Displaying items by tag: Den Theater

The true story behind Lauren Gunderson’s “The Book of Will” is compelling—the efforts of actors John Heminges (Jared Dennis) and Henry Condell (Ben Veatch), Shakespeare’s colleagues—to compile and publish a definitive collection of the Bard's works in the years soon after his death in 1616. This they did over the course of four years until it arrived in 1623, and Gunderson uses a comedic form to render the story and characters involved in the effort. 

Comedy keeps the story energized, staving off the dreariness of what might have been a docudrama. And the Promethean Theatre Ensemble cast directed by Beth Wolf delivers top notch performances. Brendan Hutt in the role of Richard Burbage, the actor who originated many of Shakespeare’s most famous roles, gives real Shakespearean heft to his performance. Hutt also plays William Jaggard, a publisher who produces the definitive First Folio (several after producing a less accurate version) with 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, 18 of them published for the first time. These included "The Tempest," "The Taming of the Shrew," "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar," an unimaginable tragedy had these been lost.

Gunderson’s script opens with Heminges and Condell (and the audience) witnessing a performance of “Hamlet” so badly rendered as to lose the playwright’s intent. We see “To Be or Not To Be,” Hamlet’s famous soliloquy  (delivered by Jesús Barajas playing beautifully, stunningly wrong), the delivery even more butchered due to a distorted script, perhaps recorded from another actor’s faltering memory. It’s like watching as someone belts out a song all off key.

Galvanized by this horror, the two determined they would gather up all the most original copies of Shakespeare’s masterpieces and publish them in a book, before they were lost. Some of Shakespeare’s works were published while he was alive, but others were relegated to the haphazard storage of working theaters, marked up scripts found at playhouses even today. 

Jonathan Perkins

All this is factually true, as is so much of the play. That Gunderson often leans toward almost jarring contemporary vernacular and a comedic approach may make us question whether this can all be the real story, but indeed it is, in details large and small. Most of the cast performed multiple roles, for example Jonathan Perkins in the role of a compositor at the printer and three other characters. Perkins was arresting in the quality of his performance.

“Book of Will,” to my mind, is a flawed thing. While Gunderson has the greatest intention in celebrating Shakespeare, there is very little of his work delivered. The play is based on the reasonable presumption that the audience loves Shakespeare—who else would be drawn to the heroic tale of the publication of his works? But it doesn’t present enough of it to remind us why, to stir our emotions for a moment with the real art of the celebrated subject.

Brendan Hutt convincingly offers some solid Shakespearean delivery in the role of Richard Burbage, the actor who originated many of the playwright’s most famous roles, delivers promising and skillful recitations of bits of Shakespeare. But the snippets offered us by Gunderson are too brief, and not gripping. Even worse are a couple scenes where “quotable quotes” from Shakespeare are offered, sometimes in multiple languages to reinforce his universality—but it comes off as an artfully executed but nonetheless bad “tribute” to the playwright. 

One lost opportunity arises after Heminges’ wife Rebecca (Ann Sheridan Smith in an exceptional performance) passes away (I didn’t see that coming) at the beginning of Act II. Rebecca has been his rock during the four year effort to secure rights and overcome financial hurdles to publish the plays. Inconsolable, Heminges seeks solace in the theater, spending sleepless nights there reciting monologs from Shakespeare’s plays, he tells us. Could not the playwright have let Heminges deliver us even one of these, an apt monologue voiced with the passion of his grief?

In short, this is a play about people who love Shakespeare, but he isn’t tapped for what he might bring to the party. I thought James Lewis turned in a remarkable performance as Ben Johnson, Shakespeare’s rival and critic, who wrote a dedicatory poem for the First Folio. Lewis gave me the one moment I felt touched at the level of emotion that Shakespeare evokes in his works. This comes as the begrudging Ben Johnson delivers the opening lines of his dedicatory poem for the First Folio. 

Nevertheless, “The Book of Will” tells an important story of the epic accomplishment of two devotees of Shakespeare, and one well worth hearing and seeing. Even as the web lulls us into believing that all knowledge and information is permanently and universally accessible, in fact we are seeing in present days the disappearance of content  the “Book of Will” reminds us anew of the evanescence and fragility of the written word, and the commitment required to maintain and preserve it. "The Book of Will" runs through October 25, 2025 at The Den Theatre on Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago. 

How many times have you heard someone say they went to see a western/zombie play? Most people would dismiss the idea of a western/zombie story especially one being played out on a stage. The two genres don’t seem to mesh well together when you put them in the same sentence. The western is a genre of post-Civil War America. The genre comes with a bravado similar to Arthurian mythology. The zombie genre has mostly been a contemporary tale. Usually a terrifying result of some wacky science experiment. Since The Walking Dead or Zombieland, the genre has seen a resurgence. We enjoy playing with the idea of “what if". The zombie and/ or zombie invasion has become a way to study relationships when love ones die and resurrect into a dangerous, poisonous being. Bill Daniel’s Hell Followed With Her attacks this study and blends it with drama you can only find in a well-written Western.

Willow Parker is a hardened bounty hunter out for revenge. For the two years, she’s travel far and wide to locate a man named Glanton, who muredered her family after escaping prison. She finds him in Dodge, Texas, along with a few other shady characters in a dimpy lit saloon. The zombie invasion starts of as subtle, with the town’s doctor mulling over the unusual bite marks he discovered from the last thirteen patients. As tensions skyrocket, the disease spread all over Dodge, and the sick have their sights set on the saloon where they can hear gunshots being fired.

Later, Willow Parker reveals that the disease has been following her throughout her journey for revenge. Every town she passed by is swallowed by the disease, which brings the two genres together in an interesting way. Though the origin of the disease is never revealed nor is there any explanation in the connection between the disease and Willow Parker’s revenge, the parallel adds an excitement foreign to the Western genre. An excitement that the genre could use (except for stuff like that 2011 film Cowboys and Aliens. That movie should cover the alien invasion angle). Without explanation, the audience can understand that the disease is a manifestation of Parker’s revenge. Where some revenge stories glorify the idea for an eye for an eye, Hell Followed With Her examines the revenge story as a dark passage that comes with heavy consequences when traveled.

Sophia Rosado gives a reserve performance as Willow Parker that works well with the cold-hearted character, but Krista D’Agostino, as Dr. Haxton is magnificent. Laying it all out on the stage, you feel her confusion, her sorrow, and panic. Out of all of the tough and rough characters in the play, hers is the most relatable. The intellectual trying to make sense of something supernatural.

The first half rolls along and ends on a high note that leaves the audience anxiously waiting for the outcome. But when the second half comes along it's stuffed with two flashbacks. One detailing a time when Willow Parker and another infamous bounty hunter Cole White met in Mexico. The other Glanton describes the night he murdered Parker’s parents. The play drags for the last fifteen minutes. A dice game is used as an attempt to intensify the moment but end up being unnecessary along with a shaky fight scene and long pauses in between lines. By the time the ending finally arrives, it ends the same it began with a song written by Bill Daniel called Willow’s Song. Sophia’s silky smooth voice almost makes up for the second half, but one may still leave their seat wishing there was smoother road to the end.

Despite the second-half’s length, Hell Followed With Her brings a different kind of story to the stage that blends well with the Halloween season. I challenge anyone that questions the idea of a western/zombie play being any good to see this show. It will shock you, make you laugh, and possibly change your mind on what’s possible and what’s not.

Through November 9th, 2019 at The Den Theater.

In its opening scene, Blue Stockings sets us in a bustling 19th century train station, the crowd swirling quickly by, then shifting to slo-mo – just like a digital film – highlighting characters who soon become principal players in the action.

That cinematic touch seems to be used more frequently on stage, and underscores the growing crossover of film and stage. In fact, Blue Stockings - the true story of the struggle by 19th century British women for access to college degrees - is now being adapted for a television series by Jessica Swale from her 2013 script, which won a Most Promising Playwright award when it debuted at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

So this is a wonderful opportunity to see a significant work by a rising writer (Swale has two other movies in development). It is very well directed and produced by Spenser Davis for Promethean Theatre Ensemble (at the Den Theatre through October 13).

Following that opening scene, we quickly cut (movie style) to a foretaste of a future scene, where guest lecturer Dr. Maudsley (Jared Dennis) is holding forth:
“Except if theywith to sacrifice themselves, the higher education of women may be detrimental to their physiology,” he posits, noting the women who pursue education are of four types: scientists, mathematicians, writers, and “wealthy dilettantes” the latter known at the time as “Blue Stockings.”

When he reappears, Dr. Maudsley will also lecture on hysteria, “rooted in the Greek for ‘uterus’” he reminds the students. As preposterous as such assertions sound today, it was in fact exactly the type of “scientifically grounded” basis on which men objected to equality for women. “These are not opinions,” Dr. Maudsley says, “they are facts of nature proven by science.” And this sets the basis for the tension and drama that follow.

Girton College was founded in 1869 as the first of Cambridge University’s 31 colleges to admit women. By 1896, when Blue Stockings takes place, women also began agitating to vote – then restricted to males, just like the U.S. You may not need to know all the background to appreciate the play, but it helps – since Swale confronts us with the unbelievably bald misogyny of the period. These sentiments still infiltrate current debates, so revisiting them in Blue Stockings is instructive.

Girton’s headmistress, Elizabeth Welsh (Jamie Bragg), has been working steadfastly for decades to raise the stature of women’s education, arguing for the right to award degrees. Blue Stockings follows the action culminating in an 1896 vote by the all-male Oxford University Senate. But the men on campus, students and professors, found the prospect of women earning degrees just like men but threatening and perverse.

Promethean Theatre has developed a wonderful “Appreciation Guide” to provide background for the play. And I must admit, watching it with no with no factual context made me think of it more as a PBS-style costume drama, like Dowton Abbey – interesting, but not gripping. Being reminded that the Cambridge Senate voted down the degrees measure, and women were not awarded Cambridge degrees until 1948 (!) makes it matter much more.

Swale gives us another mark of a good playwright, with a host of distinct and memorable characters, and an entertaining story line, too. Girton lecturer Mr. Banks (Patrick Blashill) is that inspiring and nurturant educator who helps reorder the women students’ thinking. He has them dress in bloomers (those billowy 19th century pants) and teaches them to ride a bicycle, astride no less. (In real life, this happened, and the male students protesting women’s degrees burned in effigy a woman on a bicycle.)

With 19th century co-education comes the first challenges of keeping the young men and women safely separated, and all the efforts college students engineer to circumvent that control. Swale Tess (Heather Kae Smith) plays an everywoman student, a gifted mathematician and astrophysicist. The women student performances overall were far stronger than their male counterparts. For the first time society proffers a choice for her between romantic love and the life of a mind.

Swale shows this up to be a false choice from a male-dominated society. With the right man, she can have both. Among noteworthy performances are Jamie Bragg as schoolmistress Elizabeth Welsh; Cameron Feagin as Miss Blake, a lecturer and active suffragist; Patrick Blashill as Mr. Banks and Jared Dennis as Dr. Maudsley. Blue Stockings runs through October 13 at The Den Theatre in Chicago.

If you remember the terrible Disneyland song, “Small World,”with its annoying refrain “ It’s a small world after all,” don’t let that stop you from seeing Small World at The Den Theater.

Based on what many would call Disneyland’s most inspid attraction, this play embraces the audience as ticketholders embarking on a mechanical boat passage tunnel. Facing a blank white curtain, we’re warned to keep arms inside and stay in our seats for a ride that “will last approximately 85 minutes,” the unseen announcer capturing the Disney tone of restrained excitement.

Then following sounds of explosions and destruction , the curtain parts, revealing a disaster inside the Small World tunnel. The three Disney “castmembers,” as they are known, suffer the effects of what may be a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. The tunnel exit has collapsed; they are trapped.

All are injured, one seriously, but their wounds and disorientation to nothing to hinder their non-stop, manic discussion, as they speculate about what happened and what to do next. And the song, “It’s a Small World After All” plays non-stop, just as it did on the ride in the real world, but set, thankfully, at a low enough volume to not be distracting.

We have Becca (Jackies Seijo), a disillusioned Disney worker who was serving her lsat day when disaster; perpetually upbeat Kim (Stephanie Shum) a by-the-book Disney employee who feels she is living the dream within Disneyland; and (Patrick Coakley) a white Christian conspiracy theorist who has secretly turned on the Disney empire. Struggling in limited lighting, the crew is repeatedly thwarted in attempts to exit. Kim, the closest thing we have to a protagonist here, manages to recite chapter and verse from the Disney employee manual, despite her thigh being imp. ailed….that’s the gonzo part, and somehow it works – the energy on stage is so over-the-top the audience catches fire and laughs uproariously.

”Facing mortality, there young conscripts at Disneyland, "the happiest place on earth," mine the dark side for humor. "Now I know how Simba felt," opines Kim, to great laughter. In managing the cadaver of a friend that floats by, Donny says he is deceased, but Kim demurs: "Noone dies in Disney," tapping the Magic Kingdom's reputation for carefully managing any hint of bad news. 

All of this is adds up to a “gonzo workplace comedy,” as artistic director Fin Coe puts it, and loaded with “our signature weird humor and wild action."That is an apt description of what you will witness in Small World, but the breakneck pace of the non-stop gabbing frequently reveals an overloaded script occasionally more suited for reading than speaking. In the course of the conversation, the characters reveal themselves as an unlikely team in a quest for survival.

Small World is funny as an idea and on stage – we give it a Recommended rating. Directed by Andrew Hopgood, Small World runs through May 4 at The Den Theater on Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago.

Scapegoat; Or (Why the Devil Always Loved Us) a satirical political drama now playing at the Den Theatre, takes the audience on a wild ride through a rather unusual family affair. But the play rapidly bogs down with its own complexity.

The curtain rises mid-action, and we gradually piece together that the six members of the Porter family are career politicians: patriarch Senator Anse Porter and his son, Congressman Coyote “Coy” Porter, represent Ohio as Democrats. The Senator’s Chief of Staff John Schuler is married to his daughter Leza, who is in the final weeks of her pregnancy. Matriarch Eleanor Porter and the Senator’s adopted daughter Margaret, are lobbyists for the United American Muslims.

The plot centers on the passage of a bill that would favor Christianity over other religions in the U.S. This bill is supported by Congressman Coy Porter, who is courted by the Religious Freedom Caucus, comprised of three Republican Senators: Frank Mason, Texas; Mary Colbourn, Illinois; and Perry Allen, Arizona.

Plans go awry when Congressman Porter’s father Anse, the senator, is outed as a Satanic Priest. He decides he will filibuster the bill. To dissuade him, so the bill can pass, the Religious Freedom Caucus hints they will award him a judgeship.

While it took a while to figure out what was going on, once I did, I loved the concept. And the play delivers some strong social commentary on religious freedom – a topic of great social currency. It also  scores some comedic points – Senator Porter delivers a complete Black Mass in downstage while the political drama unfolds upstage in convincingly delivered press conferences.

Jeffrey Freelon Jr. gives a strong performance as the put-upon Chief of Staff John Schuler. Likewise for Echaka Agba (Margaret), John Kelly Connolly (Frank), Barbara Figgins (Eleanor Porter), Jack McCabe (Perry), Cassidy Slaughter-Mason (Leza), Kelli Strickland (Mary) and Norm Woodel (Anse).

Scapegoat is needlessly layered, starting with its grammatically suspect title, through characters whose background and details have little bearing on the main action on stage: That Margaret is the Senator’s adopted daughter is revealed in the second act – along with the fact that she chose to keep her birth mother’s last name (so she is Okafor-Porter). So? Coy Porter is widowed, and occasionally has seizures. Um, did we need to know that? This made Evan Linder’s job playing Coy a challenge, but he rose to it.

Scapegoat is by and large a sentimental comedy. The script by Connor McNamara, a Chicago actor, brought to mind those fast-paced 1930’s screwball comedies loaded with mayhem. But the play is probably closer to You Can't Take It With You, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s 1936 Pulitzer prize-winning satire. 

There are some rich moments here: Deciding to filibuster anyway, Anse reads chapter and verse from the satanic scriptures, driving the believing Caucus senators from the chamber floor. This intelligent script which renders the political processes and dynamics with veracity, is, is fast paced and strong at its core. The direction by Kristina Valada-Viars is very well done. Scapegoat plays through May 7. www.thenewcolony.org