Chicago Spotlight: June 2005

‘Tis the season when fairies, sprites, baseball players and fireflies emerge from their secret winter places to frolic, cavort, play, and sometimes mate under the sun and stars…and so do Midwestern actors! It’s time for summer stock and outdoor theater festivals.

As ever, Shakespeare is the outdoors champ, since he wrote most of his plays to be performed in the open air. Theatre Hikes gets into the game June 3-July 3 with As You Like It, most of which is set in a forest. But Theatre Hikes goes The Bard one better: they perform in botanical gardens, forest preserves and parks where the audience hikes along a trail with each scene of the play unfolding around the next bend. As You Like It is being staged at the Morton Arboretum in West Suburban Chicago.

The next al fresco Shakespeare is the Festival Theatre, Oak Park, opening its 30th anniversary season with The Comedy of Errors given a Caribbean setting, June 23-August 22 (a second Festival show, Miller’s All My Sons, opens in July). The Festival Theatre is in Austin Gardens, nestled in the Oak Park Historic District of grand late Victorian and Edwardian homes and a half-dozen Frank Lloyd Wright houses (Wright’s home and studio are nearby).

Two troupes offer June 25-August 7 runs: First Folio Shakespeare Festival presents a Wild West The Taming of the Shrew in its lovely West Suburban setting, the Peabody Estate Mayslake Forest Preserve in Oak Brook; and Ground Up Theatre gives A Midsummer Night’s Dream a New Orleans/Cajun flavor in Ravenswood Manor Park right in the City. Ground Up then will take their outdoor show to four different urban parks.

It’s three hours’ drive to the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in Bloomington, staging Twelfth Night, Macbeth, and the rarely-seen Henry VIII in rotating rep, June 29-August 14. This is ISF’s 27th season on the beautiful grounds of Ewing Manor, a former private estate with formal Elizabethan and Japanese gardens.

Out-of-doors theater hardly is the whole ball of wax, as indoor theater scarcely slows down during the warm-weather months. All three of Chicago’s Tony Award winning theater companies will open subscription season shows over the summer. Victory Gardens Theater is up first, offering the world premiere of Symmetry by Dave C. Fields June 6-July 10. The surprise star is familiar tough guy J. J. Johnston (you’ll know the face, if not the name) making a too-rare return to his home town. At the end of June, the Goodman Theatre presents Dollhouse, the world premiere of Rebecca Gilman’s adaptation of Ibsen, June 28-July 24. Almost immediately, Ms. Gilman will depart for the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center to workshop another new play in July.

Most other leading subscription houses also offer summertime attractions: the well-received It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues continues at Northlight Theatre through June 19; Arms and the Man enjoys a long run at Writers’ Theatre, through July 24; Lookingglass Theatre stages Hillbilly Antigone June 4-July 10, an Appalachian displacement of the Greek tragedy featuring original Blue Grass music in a traditional style; Court Theatre completes its 50th anniversary season with Beckett’s Endgame, June 11-26; and Apple Tree Theatre (in North Suburban Highland Park) offers Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya June 19-July 17.

The Broadway houses in The Loop will be busy, too. Disney’s The Lion King returns to the Cadillac Palace Theatre June 10-September 4 with Chicago actor Larry Yando in the starring role of bad-lion Skar. Meanwhile, Wicked is packing them in at the Ford Center/Oriental Theatre. The touring company closes June 12, but a new Chicago-based company begins performances June 24 for a July 13 press opening. The touring Little Shop of Horrors comes to the far too big Auditorium Theatre (3,800 seats) June 21-July 3. Normally, Little Shop would play the 2,000 seat Shubert Theatre, but the Shubert is half-way through a multi-million dollar renovation. It reopens in the autumn as the LaSalle Bank Theatre. The inaugural attraction will be the North American premiere of The Woman in White by Andrew Lloyd Webber, David Zippel and Charlotte Jones.

One always expects Chicago’s smaller, younger Off-Loop houses to offer several hot tickets. Among the very hottest is the three-year old ensemble company, House Theatre. Their world premiere about time travel and marriage, Dave DaVinci Saves the Universe, is packing them in at the Viaduct where it continues through July 9 (extension probable). From sci-fi to fantasy romance: the Griffin Theatre has a success with Stardust, adapted from the novel by Neil Gaiman. It’s running through June 26 at Theatre Building Chicago.

Another small troupe, Infamous Commonwealth Theatre Company, has earned high marks for its ambitious staging of the massive The Kentucky Cycle in two parts. Performances through July 3 are at the National Pastime Theatre. Critics also have raved about August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, staged by Congo Square Theatre Company at the Duncan YMCA, through June 25.

Chicago’s always good for a grand variety of fare, and June is no exception. Consider: Thou Shalt Not, the Harry Connick, Jr. musical at Circle Theatre, June 1-July 10; the Spanish classic Life is a Dream (La Vida es Sueno) by Live Wire Theatre; the world premiere of Marlowe, about Shakespeare’s contemporary, at Bailiwick June 12-July 17; and Ken Prestininzi’s Amerikafka at Trap Door Theatre, June 23-July 29.

Who has time for the beach and barbeque?