Everyone's favorite probable Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is still mulling over his his choice for vice president, despite the fact that John Nance Gardner, FDR’s Vice President, famously mentioned that the post isn’t worth "a warm Bucket of Spit."
That hasn't stopped interested parties in offering up their services and stepping up to the plate. Theater critic Stephanie Shaw is one of them. Read an excerpt of her thoughts below or listen above:
Dear Mr.
- Recent Chicago drop-out Beth Stelling was on Conan last night. She discusses our fair city vs. LA for a moment, all with her trademark dry delivery.
- How could we forget about Jay Pharoah? He was on Afternoon Shift last week.
- Heidi Weiss calls Michael Jackson: The Immortal Tour "Nostalgia on steroids.
- More Shakespeare in the parks: Midsommer Flight, a new theatre group, will be doing free (donations happily accepted) productions this August. They are, unsurprisingly, doing A Midsummer Night's Dream as their first show. It's up August 18-19, 25-26 at Touhy Park. Their website is very green, much like the parks. There is a band and picnics are encouraged.
- ComedySportz Chicago repped their city and won the ComedySportz World Championship; the Downtown Chicago Bosses beat Los Angeles 26 to 12.
"Inside Tom Cruise's Private Pain" proclaimed People magazine on Wednesday, as they attempted to paint a picture of exactly how much the movie star has been suffering since his separation from wife Katie Holmes — and how.
Perhaps we'll never know exactly what Cruise has been experiencing, but we can certainly speculate. Comedian Michael Palascak shared his theory at The Paper Machete. Read an excerpt below or listen above:
Tom just gets home from work. Work is in Iceland and home is probably a really nice hotel. One that you walk into and it’s always just been cleaned or made up and it smells wonderful. And the faucets and the shower are shiny and there’s a flat screen TV that you can watch Conan on or whatever they watch in Iceland. Or maybe it’s a condo in a beautiful part of Iceland--all of Iceland is beautiful. That’s why they called it Iceland. They didn’t want people going to Iceland so they called it Iceland and they called Greenland, “Greenland,” so people would go there.
- Coming to the Paramount: Olivia Newton-John! November 10, 8 pm. Tickets vary in price from $50 to $75.
- Regina Taylor of Crowns stopped by Afternoon Shift yesterday.
- First Folio Theatre is doing a staged reading of Shylock and his Daughter by Maurice Schwartz on Thursday, July 26 and Thursday, August 2, 9, and 16, all at 8:15 pm.
Wednesday night I trucked out to see The Merchant of Venice, at the annual outdoor Shakespeare festival presented by First Folio Theatre at Mayslake Forest Preserve in Oak Brook, Ill. I enjoyed this handsomely-designed and engagingly-acted production very much, until the show was cancelled at intermission due to approaching violent storms. Lucky for me, I know how the play ends.
Most Shakespeare plays require a large cast, and the program for Merchant listed 19 actors. Combing through the credits, I found that six of the 19 either graduated from university acting programs within the last two years or still are in school. None of the six yet has a union card from Actors Equity Association (which will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year).
This is one of the finest characteristics of Chicago theater. Our Off-Loop and Off-off-Loop companies abound with embryonic talent; kids just out of school or soon-to-be. Our larger institutional theaters, too, often engage early-career actors.
- Some switch-ups at TUTA Theatre, as co-founders Zeljko Djukic and Jacqueline Stone change their roles. Djukic is moving to a position as Founding Director and Stone will become artistic director, all starting September 1. Djukic will be doing the Fulbright program in Serbia for the coming year, before he returns to TUTA upon its completion.
- Emmy nominations were released this morning; Nina Metz pointed out that the bounty was particularly fruitful for Chicago comedy stars. Huzzah!
- The Chicago Fringe Festival's got a new poster by a new set of designers.
Three Sisters, Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 plus matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 3; through August 26 at Steppenwolf; tickets $20-$78.
If you feel like you’ve never grasped Chekhov, this is not the production to provide you with sudden illumination (like, say, a version of the play I once saw at Stratford). But if you’ve always wondered why people say his plays are funny, this adaptation by Tracy Letts directed by Anna D. Shapiro will make that clear. Yasen Peyankov as the cuckolded schoolmaster and Scott Jaeck as the drunken doctor are particularly strong in the comic bits. All the play is missing is the powerful sexual energy that underlies all those aimless conversations; for, as Chekhov translator (and erstwhile Steppenwolf Artistic Associate) Curt Columbus explained, “[It’s not] some chaste and tepid attraction . . . . The people in Chekhov’s plays want to f**k each other.” –KK
