Shayna Swanson, owner of El Circo Cheapo, made her triumphant return from Germany just in time for this month’s show at Aloft Loft in West Town. Performing every first Saturday of the month, the show invites circus performers to try out tricks new and old in an intimate setting. The cheap ticket price (a $10 seat deposit they’ll gladly refund if you ask) promotes the kind of casual atmosphere where performers flub and ask for a redo and everyone rolls with it clapping encouragingly. (Don’t you sometimes wish real life was like that?) The lineup changes month to month, but the hilariously charismatic ringmaster is not to be missed.

Photos by: Julia Korol

I walked into the Second City’s newest musical parody a typical left-of-center kind of guy. But judging by how much I thoroughly relished its total obliteration of Limbaugh and his right-wing cronies, I walked out of the theater beaming the bluest shade of blue. Rush Limbaugh! The Musical is at times offensive, cheap and one-sided—not unlike Limbaugh himself. In other words, it does what doey-eyed liberals (and moderate conservatives) have feared to do for decades, fills its arsenal with slanderous vitriol and aims it straight back at the conservative machine. Except that it’s far smarter and funnier than anything the right could ever throw our way (thank God entertainers are on our side!).

The story begins in the early sixties with a young Rush pedaling his mediocre talents as a DJ at a church sock hop. Even his musical choices reflect his blooming conservatism. “Screw those commie, faggy Beatles and give me some Pat Boone!” It’s here that he cozies up to Reverend Rightwing, a Darth Vader–like demagogue who convinces Rush to pledge allegiance to Pat Robertson, Ronald Reagan and Old Country Buffet with sly one-liners like, “Hating the people God hates is a great way to share his eternal love.” He also comes face to face with dirty hippies Barney Frank and Hillary Clinton, before their own meteoric rises to fame. In one of the shows most enduring gags, a young Frank can’t help but turn every sentence he utters into a metaphor for gay sex. Read more »

TimeLine Theatre Company, the 12-year-old, historically-focused Lakeview underdog, is riding a well-documented surge these days. The company’s followed last year’s massive hit (and Jeff Award magnet) Chicago premiere of The History Boys with solid fare like Kimberly Senior’s strong revival of All My Sons and the current ‘Master Harold’…and the Boys; up next is another Chicago premiere, Aaron Sorkin’s The Farnsworth Invention, in April.

TimeLine’s first out of the gate with news of the 2010–2011 season, announcing today that it’s scored another Chicago premiere to kick off its fall slate: Peter Morgan’s Frost/Nixon will open in August, directed by Louis Contey. The 2006 play, about the unlikely circumstances by which British TV presenter David Frost bagged a series of interviews with former president Richard Nixon in 1977, earned Tony and Drama Desk awards for Broadway star Frank Langella. TimeLine’s casting (and the rest of its season) remain TBA. The company also announced that it’s one of two 2010 recipients of a $25,000 grant from the Lester and Hope Abelson Fund for the Performing Arts at the Chicago Community Trust. The “Hopie,” as the award is apparently referred to, is given annually to two arts orgs that have less than $1 million in operating revenues, have been in existence at least three years and whose work demonstrates “innovation, inspiration and creativity.” This year’s other recipient is Free Street Theater, who TOC profiled last month.

Last night I fulfilled a dream I didn’t even know I had until it was happening in front of me: I watched veteran actor Mike Nussbaum bark George Michael lyrics into a banana.

The event was Strawdog Theatre Company’s benefit performance of The Phone Book, a variety show in which an all-star cast offered up idiosyncratic takes on a telephonic theme. One of the highlights was a parodic re-enactment of how Strawdog’s supposed production of the David Mamet hit American Buffalo “moved” to Steppenwolf. Nussbaum, 86, who originated the role of Teach in Buffalo’s 1974 debut, reprised it, while Fran Guinan took on his current role of Don in Steppenwolf’s actual revival. Strawdog’s self-deprecating gag was a nod to its penchant, as in last year’s production of Red Noses, to swap out script elements it definitely hasn’t obtained rights for, like specified songs, for the company’s own choices. In Buffalo’s famous telephone scene, Strawdog doesn’t have rights to the script’s phone numbers, and then the phone company pulls the plug—thus, Nussbaum screaming “You gotta have faith-uh-faith-uh-faith-AHH” into fruit.

It was a perfect set-up for the evening’s big news: Strawdog artistic director Nic Dimond announced that Red Noses (TOC’s number-three choice on our 2009 theater top ten) will become the twentysomething company’s first-ever remount this summer, first hitting Theater on the Lake July 14–18 before a four-week July–August reprise at Strawdog’s Lakeview home.

Read more »

Photo: Jill C. Adamson

In its 21st incarnation, the Rhinoceros Theater Festival maintains its stubborn commitment to the city’s fringe and emerging theater. This year’s model, a co-production of Curious Theatre Branch and Prop Thtr, keeps all performances at the Prop, a boon to audience members who in years past might find themselves hurtling between North Side locations to catch work by the likes of David Isaacson, Idris Goodwin and Jenny Magnus. Read more »

Our Kids editor, Judy Sutton Taylor, has never seen The Godfather. None of them. Yes, seriously. Eat Out editor David Tamarkin claims he has never heard Led Zeppelin. Art & Design editor Lauren Weinberg has never watched a reality TV show (not sure she’s missing anything there). I’m outing my colleagues not to embarrass them (though, really? The Godfather?), but to show that everyone, even us cultural critics, has gaps in their pop-culture knowledge.

We aim to rectify these shortcomings in cultural literacy by introducing individuals to an expert in their field of non-expertise. That person will school them on the finer points of say, Andy Warhol or The Wire, then show them the important works one needs to know to seem knowledgeable. Problem solved! No more mortifying cocktail-party chats where you have to feign knowledge of something you wished you had the diligence to learn about.

Up for it? Got a cultural gap you want filled? This can be movies, food, music, theater, books—anything you feel most people know and love, but somehow you managed to be oblivious. E-mail me.

Anyone who’s ever complained about the high price of theater tickets or the “high risk” of taking a chance on new plays, About Face Theatre has a deal for you: Select tickets for the company’s Chicago premiere of Ann Marie Healy’s What Once We Felt are 99 cents. February 3, 10 and 17 performances of Healy’s dystopic play about the world’s last print novelist have been designated “Word of WOWF Wednesdays,” with a limited number of extra-value-menu seats available alongside the $25 ($15 for students) general admission. Healy’s play was originally slated to have its world premiere at About Face last spring, until a budget crisis forced artistic director Bonnie Metzgar to postpone the production. The play instead bowed last fall in New York in Lincoln Center Theater’s LCT3 series; reviews there were sharply divided. Krissy Vanderwarker directs About Face’s production, which runs February 3–March 6 at the Center on Halsted.

Photo: Gabe Bowling

Producers for the smash jukebox musical Million Dollar Quartet announced their new Chicago cast today. Starting February 3, David Lago, Lance Lipinsky, Gabe Bowling and Sean Sullivan will take on the roles of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash, respectively. That’s because the original foursome, Eddie Clendening, Levi Kreis, Rob Lyons and Lance Guest (all but Kreis pictured above), is headed to Broadway; the show starts previews at New York’s Nederlander Theatre March 13.  The long-running recreation of a legendary 1956 Sun Studio recording session continues here at the Apollo Theatre at least through May 30.  If you haven’t made it out yet, it’s well worth doing so: The show wields its thorough research lightly and rehearses rock history with a blazing, and rousingly performed, score. While the current cast will be tough to match, the newcomers offer some impressive credentials. Lago won an Emmy for playing Raul on The Young and the Restless, while Sullivan did fine work in 2008’s Requiem for a Heavyweight at Shattered Globe Theatre.  And as lead guitarist for Wisconsin’s rockabilly-tinged Fat J and the Pinners, Bowling should offer a solid take on the pivotal Perkins role.

In an America struggling to emerge from a deep recession and still feeling the effects of a disastrous Republican administration under a new Democratic president proposing broad social programs to lift the malaise, the moment is ripe to see a musical set during the Great Depression when the newly elected FDR was formulating his New Deal. And so Broadway in Chicago’s presentation of the latest Annie National Tour to roll through town–it plays the Auditorium Theatre only through Sunday–is helped quite a bit by its unexpected timeliness. But depictions of Republicans sitting down with Democrats in the Oval Office to negotiate bipartisan solutions to the nation’s ills on the very night that the GOP took Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat by running against health-care reform? Well, Annie is a fantasy, after all.

It’s a fairly durable one at that. This production boasts a big-hearted Daddy Warbucks in David Barton, performing his second national tour of duty; an energetic Miss Hannigan in Lynn Andrews; a winning crew of orphans led by Mackenzie Aladjem (right), making her adorable professional debut as Molly; and a straightforward lead in Madison Kerth (left), who ably makes the jump here from regional to national Annie. If Jeffrey B. Duncan’s FDR reminds one of the Disney Hall of Presidents version currently played by Tom Flanigan on the Second City e.t.c. stage, there’s no harm in that.

As the soon-to-be-6-year-old sitting next to me tonight can attest, Annie’s a delightful family show even on a night when the bipartisan story line doesn’t fit the ugly reality in Washington, D.C.

Hello… Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home?

Hot & Heavy Burlesque checked our pulse with a tribute to Pink Floyd’s art rock classic album and film The Wall last night in the third of four performances. If you like what you see, there’s one more chance to catch the show and hear some blazing saxophone solos while people take off their clothes: Saturday, January 16, 10pm at the Viaduct.