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Chicago Tribune
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: In ‘Endgame' at Facility Theatre, reality and dystopia wash together
If Ebenezer Scrooge found himself isolated in a post-apocalyptic setting, with no one but his elderly parents and his long-suffering servant to haunt his monotonous days, he would probably behave like Hamm, the petty tyrant of a sad little domain in Samuel Beckett's 1957 play, 'Endgame.' In Facility Theatre's new revival of the Irish playwright's absurdist tragicomedy, the blind and paralyzed character (played by artistic director Kirk Anderson) looks like a slightly steampunk Scrooge, wearing a silk dressing gown, old-fashioned nightcap and round black sunglasses as he holds court from a shabby upholstered armchair. But this is Beckett, not Dickens, so don't look for a redemptive character arc or cathartic ending. Like his better-known 1953 play, 'Waiting for Godot,' 'Endgame' doesn't have much of a plot but rather centers on sparse, often nonsensical dialogue with a dash of physical comedy. Amid the rambling non-sequiturs and repetitive exchanges, Beckett drops hard-hitting reflections on the bleakness of a life lived with no authentic human connections. Facility's production is directed by Yasen Peyankov, a Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member and head of the theater department at University of Illinois Chicago. Along with Anderson, the cast includes York Griffith as the servant, Clov, and H.B. Ward and Shawna Franks as Hamm's parents, Nagg and Nell, who occasionally poke their heads out of the garbage bins where their miserly son keeps them imprisoned. Under Peyankov's direction, this ensemble effectively conveys the ennui and despair of Beckett's characters while also capturing the script's dark humor. In my experience, watching a Beckett play is best approached like gazing at a surrealist painting. If you let the words and imagery — and the emotions they conjure — wash over you without trying to make logical sense of the action, cogent thematic threads will emerge from the bizarre actions of these strange characters. In Facility's 'Endgame,' the first production of this play that I've seen live, I was particularly struck by Beckett's exploration of toxic familial relationships and the sense of malaise that permeates this dystopian world. Hamm comes off as self-pitying and demanding from the start, and his capacity for cruelty only becomes clearer when we learn how Clov came to be part of his household as a young child. There's also the matter of Hamm's parents, confined to living in their own filth with only dry biscuits for sustenance, though Nagg's reminiscences reveal that he and Nell were not exactly kind parents when Hamm was a child. While this family history doesn't justify what can only be described as elder abuse, it does hint at a vicious cycle that didn't begin with Hamm. Clov, who doesn't remember his own father, completes this odd family. Griffith plays this role with a shuffling gait, drooping shoulders and vacant gaze, which form a striking contrast to his occasional bursts of rage. Although the servant admits that Hamm has been like a father to him, their relationship is also highly dysfunctional. The question of whether Clov will leave Hamm recurs throughout the play, epitomized in this asynchronous exchange: Beckett never specifies what disaster has trapped these characters in a house by the sea, but it seems to have resulted in novel weather patterns, a lack of supplies and no expectation of encountering other survivors. Here, the end of the world seems both baffling and boring. 'Why this farce, day after day?,' both Nell and Clov wonder at different points in the play. This question feels all too relatable today, when news headlines seem indistinguishable from satire. One aspect of the play hasn't aged so well, though: Beckett's treatment of disability. Hamm's blindness and paralysis serve as metaphors for his character traits, and both are occasionally played for comedic effect, albeit a pathetic sort of comedy. Given the evolving conversations about onstage representation of disabilities, I suspect that modern audiences would (rightly) be less forgiving if a contemporary playwright used these devices. Before this review reaches its endgame, I have to add some praise for the production designers. Doing double duty as both actor and set designer, Anderson uses an off-white fabric with a papier-mâché texture to create a grimy backdrop. Lighting designer Richard Norwood's overhead fluorescents shine a harsh glare on Bisa's Victorian-esque costumes, with jarring buzzes from sound designer Rick Sims punctuating the sudden lighting changes. The combined effect lies somewhere between the gloomy, rotting mansion of Miss Havisham (another notorious Dickens misanthrope) and the sterile corporate cruelty of the Apple TV+ series 'Severance.' Facility's revival of 'Endgame' is a rare chance to see this classic work by a playwright who prefigured dramatists such as Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter. (More significant parallels aside, the characters popping out of barrels in 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' surely owe something to Nagg and Nell.) In Facility's home base, located just across the street from the green expanse of Humboldt Park, Peyankov and team have skillfully harnessed the resources of a storefront theater to make Beckett's 'corpsed' world feel utterly 'Endgame' (3.5 stars) When: Through June 29 Where: Facility Theatre, 1138 N. California Ave. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Tickets: $30 suggested donation (pay-what-you-can options available) at
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tony Awards 2025 nominations: George Clooney gets nod while Denzel Washington snubbed
Nominees for the 78th annual Tony Awards, honoring the best of Broadway, have been announced. Forty-two productions from the 2024-2025 Broadway season were eligible to receive nominations, which were shared Thursday morning by Tony winners Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce. Oscar winner George Clooney is among the A-list stars who have been recognized. Clooney, currently making his Broadway debut as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck, received a nod in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play category. The role marks his first on stage performance since 1986 when he appeared in Vicious at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. Stranger Things star Sadie Sink received a nomination in her return to Broadway. She's been nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play for her role as Shelby Holcomb in playwright Kimberly Belflower's John Proctor is the Villain. The production also received a nod for Best Play. Sink last appeared on Broadway in 2015's The Audience. Nominated alongside her is Succession star Sarah Snook, currently starring in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Snook is making her Broadway debut following a successful run in London's West End. Former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger received a nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for playing Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Similar to Snook, Scherzinger is making her Broadway debut with the production following its' London run. The production was also nominated for Best Revival of a Musical. But not all celebrities who took their work to the Main Stem were recognized by the Tonys. Oscar winner Denzel Washington was snubbed in the category where Clooney was recognized. Washington marked his return to Broadway as the title role in Othello. He last appeared on the Main Stem in 2018's The Iceman Cometh, and won a Tony for his leading role in Fences in 2010. Washington's co-star, Jake Gyllenhaal was also snubbed. The three-time Tony nominee is playing Iago in the Shakespearean revival. Oscar and Emmy winner Kieran Culkin was not recognized for his work as Richard Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross. The production marks Culkin's return to Broadway following 2014's This Is Our Youth. In his Broadway debut, Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr. was overlooked in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play category. He starred as the titular character in the limited run of McNeal. Nick Jonas, in his return to the Main Stem for the first time since 2012's How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, was also snubbed. Jonas is starring alongside Tony winner Adrienne Warren in the first-ever Broadway mounting of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years. Interestingly, two productions — Our Town and Romeo + Juliet — were each nominated for Best Revival of a Play. But the stars at the forefront of those productions — Jim Parsons and Katie Holmes, and Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler — did not receive acting nods. The 78th annual Tony Awards will take place Sunday, June 8 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Hosted by Tony, Grammy, and Emmy winner Cynthia Erivo, the Tonys will be broadcast live on CBS starting at 8 p.m. ET. The full list of 2025 Tony nominees can be found here. Nominees in the eight main acting categories plus those for best play and musical are below: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck Cole Escola, Oh, Mary! Jon Michael Hill, Purpose Daniel Dae Kim, Yellow Face Harry Lennix, Purpose Louis McCartney, Stranger Things: The First Shadow Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play Laura Donnelly, The Hills of California Mia Farrow, The Roommate LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Purpose Sadie Sink, John Proctor is the Villain Sarah Snook, The Picture of Dorian Gray Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical Darren Criss, Maybe Happy Ending Andrew Durand, Dead Outlaw Tom Francis, Sunset Blvd. Jonathan Groff, Just in Time James Monroe Iglehart, A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical Jeremy Jordan, Floyd Collins Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical Megan Hilty, Death Becomes Her Audra McDonald, Gypsy Jasmine Amy Rogers, BOOP! The Musical Nicole Scherzinger, Sunset Blvd. Jennifer Simard, Death Becomes Her Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play Glenn Davis, Purpose Gabriel Ebert, John Proctor is the Villain Francis Jue, Yellow Face Bob Odenkirk, Glengarry Glen Ross Conrad Ricamora, Oh, Mary! Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play Tala Ashe, English Jessica Hecht, Eureka Day Marjan Neshat, English Fina Strazza, John Proctor is the Villain Kara Young, Purpose Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical Brooks Ashmanskas, SMASH Jeb Brown, Dead Outlaw Danny Burstein, Gypsy Jak Malone, Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical Taylor Trensch, Floyd Collins Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical Natalie Venetia Belcon, Buena Vista Social Club Julia Knitel, Dead Outlaw Gracie Lawrence, Just in Time Justina Machado, Real Women Have Curves: The Musical Joy Woods, Gypsy Best Play English The Hills of California John Proctor is the Villain Oh, Mary! Purpose Best Musical Buena Vista Social Club Dead Outlaw Death Becomes Her Maybe Happy Ending Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical Best Revival of a Play Eureka Day Romeo + Juliet Thornton Wilder's Our Town Yellow Face Best Revival of a Musical Floyd Collins Gypsy Pirates! The Penzance Musical Sunset Blvd.
Chicago Tribune
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: Steppenwolf's ‘Purpose' has moved to Broadway, all Chicago guns blazing
NEW YORK — Nobody but Branden Jacobs-Jenkins could have written Steppenwolf Theatre's blistering play 'Purpose,' now reintroducing Chicago's most famous theater to Broadway. No one else would have had the chutzpah or the clout to so eviscerate a powerful, theocratic Black family and, in so doing, to chart the price that political parents invariably extract from their kids, children who did not sign up for any kind of campaign and to whom no benefits accrue. Just pressure and angst from listening to a lifetime of moralization and pontification and hypocrisy. Commissioned by Steppenwolf, where it premiered last year, 'Purpose' could reasonably be described as a Black version of the Steppenwolf play 'August: Osage County' (or the Black version of that famous Italian dinner scene in the Chicago-set TV show 'The Bear.') Directed in New York and Chicago by Phylicia Rashad, 'Purpose' is all the more powerful for its sly, barely fictionalized references to a specific family, that of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose son, former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., was busted in 2013 for violating federal campaign law by using campaign funds to make personal purchases and sent to jail. His wife (now ex-wife) Sandi Jackson was sent to jail, too, on the inarguably flimsy grounds of jointly filing a fraudulent tax return. In a novel concession to the couple having young children, a judge allowed the two to serve their sentences sequentially. To be clear, 'Purpose' is about a fictional family named the Jaspers (LOL), but it takes place just as 'Junior' Jasper (Steppenwolf co-artistic director Glenn Davis) has gotten out of jail and wife Morgan (Alana Arenas) is about to enter federal prison. In the Broadway version of the script, some of the juicier Jacksonian references are less evident than was the case in Chicago, but there's still little doubt where Jacobs-Jenkins got the idea. 'Purpose' becomes another entry in Steppenwolf's long ledger of potent plays wherein damaged young storytellers, trying to find the point of their own lives, take their revenge against self-absorbed, transactional baby boomers, all bull, blather and blarney. And the piece is acted in this Broadway transfer with all ensemble guns blazing, replete with deeply immersive performances from Latanya Richardson Jackson (who is new to the show), Harry Lennix, Kara Young (also new) and, playing the authorial alter ego, the Steppenwolf ensemble member Jon Michael Hill. Anyone who has real-life experience with such a circle-the-wagons family will tell you that it's the outsiders drawn in by marriage who have the hardest time. So it's apt that the breakout performance here comes from Arenas, the longtime Steppenwolf ensemble member who is on fire from the moment she walks out on the stage of the Hayes Theater, her character so infuriated by the actions of her husband, and so aware of what familial forces made him this way, she can barely contain the roar of her sardonic rage. This is one of those tours de force where the audience collectively leans forward the second she enters Todd Rosenthal's re-creation of a big house on Chicago's South Side with portraits of civil rights icons like Martin Luther King, Jr. on the walls, men who also once walked its halls. Hill's Naz Jasper, like Tom in Tennessee Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie,' talks directly to the audience as he returns to his family homestead with his friend Aziza (the live-wire Young), to whom he has donated his sperm, an action he knows his parents are destined not to understand. At first, Aziza is star-struck by being in the home of a civil rights icon, but over dinner she sees that Solomon Jasper (Lennix) has been a better marcher for social justice than a parent and husband, and that his wife, Claudine (Richardson Jackson) has learned that her job is to clear up the mess with nondisclosures and the like. 1 of Jon Michael Hill (as Naz), Kara Young (Aziza), and Harry Lennix (Solomon) in "Purpose" on Broadway at the Hayes Theater in New York. (Marc J. Franklin) Hill is a deeply empathetic actor and his character pulls the audience through this story by the hand, revealing a now-struggling Solomon and an unstable family trapped in the deepest form of denial. Jacobs-Jenkins has penned Naz as an asexual introvert, the kind of young man who finds solace in nature and lakes and everything that takes him far away from either his father's infidelity or the glare of political attention. It's a remarkably moving character, likely all too familiar to all scions of big personalities with even bigger flaws. And it's rendered beautifully by one of Steppenwolf's young stars. 'Purpose' runs out of steam a little late in the second act, where Lennix could, to my mind, fight with yet more force as Solomon makes his generation's case to his needy younger son, insisting on his continuing relevance even as the world spirals away. But that's a minor quibble, given Lennix's overall sad gravitas, the power of this ensemble acting, the merciless direction throughout and the fantastic way Jacobs-Jenkins goes back and forth between his characters' anger and vulnerability, making the case for everyone and undermining all their arguments at the same time. In the end, 'Purpose' is a major new American play about what it's like to be trapped by powerful parents whose public personas their children can easily see through, even as they are condemned to try and live up to their import. A thumping blend of tragic-proximate horror and schadenfreude, it's riveting to watch.
Axios
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
From "Chicago Med" to Steppenwolf: Nick Gehlfuss shares his perfect day in the city
Steppenwolf Theatre's " Fool For Love" has been a big hit for the legendary North Side theater, which is extending the Sam Shepherd play through March 23. Last produced by the company in 1983, the show stars Steppenwolf ensemble member Caroline Neff and actor Nick Gehlfuss, who is making his first appearance with the company. Yes, but: That doesn't mean Chicago audiences don't know him. Gehlfuss is best known as fan favorite Dr. Will Halstead on NBC's "Chicago Med." Spoiler alert: He left the show in 2023 after eight seasons. What they're saying: " I love connecting with Chicago audiences more intimately through theater having only been on their televisions for the past decade," Gehlfuss tells Axios. With this run at Steppenwolf and his time playing a Chicago doctor, it seems fitting to ask how Nick would spend his perfect day in the city: 🥞 Breakfast:" Batter and Berries in Lincoln Park. I'd get the Green City Omelet and if I'm feeling frisky, obviously the French Toast Flight." 🌊 Morning activity:"Kayaking on Lake Michigan or bike riding with my family along the bike path — basically any activity near the water." 🇪🇹 Lunch: " Demera in Uptown. I'd order the misir wot/ingudai, tibs/quosta and all the teff injera one can muster." ☕️ Afternoon activity:"Having a matcha latte and reading at The Understudy." 🥘 Dinner: " Bloom Plant Based Kitchen in Wicker Park. I'd eat anything there from the cornbread casserole to the turnip causa to the beet tart to the stuffed Piquillos." 🎸 Evening activity: "Accomplishing my goal of visiting every music venue in Chicago." What's next: Gehlfuss is on stage with "Fool for Love" at Steppenwolf through March 23.
Chicago Tribune
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘A Lie of the Mind' is a Chicago-style treatment of Sam Shepard's most difficult play
With 'Fool for Love' playing at the Steppenwolf Theatre and now 'A Lie of the Mind' at the thriving Raven Theatre, Chicago is having something of a Sam Shepard revival. The late, great bard of the lonely American prairie and desert went out of favor here for a while; it's good to have his work back and being interpreted by a younger generation of artists. I found Steppenwolf's 'Fool for Love' overly styled and tentative, but that's far from the case with director Azar Kazemi's Raven production, filled with compelling young actors such as Ian Maryfield, Arash Fakhrabadi, John Drea and Gloria Imseih Petrelli going for broke in Raven's intimate theater. Now 40 years old, 'A Lie of the Mind' started out as a three-act, four-hour play, although Raven is using the revised version, first produced by the New Group in 2010, that clocks in at around 2 hours and 40 minutes — still nearly twice as long as 'Fool for Love.' The piece has accurately been described as the final episode in a quintet of familial dramas that also includes Shepard's 'Curse of the Starving Class,' 'Buried Child,' 'True West' and 'Fool for Love' and it's probably fair to say that it's Shepard's last great 20th century masterpiece. His 'Long Day's Journey Into Night,' kinda. All of those plays deal with broken families and romantic relationships, some subject to healing, some not. All of them are about the disconnect between the sparse natural environment in these United States and the human craving for intimacy. And all deal with American iconography: more specifically, the nation's foundational reliance on mythology and self-dramatization and the largely detrimental impact of all of that on, well, just making love and having children and trying to keep the wolf from the door. Whatever else I have to say about Kazemi's show here, this is a most serious production, one that understands this great writer strikingly well and that wrestles admirably with what is, I think, his most difficult work. All the characters in 'Lie of the Mind,' even the parental figures played here by Meighan Gerachis (in an exceptional stretch of her long career in Chicago theater) and Rom Barkhordar, who plays Baylor, the classic brutal Shepard father figure. The plot? It involves a young marriage where there has been horrific domestic abuse and both parties, aggressor and victim, have gone back to their original families in a kind of psychic retreat. Things go from there. Thus the piece tells the story of two agonized families striving for, oh, I don't know, coherence? Forgiveness? Self-awareness? Revenge? Redemption? Probably all of the above. Compared to other productions, which have fused much music into the show and used a sparser and more experimental or meta visual aesthetic, Kazemi situates the play more in terms of domestic realism or, if you like, a storefront Chicago gestalt. That's fair enough, especially given the resources at Raven, and it often works very well in terms of helping us identify with these struggling characters and reminded us of the autobiographical underpinning of all this man's plays. At other times, though, it fights Shepard's more surreal inclinations, especially as the play goes on and its non-realistic elements become more and more pervasive. The show's strength is the potent and courageous ensemble acting, as adroitly and generously directed by Kazemi (it will get yet better too). Its weakness is an intermittent lack of vulnerability and an occasional disinclination to leave all of that behind and pull out individual characters who have figured out that their travails flow from the difficulty of stopping American family life from turning into a Sam Shepard play. Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. cjones5@ When: Through March 22 Where: Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St. Running time: 2 hours, 35 minutes
