HollywoodChicago.com Theater Reviews & Interviews

CHICAGO – “Fairytales should really be updated,” muses the puckish Shrek during a final plea for the affections of a reluctant princess. It is one of those startlingly honest and quietly irreverent insights that “Shrek the Musical” is all too wary to boast, but is a welcome dagger into the cavalcade of childhood morality tales that, year after year, infiltrate the bulk of shooting star wishes and Barbie dream-houses.

CHICAGO – Lauded as the first great poet of Latin America, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz served as both an artistic and philosophical trailblazer in the most consequential of orders. A self-instructed scholar of Baroque thought, Sor Juana piloted a course of unprecedented intellect as well as feminist ideology during her brief years. What has rightfully garnered the scribe a nonpareil reverence was her audacity to posit such work in a time of a most restrictive piety.

CHICAGO – The eponymous subject matter of Andrew Hinderaker’s enthralling new work “Suicide, Incorporated” is hardly a newfangled muse to dramatists. The concept of one’s self-sanctioned execution has inspired the minds of media architects from Poe to the executives at Lifetime Television Network (the latter of which tends to default to the exertion habitually). The question of an individual opting to terminate his life, especially when the meaning of which plagues the majority of us, is nary an easy one. Hinderaker’s take on the matter, both in stylized approach and explication, proves to be one of the most cerebrally exigent of the lot.

CHICAGO – Most adolescent boys do away with their freshly-acquired Bar Mitzvah money before you can say “Haftorah”. But not David Schwimmer. Instead, the Lookingglass Theatre Company co-founder and “Friends” superstar mounted what was to become his theatre company’s most illustrious and withstanding production, “Lookingglass Alice”, based on the cherished novels of Lewis Carroll. The company’s Artistic Director David Catlin recently caught up with HollywoodChicago.com to discuss the adaptation and production process for Alice’s latest journey (now playing through August 1, 2010 at the Water Tower), and why this fourth trip down the rabbit hole just may be the best yet.

CHICAGO – Few but the most professorial of Broadway aficionados recall with clarity the short-lived “Sugar,” which is one of the first film-to-stage transfers that premiered on the Great White Way in 1972 to lowly acclaim and even lower financial prowess. Though serving as a harbinger for the soon-to-be endowed trend of film derivatives, “Sugar” debuted in the throws of an era thirsty for the provocation of Michael Bennett and the insight of Stephen Sondheim.