Displaying items by tag: Andre Pluess

Lookingglass Theatre Company continues its tradition of staging visually inventive and thought-provoking world premieres with its latest production, Untitled Vampire Play. Written by Lookingglass Ensemble Member Kevin Douglas - who has previously crafted well-received work for the company, including Thaddeus and Slocum: A Vaudeville Adventure - this comedy-drama uses supernatural lore to dissect the vulnerabilities of modern relationships.

The story centers on a delightfully bizarre “meet the parents” scenario. Dom (Jordan Anthony Arredondo), an everyman bartender, introduces his parents to his new girlfriend, Val (Courtney Rikki Green). The twist? Val is a centuries-old vampire. But don’t worry - she gets her blood from ethical sources, not human victims. Dom’s parents laugh it off, though, thinking their son’s girlfriend has a few screws loose.

Meanwhile, Val’s “brother” Roderick (Walter Briggs) resurfaces, wanting to reconnect. In reality, they are former lovers, but after his betrayal, she ran away. Val doubts that he’s changed, but her progeny, Rose (Jin Park), gets sucked into his orbit despite being under Val’s supernatural control. As Roderick carelessly makes kills in Chicago, bodies begin piling up, drawing the attention of Dom’s mother - a police detective - and a vampire hunter descended from Van Helsing. Who said love was easy? The result is a look at relationships in all of their messy, bloody glory.

Briggs turns in an excellent performance as Roderick, playing the charismatic bad boy with ease. He channels the classic Hollywood vampire aesthetic with immaculate fashion and a distinct, formal vocal cadence that commands the room. Sure, he’s a villain, but he’s fun to watch, especially with the little flairs he adds to his characterization.

Kareem Bandealy is another standout, tackling two completely contrasting roles. He plays Dom's father, Louie, with a relentless barrage of corny vampire dad jokes, then completely transforms into Lance Tardis Van Helsing, a fierce vampire hunter with an equally fierce hair flip.

Courtney Rikki Green as Val inUntitled Vampire Play at Lookingglass Theatre. Photo by Justin Barbin.

Anchoring the whole cast, though, is Green, who brings immense emotional weight to her performance as the complex Val. Serving as the real window into this hidden world, Green charts her character's profound transformation, as Val wrestles with whether she is seeking genuine love or simply trying to outrun eternal loneliness.

Beneath the fangs, the play asks a deeply human question: What does it mean to love someone? It explores the underlying selfishness that often masks itself as romance. Val wants Dom to turn into a vampire so they can be together forever, viewing his reluctance as a rejection of her identity rather than a defense of his own humanity. Meanwhile, Dom uses Val as an emotional security blanket to quiet his own intense insecurities. Through these characters, Douglas examines how control, weakness, danger, and even lust can taint love, or at least the illusion of it.

The script could use a bit of trimming in its exploration, as there are moments that feel repetitive, alongside a few minor plot weaknesses. For instance, it seems odd that a police detective would wait so long to investigate self-proclaimed vampires once gruesome deaths with animal-like attack marks begin happening. Furthermore, one thing I certainly could have gone without was a gruesome scene where the vampires feast on a victim, using gummy worms to simulate intestines. Still, beneath those rough edges, the play’s core story has real spark, offering a fresh, funny twist on vampire mythology that keeps the audience engaged.

I’d be remiss not to praise the play’s design. The technical execution is a masterclass in atmospheric world-building. Scenic designer Alyssa Mohn delivers an expert landscape featuring coffins that seamlessly rise from and sink into the stage floor. This clever staging pairs beautifully with Andre Pluess’s precise sound design and Jason Lynch’s lighting choices - ranging from moody washes to stark spotlights and flashing accents - to wrap the theater in an escalating sense of intrigue and peril. The atmosphere creates moments when you’re not sure if you might be the next victim.

Inventively directed by Devon de Mayo, the production also incorporates fun moments of audience engagement, whether it’s handing theatergoers caution tape to hold at a crime scene or a rather messy vampire kill that sprays stage blood into the front row.

While it doesn’t entirely break new ground, Untitled Vampire Play is creative and visually arresting. At a time when modern relationships are being heavily dissected in media - such as in the hit Obsession - Untitled Vampire Play tosses its fangs into the conversation, leaving the audience to wrestle with what should encompass the core tenets of love.

Recommended.

Untitled Vampire Play is being performed at Lookingglass Theatre through July 12^th.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

Let’s begin with a children’s story. A children’s story about children’s stories, really.

Long, long ago, there lived a boy who could not decide what he would be when he grew up. He might have grown up to sing songs or tally bills, to right wrongs or treat ills, but he just could not decide. Then one day, the boy met a wonderful enchantress — a creator and a raconteur who herself had vowed never to grow up, and who lived her life telling stories for children. She told the boy that he, too, needn’t ever grow up, for he had been placed in this world for the same purpose as her — to tell tales that enchant children, young and old. And so, the boy did just that for many years until one day, as boys sometimes do, he grew up and went on to smaller, lesser things. And while that ageless enchantress still tells stories to children while the tired, graying boy does not, somewhere deep inside him lurks a longing for that storybook world he left behind, a longing let out now and again when he reads or hears or sees a story told truly and lovingly, told for and to those who have yet to grow up.

I begin with that story because Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” was always the gold standard when that boy considered what a true and lovely children’s story is. Lookingglass Theatre’s The Steadfast Tin Soldier, written and directed by Mary Zimmerman, is the rare adaptation of a true classic that’s not only worthy and respectful of its source material, but takes it to new and wondrous places.

Show, don’t tell. That’s perhaps the first rule of good storytelling, and Zimmerman’s production adheres to that maxim. From the curious pre-show goings-on that evoke an advent countdown to both Christmastime and the curtain’s rise, to the inspired puppets and streamers and set pieces that create worlds within worlds on the Lookingglass stage, to the powdered wigs (“That’s Mozart!” my six-year-old cried when she spotted music director and arranger Leandro Lopez Varady take his seat at the piano) and classical instruments that arm the four-piece orchestra tasked with playing Andre Pluess and Amanda Dehnert’s exceptional score, a time and a place and a mood have been created before the story even begins.

Show, don’t tell. For the length of the play, not a word is spoken. I imagine that Ms. Zimmerman drew inspiration from silent movies, as her cast tells the story with what they show the audience — with their actions, with their bodies, with their faces, with their eyes.

John Gregorio and Joe Dempsey are the play’s active, madcap jacks of all trades, filling pointed elven shoes as puppeteers, scene-makers and set-movers, and various roles throughout. Dempsey’s Nursemaid is positively Pythonian in her prissy, proper pomp and posture. And Gregorio’s Rat, one of many parts he plays, adds a sense of gnawing doom and gloom.

As the ballerina, tucked away inside a doll’s house into which the audience is soon invited, Kasey Foster enchants both said audience and the titular tin soldier with her grace and her beauty. But she’s equally charming later on as a rambunctious rapscallion wreaking havoc in the Danish streets.

Anthony Irons’ costumes and props — as a wine-buzzed master of the house, as a masked fairyland creature of questionable species, and as a jack-in-the-box goblin who sets the story’s plot in motion — often capture the eye, but it’s his facial gestures I noticed most. From grins to glares to grimaces, Irons harkens character actors like Don Knotts with his oversized expressions that translate from the stage every bit as clearly as his castmates’ bodily movements.

But it’s Alex Stein’s Steadfast Tin Soldier who’s, quite literally by the end of it, the play’s heart. While the others frolic about, Stein’s one-legged plaything is destined to remain static, so it’s his eyes that show us all we need to know. Above, I wondered if Mary Zimmerman was inspired by the silent movies of yesteryear, and I think it’s Stein’s Buster Keaton-esque ability to tell it all with just one look that got me thinking that way, every bit as much as the entire wordless production did. When Stein’s eyes gleamed, brimming with tears, so did mine.

Perhaps he’s as old fashioned as those silent films of yore, but that boy who’s all grown up now is not a crier. Then this holiday play for kids of any age went and brought him to tears, the same as Hans Christian Andersen’s original children’s story always did. And maybe, just maybe, this children’s story told truly and lovingly will also remind that boy that he hasn’t yet grown up all the way and that there are still children’s stories of his own to tell — stories that delight and inspire, that entertain and touch — just like Lookingglass Theatre’s The Steadfast Tin Soldier is doing from now through January 26.