Mary-Arrchie has spent much of the last year closed, correcting its issues with the city, and they’ve reopened with a newly painted lobby and a show that takes full advantage of everything their space offers.

Mojo, by Jez Butterworth takes place in a 1959 club in Soho where a potential deal for a hot young singing property is in the works. When the deal goes bad, the employees and part owners end up hiding out in the club waiting for the fatal blow to fall.

Set designer Elizabeth E. Schuch has made some of the best use of Mary-Arrchie’s proscenium stage I’ve ever seen. The first act, set in the club’s upstairs office, offers a picture of a work/storage space, with cluttered desks, broken juke boxes and other assorted junk cluttering the space. The actors spend intermission completely dismantling and removing the office, leaving behind the bare stage with a few touches to indicate the club’s dance floor. It’s a stunning transformation that wonderfully evokes the script’s setting.

Director David Cromer has assembled a strong group of actors for this ensemble -driven show. Carlo Lorenzo Garcia has the showiest role as the mercurial Baby, and he delivers, leaping from desk to table and offering an impressive portrayal as both an abuser and abused. Dan Waller as Sweets and Hans Fleischmann as Potts set the scene with energetic glee, overlapping lines, finishing each other’s sentences and generally acting like manic twins. The more settled Sean Cooper as Mickey lends a nice air of maturity to contrast with the rest of the cast’s over-stimulated youthfulness and Robert Fagin gives some depth to the put-upon Skinny.

Mojo delivers the sort of actor-driven intense work for which Mary-Arrchie and Chicago theatre have long been known. It may have been a forced absence, but Mary-Arrchie’s break from producing appears to have recharged their creative juices. Hopefully we can look forward to more productions that work as well as Mojo.

Mojo—Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co.

Chris Jones, Tribune—“David Cromer’s Mary-Arrchie revival of Jez Butterworth’s guttural, edgy Mojo, a play located in a nasty music venue and concerned with the sleazeballs of the early London rock scene, is the most evocative physical production that Mary-Arrchie has presented in its entire 20-year history… Cromer’s Mojo bears very credible witness to a style and place, but it lacks tension and focus. The acting is all very solid, but it lacks contrast and shading. And as a result, a kind of puerile wash permeates the show, with all of the depressing losers standing handsomely on a great-looking set, but nonetheless all starting to look and feel much the same.”

Brian Nemtusak, Reader—“[T]he real problem with Mojo is that it’s a black, black comedy that’s rather short on laughs—which may be because it decides it’s a drama about halfway through. This shift has baffled mightier ensembles than Mary-Arrchie’s, but director David Cromer does damn fine work despite the flawed design. As usual, the actors playing sidemen Sweets and Potts fare best. The play’s only purely comic creations, they’re also easily its most realized, and in the hands of pros Dan Waller and Hans Fleischmann the early scenes they dominate are a riot. But as things progress, they’re overshadowed by main-event contenders Baby and Mickey, a boringly violent cartoon and a woefully underdrawn cipher. There’s only so much even the talented Sean Cooper and Carlo Lorenzo Garcia can do with these roles, or the disappointing second act.”

Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“Dan Waller as the paranoid Sweets, Hans Fleischmann as the opportunistic Potts, Sean Cooper as the pragmatic Mickey, Robert Fagin as the effete Skinny, newcomer Carlo Lorenzo Garcia as the enigmatic Baby, and Brad Bukauskas (who dangles head-down like a bat for 30 minutes in the course of the action) as the hapless Johnny together comprise one of the finest ensembles seen this season. The technical team—in particular, Josh Schmidt and Andy Sewell’s sound design—likewise conspire to render impressive this auspicious comeback of a company lying fallow for too long.”

Cherry Orchard—Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Michael Phillips, Tribune—“Walk into the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre, and the ghostly white-lace universe enveloping you imparts a feeling that the Tina Landau staging of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard is going to be something special. The production turns out to be special now and then, in brief, discrete moments. Director Landau set an awfully high bar for herself two years ago with The Time of Your Life. Here, with an infinitely richer and more elusive play, you must settle for a generally absorbing account of a 100-year-old dream, with occasional flashes of magic.”

Rick Reed, Windy City—“Steppenwolf’s Cherry Orchard possesses that rarest of magic that can occur on a stage: perfection. In a clean, elegant translation, Curt Columbus manages to bring Chekhov’s characters to brilliant life, highlighting their all-too-human foibles, joys, and hopes with simple, accessible language that does the period (late 19th century) justice without ever being stilted. I think Chekhov himself would have been pleased with the grace of Columbus’ translation, because one of the playwright’s hallmarks was simplicity. Tina Landau, a director often justifiably described as ‘visionary,’ continues to earn the description with this gorgeous production, which handles Chekhov’s curious (for his time) blend of comedy and tragedy with the assured touch of an artist.”

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)—
A Crew of Patches

Christopher Piatt, Sun-Times—“For such day-old bits to fly, a tightly woven trio of dexterous comedians is required. In this bunch, the results are thuddingly top-heavy. It’s not [Benjamin] Montague’s fault that his breakneck energy, stopwatch-perfect timing and sprawling character work go unmatched by his castmates. (For that matter, it’s not their fault either, as both are legit, if limited, Shakespeare veterans.) But so much of the humor is self-congratulating that the cast members are done enjoying themselves before we even get a chance. It’s hard not to wonder what the show had been like if [David] Blixt hadn’t insisted on working on both sides of the footlights. By directing a show he also stars in, he gives himself no time to experiment with economy or balance, and the occasionally sloppy results are more of an exhausting experiment than an exhaustive anthology.”

Nick Green, Reader—“(I)n this A Crew of Patches Theatre Company production, David Blixt, Benjamin Montague, and Scott Leon Smith get drunk on the script’s intoxicating rhythms. But here the redraft of Othello as a hip-hop musical devolves into blackface—the actors wear hood ornaments and Rasta wigs—and an inhibited crowd at the show I attended meant that the audience-participation segment (basically the entire second act) floundered. The three actors have intellectualized their roles too much, allowing the characters to take on the sort of totemic weight the originators would have found abhorrent. And during the show’s madcap finale, when it should seem the three are racing against the clock, it feels like they’re simply meeting a deadline.”

The Santaland Diaries—Theater Wit

Christopher Piatt, Sun-Times—“In Theater Wit’s smart and bratty new production, the role of the fey, acrid Sedaris is played by Joe Foust, a choice as unlikely as Harvey Fierstein playing Ebenezer Scrooge. Foust, a founding member of Defiant from more than a decade ago, has neither the puckered sourpuss nor the sissified languor of actors who often inhabit the role. Instead, director Jeremy Wechsler encourages Foust to cast the queerness aside and play it like the punk that he is…Foust’s elf-for-hire is a loose cannon. His wily, cringing eyes and anti-cadence delivery make you think that at any minute he might break something.”

Kerry Reid, Reader—“What comes through most clearly in this Theater Wit production is the degree to which parents shamelessly use their children as props for their own narcissistic fantasies. Director Jeremy Wechsler and star Joe Foust haven’t yet found the balance between vinegar and sugarplums in this engaging tale—the homiletic denouement feels shoehorned in to leaven the script’s bile. But Foust’s easygoing charm, Sedaris’s undeniable smarts, and Joe Wade and Sean McIntosh’s toy-box set help the show go down like mulled wine.”

Tim Sauers, Gay Chicago—“Of course, without a charismatic, devilish actor and deft direction, the piece would fail rather miserably, but thanks to Joe Foust’s drop-dead comic delivery and thoughtful, reflective tone guided by the appropriately paced and timed work of director Jeremy Wechsler, the staging sings the right spirited song. Mara Blumenfield dons Faust in merry Elfin attire that Foust incorporates quite well, and Joey Wade’s childlike department store Santaland setting serves as the backdrop for this fully realized rendition that does justice to Sedaris’ work.”

Save Me From Myself—The Mammals

Nick Green, Reader—“[Playwright Bob] Fisher’s latest, Save Me From Myself (the second part of a projected noir trilogy that opened with last year’s Breed With Me), follows a man with self-induced amnesia as he encounters a series of double-dealing ingénues and nattily dressed heavies. In light of the pains the script takes to set a hard-boiled tone, the play’s macabre denouement is a bit of a bait and switch. Still Fisher displays restraint even as the show plows into penny-dreadful territory; it’s like Dario Argento putting flowers on the grave of Raymond Chandler.”

“It’s not overstating things to say that Star Wars fans are, speaking charitably, a unique breed.”—Jeff Vrabel reviewing The One-Man Star Wars Trilogy in the Sun-Times.