Displaying items by tag: Sylvia HernandezDistasi

“Don Quixote of La Mancha” is considered the oldest European novel, but it gets a fresh and exciting new treatment in “Circus Quixote." This is Lookingglass Theatre’s inaugural reopening after a year off while it retooled its much loved Water Tower Pumping Station location at Michigan and Pearson in Chicago.

In “Circus Quixote,” Cervantes’ beloved novel and it’s timeless characters—the delusional knight errant Don Quixote; the farmer turned squire Sancho Panza; the target of Quixote's courtly services Dulcinea (Laura Murillo Hart); his niece Antonia (Andrea San Miguel) who burns the books on chivalry that led to his madness—all spring to life.

The script by David Catlin and Kerry Catlin, who share director credits, brings in Spanish and latin-inflected English, but holds to the core of the tale—updated with added visions of quests that are now ever more familiar in our age of the revitalized renderings of Lord of the Rings.

Unlike Broadway’s 1965 musical “Man of La Mancha,” this version incorporates acrobatics, courtesy Evanton’s Actors Gymnasium—circus and movement choreography by Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi— along with stunning puppetry (remarkable creatures large and small designed by Grace Neediman) and dashes of slapstick. The show includes sword fights aloft on ropes (kudos to Micah Figueroa as 
Quixote's frequent adversary Sansón Carrasco), members of the troupe "jousting" with windmills by climbing the blades in arial feats, and riding Don Quixote's famed Rocinante, an engineered baroque steam punk rocking chair which at one point holds seven of the troupe in motion.  

Eddie Martinez as Sancho Panza

The newly coined English word “quixotic” (for impractical or foolish causes) was drawn from the novel soon after its publication in 1605. And the cogent notes of this tale of the hopeless aspirations maintains the poignancy as eventually even taking those he loves on a fool's errand, jousting at windmills and battling an imaginary giant.
Eddie Martinez as the faithful but questioning Sancho Panza (and a stand-in for Cervantes) is remarkable.

But the highest accolades must be given to Laura Murillo Hart, an absolutely stunning performer on multiple levels. As Dulcinea, in whose service Quixote launches his quest, Hart casts a spell on the theater whenever she appears, vocalizing in haunting melodic strains (composer Kevin O’Donnell’s music is arresting), sometimes accompanying herself on guitar.

In Act II Hart is transformed into a mustachioed, hoop-skirted clergyman, her clerical garb becomes an elaborate puppet showcase, a half-dozen or more characters appearing variously in a mini stage at the skirt front, and from her billowing sleeves. It’s an endlessly entrancing performance, and Hart demonstrates an incredible range in her many roles. At Lookingglass, a star is born with Hart’s performance.

Laura Murillo Hart

The relaunch of Lookinglass Theatre has provided "Circus Quixote" a generous run through March 30, 2025 at 163 E. Pearson at Michigan Avenue. 

Founded in 1988, Lookingglass has been on hiatus for a year while it reset its business model. Founding member David Schimmer of “Friends” fame has joined the board, and appeared last month along with Governor JB Pritzger to dedicate the rejuvenated space, with a redesigned lobby, bar and cafe open for business at 163 N. Pearson. Funding by the Illinois Arts Council and Joan and Paul Rubschlager made possible the return of Chicago’s dreamiest theater that has years of memorable shows under its belt, including (to site just one) director Mary Zimmerman’s 1988 “Metamorphoses” which went on to win her a Tony in its 2002 Broadway transfer, and returned to Lookingglass multiple times.

Lookingglass has over the years offered a balance between inventively staged serious drama such as the 2009 Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” the Jackie Robinson story “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting” (2012) or “Death Tax” (2014); and more energized spectacles like “The Little Prince” (2013)  and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (2018)  Lookingglass also develops an in-between type of show embodied in 2016’s “Thaddeus and Slocum” (2016), and like all its work, presented with verve, powerful dramatics, and incisive illumination of our condition as humans.

(Updated Feb. 17, 2025.)

Lookingglass Theatre Company opens its 30th Anniversary Season with the return of the award-winning “Hard Times”, adapted from Charles Dickens and directed by Artistic Director and Ensemble Member Heidi Stillman , in association with The Actors Gymnasuim. It was first produced at Lookingglass in 2001, and some of the artists involved this season were part of the original production.

The story takes place in post-Industrial Revolution England. In a gloomy fictional small town dominated by mills and factories, art has very little presence. When a travelling circus comes to town, the circus clown manages to get his daughter Sissy (played Audrey Anderson; this is both her Lookingglass and professional debut) admitted to the best school in town. The school headmaster, Mr. Gradgrind (injecting his role with a very precise old-British flare, Raymond Fox is excellent), soon realizes that Sissy doesn’t belong in his school and makes it his business to notify her father in person. But the clown had skipped town, leaving his daughter behind. Mr. Gradgrind kindly offers her a place in his home and his school, alongside his two children, Louisa and Tom. But Sissy is from a different world, the world where imagination rules, the right words are ones that come from the heart, and mathematics is just an abstract subject that can’t be applied to life. Not exactly cut out for school, she’s left to stay home and care for Mr. Gradgrind’s wheelchair-bound wife while he spends increasingly more time out of town as a newly elected member of the Parliament.

The most important person in town is the mill-owner and banker Mr. Bounderby (the bombastic Troy West), a self-proclaimed self-made man. He has an eye on Louisa, so when she reaches an appropriate age [of twenty], he asks her hand in marriage. Mostly joyless Louisa (Cordelia Dewdney), whose only passion is her brother Tom (JJ Phillips), agrees, hoping that this will help advance her brother’s carrier in banking. Some of Dickens’ characters are quite difficult to relate to in part because of their excessive wordiness and overly dramatic demeanor, and Louisa is certainly one of them. Nevertheless, all characters are very well developed, the most entertaining of them being Mrs. Sparsit, Mr. Bounderby’s paid companion. Played by Amy J. Carle, who also plays Drunk Woman and Pufflerumpus, she’s manipulative and sarcastic and infuses her role with just the right amount of drama.

The circus performances are effortlessly woven into the plot (Circus Choreographer Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi), and are like a breath of fresh air in town’s otherwise utilitarian existence. The circus is colorful and joyful, and it’s easy to see the stark contrast between the worlds of art and creativity versus business and hard menial work. Even Louisa starts dreaming of circus in her lowest moments.
Scenic Designer Daniel Ostling created a highly mobile set that’s both imaginative and practical; it provides ever-changing scenery, and the whimsically painted back wall is capable of becoming magically translucent to allow “dreams and memories” to enter the stage.

While the well-to-do townspeople are being bored with their lives, majority of the town’s inhabitants, the poor miners and factory workers, “work day and night with nothing to look forward to but a little rest”. Struggling to stay alive leaves little room for anything else, much less romance, so when miner Stephen Blackpool (David Catlin, who also plays Sleary) asks his workmate Rachael (Atra Asdou, who also plays Mrs. Gradgrind) to spend time with him, she’s far too hopeless to be interested.

All in all, things are as expected: the wealthy run things, the poor have nothing, and a travelling circus is a refuge from it all. If running away with the circus was ever a good option, Tom, who finds himself in trouble with law, doesn’t hesitate for a moment.

“Hard Times” is being performed at Lookingglass Theatre through January 14th. For more information visit www.lookingglass.org.

Winner of four Jeff Awards, including Best Production, and fresh off a national tour, Moby Dick, adapted and directed by David Catlin from the book by Herman Melville, returns to the Lookingglass Theatre. The play is produced in association with The Actors Gymnasium, a circus and performing arts training center.

The story is narrated by adventurous Ishmael, a sailor en route to sign up with a whaling ship, Piqued. Ishmael (superbly played by Jamie Abelson at evening performances) first lands in an overcrowded hotel, where the innkeeper casually informs him that due to lack of room he’ll have to share a bed with another fellow. His muscular, tattoo covered bedmate, Queequeg (the absolutely splendid Anthony Fleming III), is a son of a Polynesian island king, who is on his own soul-searching journey. The two men bond and decide to board the ship together.

The rest of the show takes us onto Piqued. The ship is a testosterone infused man-cave; the sailors do what real men are supposed to do: they go out to dangerous sea to hunt down whales in order to obtain whale oil, a valuable commodity at the time. Their jaw-dropping circus-inspired acrobatic fits of agility (choreography by Sylvia Hernandez-Distasi) add to the feel of masculine energy and the everyday struggle to stay alive.

But Piqued’s disheveled and angry Captain Ahab (fiercely played by Nathan Hosner) is not interested in whale oil, he’s got a score to settle: the giant white whale named Moby Dick bit off his leg during their previous encounter. Captain has been at sea for a very long time, and in his insanity he imagines that the white whale represents all the evil in the world, and thus it must be destroyed. It’s pure all-consuming madness!

Costume designer Sully Ratke’s clever use of fabrics play games with our minds: an oversized woman’s skirt swallows drowning men, a vast piece of white silk brushing past our heads is a giant white whale.

The feminine energy in the play is very distinct. The three female actors (Kelley Abell, Mattie Hawkinson, Cordelia Dewdney) play all the female parts as well as the three Fates. They set the mood with their eerie presence and graceful movements, while their beautiful voices provide live score (sound designer/composer Rick Sims). Sometimes they are just lurking around, and other times they are the forces of nature and nature itself. One of them turns into a whale carcass being stripped of meat and drained of oil by sailors in a vaguely sexual way.

That feminine energy is of stark contrast to the mere mortal men’s struggles to survive. It’s Man vs. Nature, and nature can never be conquered. Spoiler alert: in the end, the Ill-fated ship is swallowed by the over-sized skirt. Vengeance is a two-way street.

About the venue: Lookingglass Theatre is housed in Water Tower Water Works, the historic still functioning water station built in 1869, which pumps 250,000 gallons of water to the north side of Chicago every day. Separated from the theatre space by a glass wall, it feels like a time warp, which sets the mood perfectly for this mid-19th century classic. For more information on this show or to purchase tickets, visit www.Lookingglasstheatre.org.