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Theater Reviews for Centerstage Chicago

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A Very Neo-Futurist Christmas Special

Christmas is perhaps the easiest holiday to parody. All it takes is for Justin Timberlake to rhapsodize about gift-wrapping his dick or Stephen Colbert to don a red turtleneck and audiences will be tee-heeing until at least February. But the Neo-Futurists are not ones to be outdone by typical holiday antics involving Grandma’s fondness for Captain Morgan or slap-happy Saint Nicks. Continue reading…

Consume: A Grotesque Burlesque

If Hell had an open mic night, hosted by sexually precocious third graders, I imagine it’d be something like “Consume: A Grotesque Burlesque.” In a series of one-act performances (with the term “act” used loosely, as some of them were merely read aloud), “Consume” is a half-assed attempt at multi-media absurdity, where burgers masturbate and a lesbian can be seduced by a blow-up doll. Continue reading…

Funk It Up About Nothin’

Hip hop has come a long way from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, with a culture and influence that have traveled as far as Asia. It’s no surprise, then, that hip hop has made its way to Stratford-Upon-Avon in this cleverly stylized ad-rap-tation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” From the masterminds behind “Bomb-itty of Errors” comes “Funk It Up About Nothin’.” The Q Brothers, Jeffrey and Gregory Qaiyum, have given Shakespeare’s classic comedy an extreme makeover, converting it into an amply blinged powerhouse performance with six MCs and a live DJ scratchin’ beats throughout. Continue reading…

Macbeth

“Much madness is divinest sense / To a discerning eye” wrote the late, great Emily Dickinson, no doubt whilst wondering when all the King’s horses and all the King’s men would come put her back together again. And so similarly was the case with Macbeth, who could best any foe that challenged him on the battlefield, but could not stop his (or in this case, her) own mind from betraying itself.

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Clitoris Stories

You would think a play called “Clitoris Stories” would be more, well, stimulating. Instead, the entire production airs like a bad episode of Tyra Banks’s talk show, hosted by slumber-partying tweens who have just discovered their anatomy and need to giggle about it for two hours….There’s nothing revolutionary about the concept of the clitoris, which the play describes as “the last female taboo,” but it’s treated as such, with ample bitterness about the men who can’t find it, and terrible puns (“clit chat,” “here’s the rub,” etc.) followed by canned laughter from cast members at how “hilarious” it all is. Continue reading…