An action movie, practically by definition, has a plot that only serves as an excuse for as many high-octane combat/chase/explosion sequences as possible. Character development? What characters? We recognize the characters from the moment they appear as standard archetypes. Dialogue? If it's not clever, snappy and short, audiences will complain that there's too much of a lull between the action sequences. Relationship? Relationship only exists to allow for nudity or heighten the stakes when the sidekick/child/member of the opposite sex is put in danger.

It's a formulaic genre, which makes it ripe for spoofing, and Defiant Theatre has turned this kind of spoof into something of a franchise with Action Movie: The Play. First appearing in 1998, the fourth installment returns to the show's roots with a less-than-coherent plot about a Vietnam veteran, who plans to take over the world with a mystical paperweight and the team of heroes who assemble to stop him. Actually, most of the play introduces the heroes one by one—the actual attempt to stop the evil Kreeger (Kurt Ehrmann) makes up less than half of the action.

At its best, Action Movie finds a truly enjoyable blend of inventiveness and insanity. A fight from car tops with chain saws provides a nice surprise factor. The climactic combat between Stone Hardgod (John Maclay) and Pike Calypso (Samuel Munoz) centering around a ladder provides a Jackie Chan-esque sequence that goes on and on without becoming repetitive or boring. The lab scene that introduces the obligatory computer genius, Alec Smarty (Noah Simon) gets points on the pure randomness of disco.

Much of the play, however, doesn't reach these heights. Because there is no plot to speak of, the only way to keep the audience's attention is to keep the dial turned up to 10 on the action, but the necessities of a live show keep things between a 6 and an 8 most of the time. We lose downtime to scene changes. The combat sequences seem a hair slow and not unique enough to make up for that. The dialogue really doesn't even attain the cleverness of an actual action movie (one exception is Ehrmann, who has many of the best lines and has certainly found the style of his villain), and when it does is partially foiled by the terrible acoustics on the Chopin mainstage. And the pace, despite the show's 90 minute length, seems slow, as though Defiant fell a little too in love with its source material.

Still, fans of the genre will forgive the slow spots for the payoffs (true of even the best action movies), and certainly Defiant gets kudos for stretching the limits of their budget to present a truly epic spectacle. It would be great to see the script tighten up and get pushed farther to its limits, in which case they'd have a truly astounding show. As it is, Defiant has a fun one, despite its flaws, and it's certainly worth enjoying.

Action Movie: The Play—Defiant Theatre

Michael Phillips, Tribune—"Judging from the whoops of Defiant Theatre friends and fans Sunday at the Chopin Theatre, there's plenty of energetically crass life left in the play—loosely defined, that's what it is, a 'play'—written and staged by Joe Foust and Richard Ragsdale, perhaps after a series of Old Style 'n' Cheetos benders…The lamer jokes in Action Movie could be papered over with sharper pacing, less languid scene shifts and a sense that someone, or two someones, actually directed it. As is, it runs about 105 minutes with no intermission. The show cries out for a 20-minute trim or, at the very least, a break after the exhilaratingly silly sequence involving hand-to-hand combat atop two speeding cars."

Nick Green, Reader—"The production gets by instead on its dismantling of the genre and its virtuosic displays of stunts and fight choreography. But pacing remains a problem: even after two revisions and a quasi sequel, Action Movie: The Play is too methodical given its sources. There's a decided lack of momentum during the hour of exposition it takes to introduce all the characters. And even the best-executed stunts can't hold a candle to the show's breathtakingly boisterous opening credits sequence. Ingratiating performances by some of the original cast members—especially Jennifer Gehr, gleefully profane as a police sergeant—justify the price of admission. Still, this is an oddly disjointed staging technically unsuited to the Chopin space."

Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—"Back also are most of the original cast, as agile as five years earlier, reveling in their gleefully vulgar verbal and visual humor (in particular Michele Di Maso and Lisa Rothschiller, coolly engaging in gynecentric fighting tactics too risqué for the male-oriented violence found in mainstream cinema). They are assisted by such venerable low-tech devices as false-perspective scene painting, ingeniously crafted puppets, a head-banging original score by the UK band Prank, several black-clad Koken (Japanese theatre's invisible "prop men") and a quick-draw Foleyman Rick Lockett supplying an endless array of split-second smacks and salvos."

I Never Sang for my Father—Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Michael Phillips, Tribune—"Robert Anderson's typically overemphatic stage directions may call for the son to act 'touched' and 'embarrassed' and 'uncomfortable' all at once, but (Kevin) Anderson—the actor, that is, not the playwright—refuses to milk the pathos. The entire production is like that. From its austere gray and sepia-toned photographic projections, drawn from the collection of director Anna D. Shapiro's own father, to the easeful realism of the young performer (Mattie Hawkinson) who gets one scene as a waitress, this is a thoroughly inhabited staging, uniformly well-acted, respectful of the text. If the text were really good, you'd have one amazing evening."

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—"Stripped of all but the most minimal signposts of life—a bed, a table, an easy chair, a wheelchair and a handful of evocative projected images—the emotionally blistering revival of Robert Anderson's I Never Sang for My Father that opened last weekend at Steppenwolf Theatre goes straight to the damaged psyches of its characters. The principal actors—John Mahoney, Kevin Anderson, Deanna Dunagan and Martha Lavey—are all that matter here. And under the fiercely disciplined direction of Anna D. Shapiro, they are all splendid."

Kerry Reid, Reader—"Steppenwolf's revival is one of the most emotionally jolting productions I've seen in months. In Anna D. Shapiro's sensitive staging, the set pieces are stripped to the barest essentials, which allows this show about old wounds to breathe on new terms. John Mahoney's performance as Tom Garrison—a man his son says 'always lived on the edge of exasperation'—is a marvel of carefully constructed nuance…Tom has a push-pull relationship with his deeply conflicted son, Gene, who acts as the narrator of this memory play. Kevin Anderson never succumbs to the temptation to milk Gene's monologues for pathos, and he wears the character's confused sense of defeat like a well-worn overcoat. The final wrenching encounter between the two is simply masterful."

Web Behrens, Free Press—"There's an undeniable emotional grab to Father, fueled by the storied Steppenwolf ensemble acting and featuring John Mahoney and Kevin Anderson as an aging father and conflicted son. The drama succeeds despite playwright Robert Anderson's irksome script, which peddles some peculiar psychiatric tropes. With leisurely pacing and simple staging on an austere set, director Anna D. Shapiro nurtures the feeling of distance that permeates the lives of the Garrison family. The result, paradoxically, makes you care both more and less about their very privileged plight."

Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—"Under Anna D. Shapiro's intelligent direction, however, a cast dominated by Steppenwolf alumni contribute performances of uncommon restraint. John Mahoney delivers as three-dimensional a portrait as could be wished of a jealous patriarch angered by his offspring's enjoyment of the privileges engendered by his labor, while Kevin Anderson deftly sidesteps all traces of whining self-pity in conveying Gene's longing for escape from his guilt-riddled past. Deanna Dunagan redeems Anderson's idealized portrait of Garrison materfamilias, but Martha Lavey, her voice as strident as a bugle call, fares less well as the embittered daughter."

Rocket Man—House Theatre of Chicago

Michael Phillips, Tribune—"For committed, blinded-by-the-light fans of the House Theatre, the Dallas-sprung company's newest show—a 1950s-styled science-fiction affair called The Rocket Man—may prove a particular drag. Under Nathan Allen's direction, playwright Phillip C. Klapperich's ode to Ray Bradbury, 'Forbidden Planet' and a million other space adventures offers a wonderful fight sequence, with slow-mo Matrix moves and an extended dance break. It takes nearly two hours to get to that fight, however. Two hours! Prior to that, scene by windbag scene, it's near-death by expositional asphyxiation."

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—"The Rocket Man is from the land of comic books and superheroes—things that, frankly, were as minor a part of my upbringing as Barbie dolls. So I found much of this tale of a young Earthling who grows up in the process of pursuing a beautiful Martian girl to be less than enthralling. Yet the show will no doubt attract a huge following with audiences in their teens and early 20s. On opening night, the latter were completely engaged in the slow-motion combat scenes, the simulated laser tricks, the tongue-in-cheek humor and the very retro 3-D glasses—all part of The House's trademark high-energy approach to storytelling."

Jack Helbig, Reader—"Even when Nathan Allen's staging veers toward camp, as when space launches are indicated by flimsy cardboard rockets and lots of smoke from a fog machine, we don't laugh; the tale Klapperich tells is too engrossing. The Rocket Man owes most to Ray Bradbury's 'The Martian Chronicles,' both for its details and for its general tone: Klapperich has Bradbury's sweet, literate, slightly old-fashioned style down cold, but without the sentimentality that makes Bradbury hard to take for anyone older than 15. A crack creative team and smart, energetic, capable actors (and one live DJ) help put this nicely written play across. Chris Mathews and Carolyn Defrin are especially moving as lovers who must literally cross the stars to hook up."

Nina Metz, New City—"'Slow, slow, slow.' That's the only note I took during the performance of House Theatre's The Rocket Man, an earthbound, sci-fi goof that is more Buck Rogers than Ray Bradbury. Saddled with a melodramatic script by ensemble member Phillip C. Klapperich, director Nathan Allen prolongs the broken-record exposition to the point of frustration…the troupe has proven its knack for arresting visuals and energetic theatrics. But whereas past productions have been both unwieldy and completely engaging, this one just seems lost in space. The tone is all wrong, earnest where it should be kitschy and tongue-in-cheek."

Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—"With tremendous energy, high spirits and admirable ingenuity the large cast and production team rev up The Rocket Man with enough physical action and shtick to fill Soldier Field. These actions—especially two wonderfully choreographed musical space fights—are the highlights of the show, yet they run contrary to the serious theme. Yeah, individual pieces work like gangbusters, but there's no unity of style or tone. The opening night audience wanted the entire thing to be a rock 'n' roll stone-cold gas and to hell with serious. The production too often caters to that taste rather than remaining true to the tale it tells."

Critic's Quote:

"There are times when the greatest theatrical thunder can be created simply by gathering a group of intensely focused actors on a bare stage, and letting them tear into a meaty score with everything they've got."—Hedy Weiss reviewing TimeLine's production of The Cradle Will Rock in the Sun Times.