of critics and colleagues.

"You cannot play Hamlet as an act of ego," says her paramour and devotee, playwright Edmond Rostand (John Tufts.) "All of theater is an act of ego," Bernhard counters, and the audience roars at the delivery and the truth of it. 

"A woman who does nothing is considered worthless," Bernhardt says at another point. "A man who does nothing is Hamlet!." 

And it's a true story that Rebeck makes gripping and fun. (Rebeck also wrote Seminar, a similarly language- and thought-centered work which I had the good fortune of seeing with Alan Rickman.)

In Bernhardt/Hamlet, director Donna Feore uses Rebeck’s script to show actors at work, mining Shakespeare for clues to character, struggling with motivation, and working assiduously to meet the demands of cadence and pace.

Much of the action takes place in Bernhardt’s Paris boudoir, where this attractive woman was waited upon by a coterie of fauning men. But the playful and exuberant Bernhardt never lets the under-fulfilled romance bother her, and Rebeck fends off melodrama by dropping in witty laugh bombs left and right.

"You've decided whether you'll like even before you have seen it," Rostand tells a theater reviewer, Louis Lamercier (William Dick). "Of course! I'm a critic!" Lamercier responds. More laughter. 

The Bernhardt character also takes men to task who would put her on a pedestal, but not really egage her mind. She excoriates playwright Rostand for writing the play, Cyrano de Bergerac, modeling his love interest Roxanne after Bernhardt. "How can you put all your genius into Cyrano and make Roxanne an empty vessel?" she asks. 

One also expects that a play about actors playing Hamlet might have some breakthrough moments of great Shakespeare. Be assured. Wise casting brings us two intensely good, full-fledged Shakespearean performers – as Sarah Bernhardt, Terri McMahon brings a bedrock of 23 years of performances at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but has all the range for this dual role.

Larry Yando, in the role of Constant Coquelin, is that world-weary trouper who has played Hamlet four times, but has now aged into the roles of Polonius and Hamlet’s father – and imparts acting advice to the less experienced players. When he turns on the power, it is electrifying. The cast is so good, the production values so high, and the play so entertaining there is only one thing to say: go see it.

Bernhardt/Hamlet is also a familiar story of actresses everywhere, who lose their grasp on major roles for stage or screen as their youth fades. These days actresses like Nicole Kidman, Selma Hayek, and Emma Thompson are defying this by successfully producing projects or scripts themselves.

And so did Sarah Bernhardt, and she did it way back in 1896. One of the first international celebrities, she achieved her global fame in analog: acting on stage, celebrated in newspapers, and promoted by posters and by word of mouth.

She was also the most prominent serious actor, among a handful, who successfully took her stage skills to the new medium of film, in 1900. That’s where the collective memory of my generation picks up on her. During her last quarter century and after, the term “Sarah Bernhardt” suggested a cross between an immensely talented stage beauty, who was also a diva – in other words, she knows her power, and how to use it. 

This is the character we meet in Rebeck's play. As she hit fifty, Bernhardt tired of playing Camille, her signature role – and she knew she was too old for the part, so she decided to try Hamlet. A master of her own fate, in 1893 Bernhardt became the manager of the Théâtre de la Renaissance, and in 1899 she relocated to the former Théâtre des Nations, which she renamed the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt and managed until her death in 1923. 

"I am not a tragic figure," Rebeck's Bernhardt asserts. "I do not play Hamlet as a woman. I play him as myself." And you can see Bernhardt/Hamlet through October 20 at Goodman Theatre.

In Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon, dolorous music accompanies the opening scene: a clearly debilitated woman is wheeled into her apartment, where she is eased into a bed in her main room. This is Paulina (Rebeca Alemán), and we see she is weak and tired.

Helping her is Rodrigo (Ramon Cámin) – we learn later he is a poet – and he methodically cares for her needs, clearly familiar with the routine tasks. Is she a stroke victim? We are not sure. He helps her practice her letters, then words and then pictures. The one-act play shows scene after scene, compressing an interval of two months into 90 minutes, as Paulina gradually recovers her ability to communicate, and more importantly, to understand, and the audience learns gradually with her as she recovers.

Paulina, it turns out, has suffered a traumatic head injury, blocking her memory. We discover she is a crusading journalist, spotlighting the heinous crimes of drug cartels that terrorize areas of Mexico. For this she was targeted for punishment. Steadfast Rodrigo is helping her regain her faculties, relating her past as she recovers her memory. We also have scenes in which multimedia presents memories from her daily life. 

The play is inspired by the true story of journalist Miroslava Breach Velducea, shot eight times and killed in Chihuahua, Mexico in 2017 as she was leaving home in her car, accompanied by one of her children. Breach covered politics and crime. A note found at the scene of the murder read: "For being a snitch. You're next, governor.--The 80,” the pseudonym of Arturo Quintana, who allegedly leads a criminal gang associated with the organized crime syndicate known as La Línea in the area. 

Aleman, an Argentine-born actor, delivers an exceptional performance...showing us with a seamless gradualness the recovery of a wounded individual. We also ponder the tragic agony of a recovery that brings with a punishing awareness – in the play, it takes weeks for Paulina to realize that she does not know where her mother and daughter are. These are powerful moments onstage.

We also share a wonderful opportunity to witness the universal nature of good acting, a craft that transcends cultural and language barriers. The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon, playing at Steppenwolf Theatre 1700, is directed by Iraida Tapias, and is being presented by Chicago Latino Theater Alliance as part of Destinos, the 3rd Chicago International Latino Theater Festival.

While Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon has political currency, it is also moving on a level of human drama. Alemán’s performance is exceptional – she also teaches acting through the Chicago-and-Caracas-based Water People Theater group. But the play itself suffers from requiring so much exposition to tell the story points, a drudgery that falls mostly to Rodrigo’s character. To make the play reach more audiences, it is delivered at the 1700 in English with Spanish supertitles – which is helpful even for English speakers. But it takes some unraveling for English speakers, anyway, to unravel what is happening on stage.

The Water People Theater relocated to Chicago from New York in 2012, though it continues working in Venezuela. Last year it received eight Chicago ALTA Awards nominations in 2018. In 2018, it presented MUSES, a fictional and extraordinary encounter between Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and American poet Sylvia Plath. Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon runs through October 13 at the Steppenwolf Theatre 1700 in Chicago.

In its opening scene, Blue Stockings sets us in a bustling 19th century train station, the crowd swirling quickly by, then shifting to slo-mo – just like a digital film – highlighting characters who soon become principal players in the action.

That cinematic touch seems to be used more frequently on stage, and underscores the growing crossover of film and stage. In fact, Blue Stockings - the true story of the struggle by 19th century British women for access to college degrees - is now being adapted for a television series by Jessica Swale from her 2013 script, which won a Most Promising Playwright award when it debuted at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

So this is a wonderful opportunity to see a significant work by a rising writer (Swale has two other movies in development). It is very well directed and produced by Spenser Davis for Promethean Theatre Ensemble (at the Den Theatre through October 13).

Following that opening scene, we quickly cut (movie style) to a foretaste of a future scene, where guest lecturer Dr. Maudsley (Jared Dennis) is holding forth:
“Except if theywith to sacrifice themselves, the higher education of women may be detrimental to their physiology,” he posits, noting the women who pursue education are of four types: scientists, mathematicians, writers, and “wealthy dilettantes” the latter known at the time as “Blue Stockings.”

When he reappears, Dr. Maudsley will also lecture on hysteria, “rooted in the Greek for ‘uterus’” he reminds the students. As preposterous as such assertions sound today, it was in fact exactly the type of “scientifically grounded” basis on which men objected to equality for women. “These are not opinions,” Dr. Maudsley says, “they are facts of nature proven by science.” And this sets the basis for the tension and drama that follow.

Girton College was founded in 1869 as the first of Cambridge University’s 31 colleges to admit women. By 1896, when Blue Stockings takes place, women also began agitating to vote – then restricted to males, just like the U.S. You may not need to know all the background to appreciate the play, but it helps – since Swale confronts us with the unbelievably bald misogyny of the period. These sentiments still infiltrate current debates, so revisiting them in Blue Stockings is instructive.

Girton’s headmistress, Elizabeth Welsh (Jamie Bragg), has been working steadfastly for decades to raise the stature of women’s education, arguing for the right to award degrees. Blue Stockings follows the action culminating in an 1896 vote by the all-male Oxford University Senate. But the men on campus, students and professors, found the prospect of women earning degrees just like men but threatening and perverse.

Promethean Theatre has developed a wonderful “Appreciation Guide” to provide background for the play. And I must admit, watching it with no with no factual context made me think of it more as a PBS-style costume drama, like Dowton Abbey – interesting, but not gripping. Being reminded that the Cambridge Senate voted down the degrees measure, and women were not awarded Cambridge degrees until 1948 (!) makes it matter much more.

Swale gives us another mark of a good playwright, with a host of distinct and memorable characters, and an entertaining story line, too. Girton lecturer Mr. Banks (Patrick Blashill) is that inspiring and nurturant educator who helps reorder the women students’ thinking. He has them dress in bloomers (those billowy 19th century pants) and teaches them to ride a bicycle, astride no less. (In real life, this happened, and the male students protesting women’s degrees burned in effigy a woman on a bicycle.)

With 19th century co-education comes the first challenges of keeping the young men and women safely separated, and all the efforts college students engineer to circumvent that control. Swale Tess (Heather Kae Smith) plays an everywoman student, a gifted mathematician and astrophysicist. The women student performances overall were far stronger than their male counterparts. For the first time society proffers a choice for her between romantic love and the life of a mind.

Swale shows this up to be a false choice from a male-dominated society. With the right man, she can have both. Among noteworthy performances are Jamie Bragg as schoolmistress Elizabeth Welsh; Cameron Feagin as Miss Blake, a lecturer and active suffragist; Patrick Blashill as Mr. Banks and Jared Dennis as Dr. Maudsley. Blue Stockings runs through October 13 at The Den Theatre in Chicago.

Directors say Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information is a challenging play, but in good hands, it is a treasure. And this is what we have at Trap Door Theatre’s production – an absolutely enthralling experience directed by Kim McKean.

It is like a tightly scripted improv show, packed with familiar personalities, some of them offbeat, playing roles that could share the stage in Lily Tomlin’s “Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe.” McKean’s accomplishment becomes clearer when you realize Love and Information brings us more than 100 sometimes loosely identified characters, mostly appearing as couples or trios, in a series of short scenes that end in blackouts.

These are gathered into seven sections, and within each, Churchill requires the director to set the order of the scenes and assign the roles. To further spice it up, the script packs an eighth section of scenes intended to be sprinkled at will in the show wherever they seem to fit.

And those scenes! Listing heavily toward couple encounters, Churchill shows us how information becomes a form of emotional currency in relationships. Couples share (or withhold) knowledge, leveraging it to gain power, debilitate, bond – or just plain flirt. A representative sample:

• A girl whose rare nerve condition doesn’t let her feel pain asks a man to explain what pain is. (He compares it to a failed love affair.)
• A man tries to impress an adoring girl by describing his research in animal learning, but ends up clinically describing dissection of chicken brains involved in his work. (She is not put off.)
• An aspiring male suitor brings a young girl a red flower. On his knees as her feet, his heart is full and open. She thanks him for it, profusely. Then too profusely, launching into a rattling, seemingly endless manic riff about how we see red, things they will do together, envisions a day trip on a train….as she goes on and on, he wilts.

Admittedly it is difficult to describe humor, and really which Churchill gives us is a dark and coldly clinical look at the world and those we share it with. Love and Intelligence doesn't traffick in sentimentality. It opens with a scene in which people are moving mechanically and seemingly inexplicably on the stage. A man enters the crowd, apparently paranoid. Then the electronic dance music rises and we see it is like a dance floor at a rave, and suddenly everything makes sense - but Churchill has pulled back the curtain and we cannot unsee the uncomfortable social aspects of that dance floor.  A  Here's a sample scene with a man who doesn’t recognize his wi

But I am your wife.

You look like my wife.

That’s because I am. Look, even that little birthmark behind my ear. Look.

Yes, I see it. It’s me.

Darling sweet, it’s me. I’m here.

No, she’s gone. They’ve all gone. Who’s gone?

Everyone I know. Everyone who loved me.

No, I love you.

I don’t want you to love me, I don’t know you.

There’s things only we know, aren’t there. That day on the beach with the shells. You remember that? Yes, of course. And cabbages. Why is cabbages a funny word, we’re the only ones who have cabbages as a joke because of what happened with the cabbages. Cabbages is a joke, yes?

Cabbages was a joke I shared with my wife. I miss my wife.

But I am. . . Let me touch you. If you’d see what it feels like to touch me. If we made love you’d know it was me because there are things we like to do and no one else would know that, if I was a stranger pretending to be her I wouldn’t know those things, you’d feel you were back with me, you would I know, please.

You disgust me. You frighten me. What are you?

Director McKean has made the most of this formula, selecting and ordering carefully from this smorgasbord of very fine writing, packing dozens of carefully honed mind-bending scenes by Churchill. Among Britain’s top ranking playwrights, Churchill is known best known this side of the Atlantic for her Cloud Nine or Top Girls. Most recently Chicago had a chance to see her Dark Mirror-style A Number, a stunning 2012 thriller produced at Writer’s Theatre in Glencoe last year. And McKean also brought in a spectacular cast, willing to go with a blank slate that evolved into this fine show: Whitney Dottery, Jake Flum, Brian Huther, Emily Lotspeich, Michael Mejia, Emily Nichelson, Keith Surney, Lilly Tukur, Carl Wisniewski. Love and Information runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturday’s through October 19 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland in Chicago.

When we meet Paul Morel, he is just being born. A bearded gentleman off to the side offers commentary on the scene as the nurses attend to his mother.

That narrator turns out to be D.H. Lawrence, and he reappears regularly in Sons and Lovers, adapted and directed from Lawrence’s breakthrough 1913 novel by Mike Brayndick. It is seeing its delayed U.S. premiere at Chicago’s Greenhouse Theatre.

Featuring a cast of 11 in 16 roles, Sons and Lovers brings the heart of Lawrence’s book onstage in just over two hours. The semi-autobiographical work centers on life and loves of Paul Morel (Miles Borchard), a proxy for Lawrence. His mother Lydia (Amy Gray) has married beneath her station, and is emotionally estranged from her coal miner husband Walter (Stephen Dunn), channeling all her love onto her sons Paul and William (Brian Boller, who also plays Lawrence as narrator).

To some degree, Sons and Lovers lends itself naturally to the stage, with patches of dialog that carry over intact. But not everything would fit, and Brayndick deftly excises and merges numerous scenes to keep the action moving.

Brayndick has done other literary adaptations, and his skill shows in Sons & Lovers. Greenhouse previously presented his versions of 19th century works by Turgenev - Home of the Gentry - and Balzac’s Pére Goriot. Sons and Lovers was originally commissioned by Traffic of the Stage in Hampstead, England, and it toured the UK, including London’s Bloomsbury Theatre, in 1996.

As the title suggests, Lydia Morel’s sons are engulfed in their mother’s needy attentions. Walter flees to a good accounting job in London, fulfilling his mother’s upward economic aspirations. This relegates Paul to an even closer interdependency with her.

An artistic, sensitive type, he explores love in two polarities: innocent and exploratory with Miriam, a girl on a nearby farm; and a more torrid affair with Clara Dawes (Emma Brayndick), a woman who is separated from her husband.

Adaptations raise the question, Why not just read the book? In a novel, our minds bask in the inner lives and travails of characters. Onstage, there is an expectation this should all be leading somewhere. What we get here is a tremendously sensitive and effective presentation of a great literary work. As a drama, it is immersive, and interesting. But as theater it is limited to following a lifeline as its plotline.

Still Sons and Lovers is engaging, in no small measure because of the memorable performances of the cast, with Midlands and other accents nicely polished. Noteworthy are Brian Boller in the dual role as Lawrence’s older brother William, and narrator Lawrence (though frankly it took me some time to figure out he was two characters). Stephen Dunn is outstanding as the coal miner Walter. Likewise for Baird Brutscher in the roles of Edgar Lievers and Baxter Dawes. And Corrie Riedl is innocent sweetness personified as the farm girl Miriam Lievers. Tina Shelley as her mother, and Pete Blatchford as Paul’s supervisor Mr. Pappleworth deliver sharp performances in small roles.

Most notable are two who carry the weight of the show: Amy Gray as Lydia Morel, Paul’s mother, who grows and ages in the role convincingly; and Miles Borchard as her son, Paul. Borchard is striking in inhabiting the role so naturally. Onstage nearly in every scene, Borchard reacts continuously to those around him, and develops a portrait of an unselfconscious young man navigating the exploration of life, and love – exactly the character D.H. Lawrence placed in his pages. Sons & Lovers runs through September 29 at Greenhouse Theater Center on Lincoln Ave.

Out of Love by Elinor Cook examines the dynamics of a close, at times even unhealthy and overly enmeshed relationship, between two women friends. Cook artfully displays that elusive quality of intimacy that courses between people who are too close – an almost inexpressible aspect of the attraction that keeps even an improbable pair of friends inseparable their whole life long.

Since they were little, Grace (Laura Berner Taylor) and Lorna (Sarah Gise) have been like twin suns in an unstable orbit. That metaphor is apt in many ways. Drawn inexorably into each other’s lives, their needs and dependencies vary as they grow up, and they circle each other in a wobbly trajectory.

The two pledge to leave town and go away to college. As humans mature, their emotional needs vary, and so Grace and Lorna’s dependence and co-dependence continuously changes. The gravity of their emotional attraction and needs vary in intensity with age and their stage in life, as we meet these girls at all different points in their adulthoods, adolescences, and childhoods.

Grace is more neurotic and has suffered more emotional deficits growing up in a violent and poorer household, while Lorna seems to have had a more supportive home life and more stable upbringing. During teen years and early adulthood, Grace - perhaps responding to jealousy - seduces Lorna’s boyfriend, and ends up pregnant. Grace consigns herself to motherhood, and almost too quickly abandons her aspirations, while Lorna moves ahead. But we suspect the path of life must inevitably have divided for these two – leaving was too much of a reach for Grace.

Out of Love jumps around in time and place in a brisk series of vignettes, opening with a scene in adulthood, and jumping back to and from childhood and adulthood. The trio of actors offers an excellent performances - Peter Gertas (Actor 3) plays a variety of male figures – boyfriend, dad, brother, lover. Gertas is excellent in this shape shifting performance. The selection of British dialects (the script’s vocabulary won’t allow for Americanized language) establish social stature and are sufficiently well honed to accomplish their purpose.

This is an exceptionally good theatrical piece, and is receiving an excellent U.S. premiere now by Interrobang Theatre Project, where it is directed by Georgette Verdin at the Rivendell Theatre. But I found I just didn’t care about this extensive exploration of two women’s emotional angst, and the quality of the performances could not overcome my lack of engagement. One suspects that this is really a movie in waiting, where the intimate portrayal of Grace and Lorna would be more effective with a tight close-up of their suffering faces on a big screen.

Kiss produced by Haven Theatre (and playing at The Den Theatre) is a stealthily crafted play. Delightfully engaging, loaded with laughs, it tells the story of two couples, none married, who double date regularly to watch soap operas at one of their apartments.

Kiss is also a theatrical event for Chicago: the production of a play by celebrated screenwriter Guillermo Calderon. He wrote Sundance winner "Violeta Went to Heaven;" "The Club," a Golden Globe nominee and winner at the Berlin Intl. Film Festival; and "Neruda," another Golden Globe nominee that was also a lauded at the Canne’s Film Festival. His plays are performed across Europe and in New York, including Neva, Diciembre, Speech, Quake, and Escuela.

The play Kiss opens as the good looking Youssif (Salar Ardebili) half of one couple, arrives at the apartment of comely Hadeel (Arti Ishak), the girl from the other couple. The two engage in friendly banter, mostly play-acting lines from the show. After awhile, though, the banter begins shifting to role playing scenes from the soap opera, and the tone gets more seriously heated and amorous, in an over-the-top melodramatic style.

Like the TV shows, Kiss loaded with thwarted passion and impossible liaisons. That familiar soap opera-style music loudly punctuates the scene, as the soap opera jumps from screen to real life. In a real soap opera, the music is intended to conjure tension, or suspense. But here, it conjures up laughs from the audience – who were wildly amused by the overheated performances.

The characters struggle for words – they know the passion, but they don’t have a script. We hear clumsy lines like, “The heart is a big muscle, and yours is larger than normal,” and “You can love two women at a time,” or “I want to watch you eat and then lick your plate when you are finished.”

The role playing seems to be seriously leading to the real thing, and Youssif and Hadeel get there rather quickly: declarations of undying love lead to a proposal of marriage by Youssif, and Hadeel accepts. Then true to form for a soap opera, there is a knock at the door, and Hadeel’s beau, the hapless Ahmed (Monty Cole, who also directs) arrives, determined to propose to Hadeel himself.

Ahmed does, and Hadeel accepts. And so it goes, with complications rising as Youssif’s girlfriend Bana (Cassidy Slaughter-Mason) arrives, angry because she senses Youssif has been untrue. This meta-soap opera grinds on comically, until the action ends, and the actors take a bow. The playwright has drawn us close with this show.

And with us in his clutches, Calderon resumes the play with a faked post show discussion by the cast, and we are lead to another plane of performance that is mind-bending, to say the least. I won’t spoil the last 20 percent of the show, but to see where the mind of Guillermo Calderon takes us under the direction of Monty Cole – it’s well, well worth seeing. Likewise the performances by Ardebili and Ishak are excellent. 

Kiss is also a social commentary. The characters names and the Arabic script on the televised soap opera playing on the set let us know it is set in the Middle East. Information in the lobby reveals it is Syria, where soap operas are celebrated form of cultural expression. They are censored, in that criticism of the government isn’t permitted.

But Syrian actors and scriptwriters insert social commentary subversively. In the lobby you can also learn a bit of famous Syrian actress Mai Skaf, who died in exile two years ago, following harassment for political dissidence. If there is a Jeff Award for dramaturgy, the researchers who brings such scripts as Kiss (and also Pomona) to Chicago are certainly deserving of it. Kiss runs through August 18 at Den Theatre.

Pomona at Steep Theatre is among the most exhilarating productions I have seen this year. Directed by Robin Witt, who selected this imaginative script by British playwright Alistair McDowall, the play follows a familiar theme in British crime dramas: the disappearance of working girls, spirited away in this case from house of prostitution.

But Pomona is much more than that. Set in the real-life Pomona, a once fashionable and now abandoned acreage encircled by England’s M50 freeway, and bordered by two canals in the city center of Manchester, it conjures up the terror associated with an unlit, unpopulated terrain that makes a dark hole in the brightly lit cityscape.

The action centers around the world of two night watchmen (abbove) – bearded, burly Moe (Nate Faustman) and his young sidekick Charlie (Brandon Rivera) – who are charged with guarding Pomona from unauthorized visitors. At rare intervals, unmarked vans are admitted, driving into the flat terrain before disappearing into a warren of subterranean passages and vaults. Neither Moe nor Charlie know who is in the vans, or what happens below ground in what are supposedly former World War II shelters. The truth we learn later is even more nefarious than Moe, Charlie or the audience might have guessed.

This dystopian tale is also in part a staged realization of the type of role playing found in Dungeons & Dragons. The game itself also appears as part of the action, as it happens to be Charlie’s major social outlet when he is not at work.

As the play opens, we meet a graying, world-weary Manchester real estate mogul, Zeppo (Peter Moore), sitting atop a packing crate next to Ollie (Amber Sollis), who is seeking his help to locate her sister, who she believes may have disappeared into the subterranean Pomona. Behind them sits a mysterious individual wearing an extraterrestrial mask. Periodically Zeppo directs Ollie to hand the creature a nugget.

The three rotate continuously before the audience in a sustained introductory dialog in what is an intriguing bit of stageplay. This also serves as a praecis to the drama to come, and sets the essential theme of the play: absolving oneself of moral culpability by remaining ignorant. Reluctant to get involved, Zeppo finally agrees to help Ollie, but offers her a warning, philosophizing that he believes in “selective education,” meaning there are some things it is better not to know about.

These days, “You can’t be a good person; there is no such thing,” Zeppo postulates. “There are only those who know the pain they are causing; and those who don’t.” Ignorance is, if not bliss, at least a form of absolution.

The cinematic style of the script and staging cuts rapidly to four successive scenes, introducing more characters, all of whom are desperate. (It reminded me of the movie, “Crash.”) Fay (Ashlyn Lozano) a woman on the run pleading with her babysitter to stay with her child; cold-blooded Keaton (Phoebe Moore), ordering her investment advisor to withdraw all her money and burn it; Moe and Charlie injuring themselves to stage an alibi.

As the story unfolds, these scenes (which jump around in time) all become clear. The provocative scenes also draw us into the action, and McDowall doesn’t let us go. The show flies by for 100 minutes (no intermission).

The entire cast is uniformly excellent, though I grew to love the range delivered by Brandon Rivera, whose Charlie runs the gamut of dramatic personae: the role-playing Dungeon Master, the nerdy young man hoping to find a girlfriend, the naïve protégé of Moe, and a sobered individual who refuses to go on. Nate Faust brought a layered sensitivity to his role as Moe, with moving scenes in which he displays vulnerability with Fay, and an unlikely nurturance for Charlie.

Kudos to dialect coach Adam Goldstein on the Manchester accents – completely convincing (and I have been there a few times) – but the cast exercised careful discipline in consistency here. Likewise applause for Joe Schermoly (Scenic Design), Brandon Wardell (Lighting) and Jenny Pinson (Props) for an integrated and effective whole. Costumes by Aly Amidei are also noteworthy. Pomona has been selling out, so let's hope the run is extended. Pomona runs through September 14 at Steep Theatre, 1115 W. Berwyn in Chicago.

After seeing Strange Heart Beating, I felt the less said about this show, which is a murder mystery at its heart- the better. Its characters struck me as unrealistic, the dialog veers to wooden at many points, and the story is outlandish and complex.

Yet in describing its storyline to others, I found they were interested in it. Directed by Addie Gorlin, Strange Heart Beating follows a murder investigation, the mysterious disappearance of a young girl drowned in a lake – and the unfortunate fate of a young man, Ramon (Brandon Rodriguez), implicated in that murder. He is a factory worker at a nearby turkey processing plant, but claims as an alibi that he was only nearby to study the wildlife around the lake. The mother of the young girl, Lena (Leah Raidt) is properly distraught, even deranged at the inconsolable loss of her daughter.

In the course of the drama Lena moves from victim’s mother, to suspect, to witness – and eventually (and here playwright Kristin Idaszak may be drawing on magical realism) she gets trained and certified to become the executioner of the now convicted killer. The town sheriff, Teeny (Jyreika Guest), was best friends with Lena growing up. Now Teeny must investigate this murder, which divides their relationship with a wall of professionalism.

As the drama progresses and the case moves to court, Teeny adopts roles of both the prosecutor and court administrator – which bothered me on the level of likelihood and realism. There are two or three more wrinkles thrown into Strange Heart Beating: the lake is suffering biological degradation (herons become erratic); the turkey plant’s experiments in bioengineering yield creatures with extra legs and four breasts; and there are other young girls who have gone missing, some possibly undocumented immigrants and children of color.

All that and the kitchen sink as problems (the content advisory reads "Strange Heart Beating contains discussions about sexual violence against women, suicide, racism, xenophobia, and capital punishment") diffuses the focus. The cast does their best to work with what they've got. The one who gets a reprieve here is Stephanie Shum, who plays the spirit of the Lake with her signature gusto - and the lines are poetic and quite apt for a Lake. 

In an interview accompanying the program, Idaszak says the story is based loosely on the Jacob Wetterling case, which lay cold for 27 years in a Minnesota village. She wanted to look at why a town would remain silent with a killer in their midst for almost three decades. It would have been a better story if that had been the case. 

Idaszak says she was following in the steps of Raymond Chandler and other noir writers to generate the story, but seeking a less misogynist resolution. All this is compelling on paper, but not so much on stage. Too many axes to grind in this show, and so the dramatics lose their edge. Strange Heart Beating runs through July 28 at the Frontier space, 1106 W. Thorndale in Chicago. 

Let me apologize for gushing (and being late with this review), but Brian Parry’s performance as King Lear at Redtwist Theater is nothing short of astounding. One of the finest Shakespeare performances I have ever seen, Parry brings goosebumps and rushes from his first few lines. He acts the role deeply and well. He is King Lear.

But Parry is also a consummate thespian, there is no other way to describe it – a master of delivery of the Elizabethan English, with cadence and emphasis so deft that the language is clear as a bell. While English is filled with ancient words whose meaning changes over centuries, the new meanings are accretions on top of the old ones. When uttered with skill, we hear with both our modern minds and our primitive souls. With Parry we hear it all.

My intuition tells me every actor on that stage knows what Parry is up to. I have to imagine they were all drawn to this demanding work because of their passion for it, and perhaps because they would have a chance to be immersed in such a wonderful enterprise with Parry as Lear. 

The story of King Lear is a mythical tragedy, a storyline set up by Shakespeare to allow for drama. The aging king decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. Determining which portion to give to each, he asks them how much they love him.

The oldest, Goneril (Jacqueline Grant) and middle daughter, Regan (KC Karen Hill) both married, are effusive in their expressions, and they warm the cockles of Lear’s soul. Hill and Grant open what will be noteworthy performances, on par with Parry.

But his youngest daughter, Cordelia, is less effusive, and more rational – pointing out to Lear she must love him more since she has no husband splitting her away from him. Angry, Lear disinherits and banishes Cordelia and the Earl of Kent (Cameron Feagin) who has defended her. Cordelia’s suitor abandons her after this loss of wealth – though the King of France steps in to marry and rescue her.

Enter tragedy, as we learn the people who really love Lear have been cast off, and the two oldest daughters and their husbands begin to diminish Lear’s standing – refusing his 150 person retinue, and tossing him between castles like an unwanted in-law.

The whole company is so remarkably good there is not a performance that falters – an electricity of excellence coursing through the stage. Particularly impressive were Kayla Raelle Holder as Lear’s youngest daughter Cordelia and Mark West as Edmund, illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester. Cordelia challenges Lear, and Holder has the chops to do it. Edmund is conniving and duplicitous, a bastard figuratively and literally – and West’s eyes glisten with his evil cunning.

Complicated roles and performances were those of King Lear’s Fool (Liz Cunningham) and the Earl of Gloucester’s legitimate son, Edgar (Robert Hunter Bry). Both play their character, as well as an alternate characters. Cunningham’s Fool took awhile to grow on me, for Shakespeare makes fools speak in puzzling ways – but I caught on.

And Bry’s Edgar is unprepossessing at first, outshown by his half evil half brother Edmund. When he adopts alternate characters - one a rustic bumpkin who guides his blinded father to safety - Bry shines. It occurred to me after this show that I had never really seen King Lear live before – though I have seen scenes from it. The role calls to actors – Glenda Jackson notably took it on in New York recently – and this production at Redtwist Theatre gives us a glimpse of the best that actors can be when inspired. Don’t miss it (it runs through August 2 at Red Twist Theatre at 1104 W Bryn Mawr.