Rachel Weinberg

Here’s some excerpts from my conversation with Porchlight Music Theatre Executive Director Jeannie Lukow about what audiences can expect from this year’s ICONS event, what’s coming up next season for Porchlight, and her hopes for the company’s future.

Is MJ a fun and entertaining musical that treats audiences to many of Michael Jackson’s iconic hits? Yes. Does MJ also demonstrate why bio jukebox musicals are tricky? Yes. In the musical, MJ emphatically tells fictional MTV reporter Rachel that he wants to be remembered for his music. But can the art be separated from the artist, or are the two intertwined in all their messy, complicated ways? I don’t have an answer to that question, but I think MJ struggles with making the struggles and demons of a complex person — the real-life Michael Jackson — seem simplistic.

It’s easy to see why Harold Pinter’s NO MAN’S LAND has been categorized as Theater of the Absurd: The play focuses on four male characters in a nebulous space, debating nothing and everything all at the same time. Les Waters directs a game ensemble of actors who wholeheartedly embrace the true absurdity and existentialism of the text. The production design mirrors the liminal state of the play: Andrew Boyce’s set is a staid, elegant, and sparsely populated living room (chiefly featuring two armchairs and two decidedly less comfortable chairs on each side of the stage). All of the action takes place inside a literal room, with walls flanked by an open blue-gray space. Janice Pytel’s costume designs are likewise timeless: Well-tailored suits that seem oddly formal for just sitting around, talking about nothing. But they fit the production nicely. Mikhail Fiksel’s sound design lends an extra sense of eeriness to the production as well.

ANOTHER MARRIAGE is the most interesting when it does precisely what it sets out to do: Show us scenes from yet another marriage and the other human relationships branching out from it.

Lucy and Charlie are Asian American newlyweds on that “Vigilante Sh*t” (to borrow from Taylor Swift) in Matthew C. Yee’s premiere musical LUCY AND CHARLIE’S HONEYMOON.

The Second City’s 11th Mainstage revue DON’T QUIT YOUR DAYDREAM has a slightly existential air to it as the name suggests. In one of the revue’s most effective sketches, ensemble member Evan Mills breaks into song as he muses about the questions that keep him up at night—they range from the mundane “Why does it take six hours to be assisted at a place called urgent care?” to the more complex “Why are people afraid of men in dresses but not of men with guns?” In keeping with the tradition of Mainstage revues past, the political leanings are definitely liberal (and that resonates just fine with me), and questions like the ones that Mills poses in that sketch are on the clever-funny side.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME is the kind of play that reminds me why I love theater.

It’s ironic that THE WHISTLEBLOWER begins with a meta pitch of the play’s concept. While the idea is witty, Moses’s concept loses steam in this full-length play. Though it’s billed as a comedy, THE WHISTLEBLOWER is mildly amusing rather than uproariously funny.

I didn't think I'd ever see a singing Antarctic explorer in a musical, but that's exactly what ERNEST SHACKLETON LOVES ME delivers. This quirky but conventionally structured two-hander introduces audiences to Kat, a struggling experimental musician with a newborn baby and a deadbeat, absent boyfriend who's on tour with a Journey cover band, and the eponymous Ernest Shackleton.

“Stop trying to be what everyone else wants you to be, man. Just be you.” Antonio Edwards Suarez recounts that his childhood best friend, Curtis, said to him growing up. This sentiment becomes in many ways the mantra for ANTONIO’S SONG: It’s a deeply human exploration of identity — and specifically Suarez’s identity — and all the elements that make us who we are. In ANTONIO’S SONG, Suarez and co-playwright Dael Orlandersmith share vignettes from Suarez’s upbringing that reflect the complexities of his identity. This is a touching, if not groundbreaking, solo show. Ultimately, theater reflects our humanity, and ANTONIO’S SONG reinforces that we turn to art to better understand ourselves. Structurally and thematically, this is well-trod territory.

Mercury’s production has some fabulous performances, but it doesn’t entirely answer the question of why BIG RIVER needed to be brought out of the archives.

I interviewed Tony Award winner Gavin Creel about his experience as The Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince in the national tour of Stephen Sondheim’s INTO THE WOODS. The production started as a City Center Encores staging and later transferred to Broadway. Now, Chicago audiences can see the tour — with some of the original Broadway company, including Gavin himself— through May 7.

Heidi Blickenstaff speaks about why the role of Mary Jane Healy feels so personal, how it's the biggest challenge of her career, and what it's like to rock out to Alanis's iconic song catalog on stage.

LAST NIGHT AND THE NIGHT BEFORE explores the in-between, the murkiness of transitioning life stages and fraught family relationships.

It’s only fitting that for his swan song at Goodman Theatre Artistic Director Robert Falls has adapted and directed Anton Chekhov’s THE CHERRY ORCHARD, a play that’s also very much a swan song. With this staging, Falls has completed the cycle of directing all four of Chekov’s full-length plays for the Goodman stage. Fall’s take on THE CHERRY ORCHARD is surprisingly comedic and strips the play of the more obscure Russian references (though it’s still a period piece), which also demonstrates an artful understanding of the text and how 2023 audiences are best primed to receive it. THE CHERRY ORCHARD’s central character, estate owner Lyubov Ranevskaya, desperately clings to her glamorized version of the past even as the world around her moves inexorably forward. It’s a farewell, indeed, and a lesson in learning when to hold on and when to let go.

A SOLDIER’S PLAY is a solid and well-structured play from Charles Fuller that explores the deep-seated roots of American racism. Centered on a Black regiment in 1944 Fort Neal, Louisiana, the play takes the form of a murder investigation when Captain Richard Davenport arrives on the scene following the death of Sergeant Vernon C. Waters. While Fuller’s 1981 play is no doubt an indictment of the racist systems embedded in the American military—and the country as a whole—the piece now feels prescient, rather than revelatory. I imagine that it must have been quite radical when it debuted over forty years ago, but now it reads like a reinforcement of the truth. It’s an effective one, and audiences who enjoy the procedural format will appreciate the play’s series of interviews and flashbacks. Director Kenny Leon’s production keeps it moving at a brisk pace, but neither material nor staging are groundbreaking.

I was curious about the changes to Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone’s THE BOOK OF MORMON, which underwent revisions before its post-pandemic return to Broadway in 2021. I imagined a substantial overhaul of the material, along with input from co-director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw (Parker also co-directed). After seeing the show, I can state the changes are minimal. All of the musical numbers are the same, and some of the dialogue may have been altered. But I don’t buy that the Ugandan characters have been given more agency or power.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater Artistic Director Barbara Gaines cleverly marries play and production concept in THE COMEDY OF ERRORS for her final production.

Martin Yousif Zebari’s LAYALINA is a heartwarming multigenerational family play that spans from Baghdad to Skokie. While Zebari doesn’t shy away from portraying the family’s trauma and the challenges of their immigrant experiences, LAYALINA is the opposite of many other family plays. It’s about how the central family tries to reconnect and find commonalities, despite their generational and cultural differences.

Rajiv Joseph’s DESCRIBE THE NIGHT, now in its Chicago premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is a sprawling exploration of the blurring of fiction and fact, censorship, and the quest to preserve truth.