AWA RDS 20 15
CRITICS’ PICKS
Best under-rehearsed swordplay Best Direction
Jeremy Wechsler, Mr. Burns, a post-electric play Wechsler, Theater Wit’s artistic director, has lately been combing Off Broadway’s brightest to snag titles theaters with bigger footprints should be fighting for. But he handles them with remarkable care, including Anne Washburn’s slyly smart play with music that posits a post-apocalyptic world in which the plot of a classic Simpsons episode maybe becomes, over generations, a society’s guiding myth. Mr. Burns crackled with electric inventiveness, no d’ohs about it. OTHER NOMINEES: Jonathan Berry, Balm in Gilead, Griffin Theatre Company; Shade Murray, Accidentally, Like a Martyr, A Red Orchid Theatre; Robert O’Hara, Marie Antoinette, Steppenwolf Theatre Company; Jessica Thebus, Shining Lives: A Musical, Northlight Theatre
OTHER NOMINEES: Scottie Caldwell, A Map of Virtue, Cor Theatre; Rae Gray, The Little Foxes, Goodman Theatre; Lindsey Pearlman, The Mousetrap, Northlight Theatre; Stacy Stoltz, Stupid Fucking Bird, Sideshow Theatre Company
Best Ensemble All Our Tragic
You certainly couldn’t say they weren’t hardworking: The 24 cast members of the 2014 Hypocrites production (pared to 17 for the 2015 remount) were on the job from 11am to 11pm every Saturday and Sunday of their run, essaying multiple
characters and executing carefully choreographed fight scenes. The fact many of them had been workshopping the play with Graney for months showed in their intimacy with the material and one another. But they also served as break-time ambassadors, mingling with the audience in street clothes at intermissions and making us all feel a part of the ensemble. OTHER NOMINEES: Accidentally, Like a Martyr, A Red Orchid Theatre; The Apple Family Plays, TimeLine Theatre; The Herd, Steppenwolf Theatre Company; Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, Theater Wit
Aaron Latterell, The Hammer Trinity Latterell, an understudy for the House Theatre of Chicago’s nine-hour fantasy trilogy who was previously unknown to me, had to go on for the injured JJ Phillips at a press performance despite not having had an actual understudy rehearsal yet. The show was delayed about 20 minutes as he and the cast went through a careful fight call, but once the lights went up, Latterell never betrayed any hesitation with a line, thrust or parry. Casting directors: This guy knows from heroic efforts.
Best bartender’s-eye view Accidentally, Like a Martyr
Scenic designer John Holt put the entire audience behind the bar for director Shade Murray’s A Red Orchid Theatre production of Grant James Varjas’s elegy in a gay NYC dive joint. We got a quite accurate feel for the perspective of Dominique Worsley’s bartender on the shenanigans and shake-ups of his regulars and new patrons; it was among the most accurate depictions of a particular shabby milieu this season.
Best double casting
Jerod Haynes and Eric Lynch, Native Son One of the strongest conceit’s of Nambi E. Kelley’s new stage adaptation of Richard Wright’s novel, coproduced by Court Theatre and American Blues Theater, was splitting protagonist Bigger Thomas into two roles. With Haynes as Bigger’s central self, id and ego, and Lynch as The Black Rat, his superego and subconscious knowledge of systemic oppression, Kelley found a powerful way into the head of Wright’s iconic character, and Haynes and Lynch executed it brilliantly.
September–November 2015
TIMEOUT.COM/CHICAGO 27
PHOTOGRAPHS (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP): CHARLES OSGOOD; MICHAEL BROSILOW; EVAN HANOVER; MICHAEL BROSILOW
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