Criticopia

The National Theatre of Scotland has no fixed playhouse of its own. The peripatetic troupe usually plays in pubs and other social venues, and it’s been successful at the Edinburgh Festival. So it’s natural that Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s Global Theatre Exchange would bring it, along with the Black Watch that scored a previous CST hit, to its Upstairs space converted to a pub.

A well-stocked bar with its busy tenders beckon. Five actor-musicians at the front playing strings and tooting with vigor before tables to be shared set the play to come.

Henrik Ibsen's 1882 play, An Enemy of the People,is particularly timely in 2012. This fiery Manhattan Theater Club revival by Rebecca Lenkiewicz at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater sharply articulates the wishes of the majority faced with the inconvenient corruption of environmental threats. What seems like hands-down common sense and the common good is threatened when the dirty word, “tax,” steps in and muddles the meaning of who is actually the “enemy.”

With its uncomplicated, fast-moving plot and theme (an ambitious desire for power and a killing obsession with keeping it), Macbethlends itself to a much-truncated version of the kind shown here. Still, it’s a potent drama, not lacking characterization, and well adapted to tour, especially to middle and higher schools in session.

In each of two troupes of six final year Acting Conservatory students (also new members of Asolo Rep Co.), all smoothly double, except the two couples playing, in turn, Macbeth and his Lady. The leads’ common trait is murderous brutality.

Milwaukee’s In Tandem Theater presents the U.S. premiere of John Goodrun’s psychological thriller, The Nightmare Room. The play is based on a story by Sherlock Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so one enters the theater expecting plenty of plot twists and turns. The play does not disappoint.

The Mountaintopis an amazing glimpse into the life of one of the 20th Century’s most important figures, Dr. Martin Luther King. King is undoubtedly the person most associated with the 1960s civil rights movement, which he led until his assassination in 1968. Playwright Katori Hall exposes the personal side of this powerful leader.

The title is baffling, but what’s clear about the Roundabout’s If There is I Haven't Found it Yetis the focus. It is water, and lots of it. Before the play even starts, rain pours steadily into a moat at the edge of the stage. Interestingly, rain itself never plays a part in the play, but the soggy theme is omnipresent, a symbolic threat of drowning both the planet and one dysfunctional family.

First there was TV’s “Sesame Street,” that crazy, diverse neighborhood where everyone managed to get along. Some characters, such as Big Bird, didn’t have a beef about anything. Other characters, such as Oscar the Grouch, wanted the whole world to go away and leave him alone. All in all, “Sesame Street” was a comforting place where children could feel safe and special.

Alexander Dinelaris has a powerful axe to grind: the genocidal slaughter of Armenians by the Turks in 1915. His fascinating, intricate play about a man’s search for his past, Red Dog Howlsis deeply funny and profoundly moving as the man (Alfredo Narciso) finds his 91-year-old grandmother (Kathleen Chalfant) living in New York and secrets are gradually revealed.

To celebrate its 40th anniversary season, Geva Theater Center opened with a rich production of a beloved American play which will celebrate its 76th anniversary in December, Kaufman and Hart’s You Can’t Take It With You.An elaborate catered party for longtime faithful patrons before and after the opening night performance, beautifully detailed designs and appealing music, and a reunion cast of favorite actors who have appeared at Geva many times before – all emphasized the festive occasion.

For someone who loves physical action, dance, gymnastics and high-flying acrobatics (like me), the cheerleader musical Bring it On(libretto by Jeff Whitty, music by Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda, lyrics by Amanda Green and Lin-Manuel Miranda, based on the movie by Jessica Bendinginder), is a joy and a thrill.

Actor/writer Keith Stevenson has tapped into his West Virginia background in his hillbilly comedy, Out There on Fried Meat Ridge Rd. now playing in its six month at Pacific Resident Theater. The one-act play is a prime example of Southern Gothic humor: all five of its characters are caricatured outrageously as they live their lives out in a setting of extreme squalor and ignorance (a ramshackle motel out in the boonies).

Is this show the “blasphemous” production that religious conservatives managed to boot from its desired facility in a state park? Hardly. The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged) is more of a gentle satire than a full-fledged attack on sacred texts. Certainly, liberties are taken with the text. But who wouldn’t want to hear Moses recite the “Ten Rejected Commandments?” (“Sorry, adultery is still in there,” he notes).

One of the best things about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the chance it affords to see the work of young playwrights, actors and directors from around the world. Among the many neophyte theater companies appearing at the 2012 Fringe was the Lyric Youth Company (which is attached to the Lyric Hammersmith in W. London)

The Radu Stanca National Theatre of Sibu, Romania, had a big hit at the 2009 Edinburgh International Festival with its production of Faust. Now the state-subsidized company has returned to the Edinburgh International Festival with a new production, Gulliver’s Travels – After Jonathan Swift.

Harrison, TX: Three Plays by Horton Foote– what a theatrical treat!

The Last Smoker in Americawith book and lyrics by Bill Russell and music by Peter Melnick, is a broadly-played cartoon taking anti-smoking to its absurdist limit. It’s a totally imaginative trip to a bizarre future performed by four top-level singer/actors in stylized, sometimes sparkling, costumes by Michael McDonald. He gives us a surreal trip to a fantasy world on a brilliant flexible set by Charlie Corcoran full of innovations and surprises, with lighting by Jeff Croiter and Grant Yeager that enlivens everything. The writing is sharp and funny, the music lively and catchy.

One thing I’d say for the translator of this Elektra, Canada’s award-winning poet and classical scholar Anne Carson: she certainly managed to remove the poetry.

Although decades have passed since this award-winning chestnut debuted on Broadway in 1964, the characters in A Thousand Clownsring as true today as they did then. The play revolves around the life of Murray Burns, a real-life Peter Pan. Despite the fact that he’s in his 30s, Murray just doesn’t want to grow up; “responsibility” is a dirty word in his vocabulary. No wonder he has no wife, no family, and no decent place to call home. What he does have is a bright, precocious 12-year-old, unwittingly dumped on him years ago by his even-more-irresponsible sister.

Crimes of the Heart is a comedy in the way Chekhov’s self-described comedies are. Indeed, Barba Redmond in her director’s notes has reasonably compared it and its leads to his Three Sisters.Each play is really site-specific, Henley’s in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, with a quirky fall atmosphere like the dropping leaves outside the three Magrath Sisters’ house.