Review: Should We Fear Disease or Demagogues in Trap Door’s The White Plague?
The White Plague or a new form of leprosy is what everyone fears in the new play at Trap Door Theatre. However, the disease described in Czech playwright Karel Čapek’s […]
Review: Love and Information at Trap Door Mines Our Anxieties About Human Connections
Trap Door Theatre’s production of Love and Information, Caryl Churchill’s 2012 play, is more performance art than theater. But Kim McKean’s direction makes this production sizzle with energy. The nine […]
Review: Ensemble, Mark Larson’s Oral History, Brings Chicago’s Theater Past Alive
Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater is a book you can enjoy in two ways. You can read it from beginning to end, as you would any narrative of […]
Review: Trap Door’s The Killer Perplexes, But That’s Why It’s Called Theater of the Absurd
The Architect (a nattily dressed Michael Mejia) welcomes a slightly frazzled Bèrenger (Dennis Bisto) for a tour of the Radiant City. It’s a paradise where everything is quiet, sunny, green, […]
The Old Woman Broods at Trap Door Theatre Is an Absurdist, Prescient Satire—or Is It?
In case you think brooding suggests gloom and doom, think otherwise. Trap Door Theatre’s The Old Woman Broods is chaotic, cacophonous and more than a little cuckoo. The 1969 play by Polish […]
Pirandello’s Naked at Trap Door: The Tragedy of a Woman Whose Fate Is in Her Own Hands
It’s Rome in 1922. In his play Naked, Luigi Pirandello, the Nobel Prize-winning author, concocts a puzzling tangle of death and passion. Directed by Kay Martinovich, Naked is now on stage […]
Trap Door’s Monsieur d’Eon Is a Woman Dazzles With Gender Questions
Trap Door Theatre takes on the contemporary issue of gender identity with the story of a famous soldier, diplomat and spy in 18th century France. Chevalier Charles-Genevieve-Louise-Auguste-Andre-Thimothee d’Eon had a distinguished […]