The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G: The Unrated Version
"Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company is, by its own description, a 'geek theatre company specializing in creating comic book styled theatrical shows that are filled with martial arts, badass ladies, physically weaker male characters who tend to need saving, and sudden and abrupt genre shifts.' Co-artistic director Qui Nguyen's new play, The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G, part three of his 'Gook Story Trilogy,' provides us with all of these things in spades. But the hilarious, sharp, high-octane show sneakily disguises a lot of heart and some important questions under the witty spectacle about a playwright struggling to write a very personal family chronicle the 'right way.'"
Read the full review by Michael Mraz
A Map of Virtue
"The power of the unknown and inexplicable to evoke fear is wonderfully utilized in 13P's fantastic A Map of Virtue. There are mysteries in the woods in the night that mirror our minds' shadowy corners. Go see this play if you'd enjoy such a journey in the ambiguous dark."
Read the full review by Mitchell Conway
Brazil! Brazil!
"Brazil! Brazil!, currently running at the New Victory, is a fast-paced, music, dance and action-filled sixty minutes that give a quick drive-by to everything you already knew about Brazil. The show is basically colorful postcards from Brazil come to life--but thanks to the enthusiasm and talent of the company, how engaging that hour-long taste of Brazil is."
Read the full review by Rohana Elias-Reyes
I Killed My Mother
"I Killed My Mother by Romanian playwright Andras Visky is presented at La MaMa by Chicago's Theatre Y, which will subsequently take the play on tour to Serbia and beyond. This haunting, non-linear story begins when Bernadette has come back to a village in Transylvania with the intention of killing her mother. It is revenge, but for what?"
Read the full review by Ed Malin
And God Created Great Whales
"Any adaptive treatment of Moby-Dick has a beast to contend with equal to the novel's monstrous namesake. The chapter-length ruminations, the Homeric cataloguing of whales and whale-parts, and the breathless descriptions of a whaling vessel's hull are more than informative filler from which a plot can be safely excised; they make up a cosmos where human ingenuity is dwarfed by a vast and unknowable natural world. A limping sea captain's pursuit of an indestructible white whale takes on tragic salience against this backdrop. Moby-Dick's otherwise simple storyline has been made into at least three normal-length screenplays and more than one stage play, but stripped of Herman Melville's seeming descriptive excess, the results are often surprisingly bloodless (the 1956 film penned by Ray Bradbury being a case in point)."
Read the full review by J. Scott Reynolds
Tokio Confidential
"I'm still scratching my head over Tokio Confidential, Eric Schorr's baffling yet intermittently entrancing new musical directed by Johanna McKeon at Atlantic Stage 2. 'Bonkers, but interesting,' was how a fellow audience member described the piece as we rode the elevator from the basement theater to the street, and thinking about it, a more apt description of anything I have not heard. After an over-long first half, Schorr completely pulls out the rug and takes the show in a direction that’s so bizarre that, without hyperbole, I don't think I will ever believe what I saw."
Read the full review by David Gordon
The Wild Finish
"The road to discovering one’s roots can be filled with as much surprise as enlightenment. It is, however, no surprise that Monica Hunken's road to discovery is an incredible journey presented with extraordinary skill, style and energy."
Read the full review by Richard Hinojosa
Leave the Balcony Open
"On the unnamed college campus that forms the setting for Maya Macdonald's Leave the Balcony Open, they've stopped counting the deaths. Over the course of a year, the student body has faced unimaginable losses—from car crashes, from suicide, from a fire, from a freak tragic accident at a campus building—and, collectively and individually, they're at their breaking point."
Read the full review by Loren Noveck