Best of 2016: On Stage in Chicago
If you want to see classic Shakespeare without flying to London, you can drive up to Stratford, Ontario, to see a production of Macbeth or As You Like It this summer. But if you want to experience classic Chicago theater, get over to the corner of Broadway and Sheridan this month and climb the stairs to the scruffy home of Mary-Arrchie Theatre. There you can see their outstanding and final production of a Chicago classic, David Mamet’s American Buffalo, set in a junk shop on the north side of Chicago. You can see it the way a storefront production should be seen: sitting five feet from the stage, possibly endangered by flying spittle or stray props.Yes, this excellent production was the swan song for Mary-Arrchie Theatre. RIP. The Hairy Ape at Oracle Productions. Another inventive staging by Oracle in its tiny space on Broadway, this early Eugene O’Neill play is a dated class story given new life by Oracle. The Oracle production starred an all-African-American cast of men playing both male and female parts. Tragically, Oracle Productions announced last month it would cease operations at the end of 2016. Read our review. Brent Eickhoff, theater critic The SpongeBob Musical, Broadway in Chicago Aside from Goodman's 2666, perhaps no other production in Chicago this year boasted as much theatricality as Tina Landau's The SpongeBob Musical. A joyous shot of musical adrenaline, this musical, anchored by a strong leading performance by Ethan Slater, brought Nickelodeon's nautical cartoon to the stage in a big way. Full of charming songs from a dizzying array of talented musicians, The SpongeBob Musical combined dazzling staging with inventive design to champion its core messages of optimism and friendship. In a 2016 full of division and negativity, The SpongeBob Musical was a necessary and welcome addition to Chicago's Loop theater scene. Read my review. Kim Campbell, theater critic and circus writer Marnie & Phil, A Circus Love Story by Actors Gymnasium Chicago has no shortage of great circus. From training up your toddler in the ways of wire walking, to fitness, to circus tents that travel from park to park, to professional training programs, you can find it all here at one of the circus institutions in town. Famous circus companies blow in to town at the first whiff of spring and stay until the snows come, but this year a local company stuck around for the winter as usual and put on a show to get us through the long dark month of February. The Actors Gymnasium wins Third Coast Review’s best circus award for its production of Marnie & Phil, A Circus Love Story. Marnie & Phil incorporated advanced students (the teen ensemble of the Actors Gymnasium) and professionals, including company founder Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi and her longtime friend David Caitlin. The show demonstrated the age range that circus can reach, from youth up to seasoned performers. It also demonstrated how nimbly the art form can incorporate many performing arts including music, dance and most notably theater. All of those elements blended to produce a witty, intelligent, exciting family show. The main characters may have borrowed the old plot device of the aerialist/clown romance, but it soon departed from there to explore deeper themes about aging and friendship as well as the itinerant and sometimes challenging life of the circus performer. “A circus performer has three enemies!” the ringmaster tells his terrified troupe early in the story, and they dutifully recite the list; gravity, time and inertia. The same three enemies that haunt us all. Bravo Marnie & Phil for making us laugh and reflect in 2016. You can read my original Third Coast Review review here or watch the trailer below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYkUobGnkKI
Nancy S Bishop
Nancy S. Bishop is publisher and Stages editor of Third Coast Review. She’s a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and a 2014 Fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. You can read her personal writing on pop culture at nancybishopsjournal.com, and follow her on Twitter @nsbishop. She also writes about film, books, art, architecture and design.