Ropes 1925

The London International Mime Festival, directed by Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig, is a unique event in the theatre calendar, a once a year chance to see very best and newest contemporary visual theatre.

The London International Mime Festival, directed by Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig, is a unique event in the theatre calendar, a once a year chance to see very best and newest contemporary visual theatre that embraces cutting edge circus, dance, physical theatre, juggling, object manipulation, physical comedy and productions that interweave theatre and film.

Chicago's non-Equity Bohemian Theatre Ensemble has undertaken Adam Guettel and Tina Landau's 1996 off-Broadway masterpiece (or close to it) and put it on at Theater Wit on West Belmont Avenue for the next month (through July 25, 2012). If you have imagination enough to meet the company halfway, somewhere between the hardscrabble Kentucky soil and the cave beneath it where the real Floyd Collins met his doom in 1925, you will come away with a musical and theatrical experience you are unlikely to repeat anytime soon, anywhere else.

Magic and movies are popular art forms based on make-believe. Magicians were once the world's most popular entertainers-but once cinema supplanted them, magicians quickly embraced the moving image, using it to create astonishing new illusions.