Theater Reviews

Jet Black Chevrolet/Chicago Reader

Thu, 22 Jun 2006 01:00:00 -0400

Ace director Beau O’Reilly keeps the first act of Scott T. Barsotti’s pretentious new drama from sinking under its own weight. But not even he (or Gil Rocha's cool drawings on a black wall) can save the second act. The play begins as a seemingly existential dialogue between a fed-up husband and his recluse wife (a nice turn by Debbie Safeblade in this School of the Art Institute/Curious Theatre Branch production), who's focused her paralyzing panic on a mysterious Chevy parked in front of their

Sisters 3.0/Chicago Reader

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 17:22:30 -0400

Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, about the yearnings of a family in a small Russian town, is a resilient play, able to withstand the gimmicks and hysterical acting of this multimedia Big Picture Group production. Director Roger Bechtel clearly has a vision of what he wants the play to look like--the coldly contemporary black, white, and red set he's designed includes large empty spaces. And he moves people around well, but this staging's random video imagery only distracts from the relationships o