The week’s other openings
A Charlie Chaplin Christmas, Doctor Atomic, Yellowface, Anything
The week’s other openings
Chicago
A Charlie Chaplin Christmas
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DCA Studio Theatre, (312) 742-8497
Chicago’s Silent Theatre Company specializes in “the wordless re-creation of silent movies,” said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. In this holiday-themed show, 10 physically masterful performers “re-create not just the comedic chaos but that desperate urge to tell a truthful human story that made Chaplin so famous.”
Doctor Atomic
Civic Opera House, (312) 332-2244
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This is the Chicago debut of composer John Adams’ 2005 opera about the Manhattan Project, said Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times. Adams’ score pulses with beautiful passages, and director and librettist Peter Sellars “has infused the opera with references beyond physics,” grounding the characters firmly in the intellectual and historical currents of the 1940s.
New York
Yellowface
Public Theater (212) 967-7555
Playwright David Henry Hwang has explored racial identity in award-winning dramas such as M. Butterfly, said Marilyn Stasio in Variety. But who knew he was “such a funny guy?” In this account of Hwang’s personal campaign against the practice of casting white actors in Asian roles, he wittily exposes the dangers of even well-intentioned racial rhetoric.
Los Angeles
Anything
Elephant Theatre, Hollywood; (323) 960-4410
Tim McNeil’s “bristly valentine to the unpredictability of the human heart” peeks into two broken lives, said F. Kathleen Foley in the Los Angeles Times. McNeil himself stars as the emotionally scarred Angeleno who takes up with Louis Jacobs’ transvestite prostitute. Both “find purpose—and ultimately salvation—in their unlikely new romance.”
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Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
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The Bridges of Madison County
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Outside Mullingar
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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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