By Patrick O’Brien As theaters begin opening their doors again, the invitations have been coming in thick and fast. So, in a bit of a fluke, I ended up with a weekend chock full o’ opera. Here’s a rundown on the offering: the old, the new, the old made new, etc. *** Shakespeare’s Macbeth, either
Theatre Wit’s ‘Mr. Burns,’ in return engagement, finds lessons in chaos and ‘Simpsons’ episodes
By Patrick O’Brien It takes a bit for the music-theater part to kick into gear at Theatre Wit’s return engagement of Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a post-electric play. Fair enough; Armageddon isn’t much to sing about. In this case, “Armageddon” means the annihilation of the power grid following a string of devastating operational failures at
PrideArts’s “Things I Could Never Tell Steven” has little new to say
By Patrick O’Brien Midway through The Things I Could Never Tell Steven, PrideArts’s grand re-opening of their space on Broadway, one starts to feel something like the restlessness afflicting each of its four characters. All of them — Mother, Father, Wife, and Ex-Boyfriend With Benefits — keep trying to reach Steven, and all of them
Performer’s School in Highland Park: Making the most of quarantine with monumental planning
By Patrick O’Brien Insofar as any theatrical institution can have “business as usual”, Highland Park’s Performer’s School had just that on their hands in March 2020. They had two shows in the hopper — Disney’s Beauty and the Beast Jr. for the fourth and fifth graders; Les Misérables School Edition for the sixth through eighth graders. They were
Chicago Opera Theater’s ‘Hija de Rappaccini’: an intoxicating promise for site-specific opera?
By Patrick O’Brien Call it making the best of a last-minute change of program; call it community outreach in the midst of a pandemic; call it testing the waters for future site-specific productions. At least call it what it is: a dang good showing. Chicago Opera Theater intended to mount a production of the late Daniel
