It's year-end round-up time again.
As usual, we critics pontificate on the best and worst of 2009. But since no person can be everywhere at once ( especially in Chicago's thriving theater scene ) , the freelance theater critics at the Windy City Times are offering up "Nine of Mine" memorable moments from the past year ( plus one or two shows best left forgotten ) .
Why nine? We've already had three nine-named films in 2009 ( District 9, 9, Nine ) , so why not continue on with that theme? But don't be surprised if there are omissions, duplications or contradictions between each critic's personal lists.
Nine of mine that were memorable from 2009:
Cabaret: Drury Lane Oakbrook showed its daring with director Jim Corti's classy staging of Kander and Ebb's seductive 1960s musical. Drury Lane's Cabaret was closer to the spirit of the original Broadway stage production since it didn't try to ape the heroin-chic 1998 Broadway revival, nor did it shoehorn in any of the extra songs made famous by Liza Minnelli in the 1972 Bob Fosse film. Set amid the divine decadence of Weimar-era Germany, Corti staged the show as a literal nightmare that the show's protagonist has yet to truly wake from.
500 Clown and the Elephant Deal: 500 Clown confirmed its status as Chicago's premier troupe of artistic clowning comedy with this large-scale collaboration with composer/musician John Fournier. So what if the connection between its inspirational Brechtian source material, Man is Man, wasn't entirely apparent. 500 Clown created a fun romp exploring the onstage persona of a singing diva and the small backstage army ( with their own performing ambitions ) that do all sorts of grunt work to keep her shining throughout.
FRAT: We may not have learned anything new about the Greek System in Evan Linder's drama about four guys entering a college fraternity, but The New Colony's environmental and fluid staging within a recreation room of Lincoln Square's Dank-Haus was a master stroke by director Andrew Hobgood. The huge cast was also amazingly dedicated and fleet on their feet when it came to adjusting to each new space and dramatic scene.
The History Boys: TimeLine Theatre scored a palpable hit with the Chicago premiere of Alan Bennett's wildly acclaimed drama of North English students in the 1980s aiming for Cambridge and Oxford. Bennett's very human ode questioning the methods and purposes of teaching and learning history was wonderfully realized by director Nick Bowling, an amazing Chicago cast and Brian Sidney Bembridge's environmental set design.
The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later ( An Epilogue ) : More than 100 theaters across the world staged Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theatre Project's docu-drama follow-up to The Laramie Project on the 11th anniversary of gay college student Matthew Shepard's death ( About Face Theatre locally staged its reading of the play at the Goodman Theatre ) . While it may not surpass the impact of the original Laramie Project, this powerful sequel continues to create a dialogue in communities regarding the often contentious issues of hate crimes, LGTBQ tolerance and how the media shapes perceptions of what happened in history.
Lies & Liars: The final plot payoff in Margot Bordelon and Cassy Sanders' futuristic comic drama may have been a letdown, but everything else in Theatre Seven of Chicago's fun production was truly a winner. Bordelon and Sanders slickly staged their work amid Courtney O'Neill's orderly office sets that also allowed for inspired bursts of multimedia ( great work by video designer CJ Arellano and sound designer Christopher M. LaPorte ) . Each cast member was also physically and comically in sync with the play's sneaky humor.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and The Piano Lesson: Court Theatre and director Ron OJ Parson continue to go from strength to strength when it comes to producing great works by the late playwright August Wilson. An amazing cast of veteran actor-musicians helped to make Ma Rainey's Black Bottom a memorable experience, while The Piano Lesson played beautifully featuring a cast of Wilson veterans and newcomers.
A Minister's Wife: Local composer Joshua Schmidt followed up his off-Broadway hit Adding Machine by teaming up with playwright Austin Pendleton and lyricist Jan Tranen for a challenging and complex musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Candida at Writers' Theatre. While musically snippet structured work might not be for all tastes, it did heighten the dramas questions of when marriage turns people into possessions. The supremely talented cast did justice to this new and dramatically fascinating work.
Best left forgotten: There's no doubt that playwright Duane Scott Cerny tried to model his gay spoof Mrs. Hyde & the Case of the Gaslight Buggerings on works by drag masters Charles Busch and Charles Ludlam. But the resulting production by Even & Odd Theatricals was a misguided mess. Cerny's pun-filled script failed to be funny, campy or coherently structured.
Equally infuriating was Factory Theater's staging of Manny Tamayo's tattered and tawdry neo-noir Dead Wrong. This mystery thriller about a corrupt Chicago police detective deployed far too many plot tangents without building credible motivations for its many, many characters. Tamayo jerks the audience around with such a spotty script that by the time the shocking conclusion arrives ( complete with out-of-nowhere revelations regarding police-sanctioned snuff films, organ harvesting and a paperboy's paternity ) , you want to strangle him for wasting your valuable time.