Lookingglass Theatre, Chicago
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To label this show “dinner theater” does it a disservice, said Steven Oxman in Variety. For $225 a head, ticket buyers are treated to a three-course dinner prepared by celebrity chef Rick Bayless. But Bayless is also a character on stage, the separate courses are knitted together by a feather-light love story, and the other performers are world-class acrobats. The conceit is that Bayless is the cook in a 1940s Mexican boarding house and that, as he tries to woo the establishment’s owner, he cooks food whose magical properties send the other residents into each other’s arms in acrobatic reveries. The story is not particularly dramatic, but then “nobody wants tragedy with a tasting menu.” Cascabel is theater à la molecular gastronomy, and the effect is a multisensory delight.
Bayless blends right in, said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. Playing a Prospero-like character, the “quietly spiritual father of these food-driven proceedings,” he isn’t asked to do much but cook on stage and leave the spotlight to the pros. From aerialist Lindsay Noel Whiting to sexy clowns Anne Goldmann and Jonathan Taylor, they’re all stellar. The meal is memorable too, said food critic Phil Vettel, also in the Tribune. The maître d’ directs the audience on how and when to eat, and those who follow his directions are rewarded with a culinary journey, culminating in an “impenetrably dark” mole poblano that “curled my toes.” There’s a reason the kitchen crew gets a curtain call along with the cast.
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If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
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Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
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Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
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The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
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Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
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The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
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No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
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The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.