The end of 2014 is here, but I must admit that I personally cannot offer a properly judged "Ten-Best List" for the theater year. That's because there was no way for me to have seen every single show in and around Chicago, what with 115 different venues featuring performances of more than 200 member companies that are a part of the League of Chicago Theatres.
So instead, I offer a look back at the notable productions that I was able to catch in 2014, plus some important theater news to contemplate as we step into 2015.
Striking a nerve
Don't accuse Chicago theater artists of ignoring current events. Several new or new-to-Chicago dramas generated buzz by touching upon many issues that made headlines.
Ike Holter, already a playwright to watch thanks to his acclaimed take on the Stonewall Riots in Hit the Wall, really spurred conversation with the world premiere of his wildly acclaimed play Exit Strategy for Jackalope Theatre. The drama focused on teachers, an assistant principal and a student all reacting to a final year at a fictional South Side Chicago school earmarked for closure—a very touchy subject in light of several recent forced Chicago public-school shutdowns in the previous year.
Violence on Chicago's South Side was explored in two very well-received dramas: the world premiere of The Gospel of Lovingkindness, by Marcus Gardley, at Victory Gardens Theater and Nambi E. Kelley's new theatrical adaptation of Richard Wright's novel Native Son in a co-production with Court Theatre and American Blues Theater. The latter was in particular a taut and upsetting thriller that transcended its 1939 Chicago period setting as it followed a frightened young African-American man who becomes a murderer.
Health-care costs loomed large over two dramas prominently featuring gay and lesbian characters at American Theater Company. Stephen Karam's Pulitzer Prize-nominated Sons of the Prophet and his world premiere drama The Humans both very adroitly explored issues of faith, love and attraction and the fallibility of human bodies.
Laura Marks' intimate and shocking 2013 off-Broadway drama Bethany made a startling Chicago debut at the Gift Theatre as it tackled one woman's desperation to survive the Great Recession amid home foreclosures, a collapsing job market and government bureaucracy.
Midsize masters
Some of the most challenging and impressive musical performances in 2014 were not found on big Broadway-sized stages. Several midsize theater companies proved their mettle by tackling difficult shows in more compact spaces.
Who needs multimillion-dollar tilting hydraulic scenery when the Griffin Theatre can truly touch you with its masterful take on the musical Titanic in the smallest of three spaces at Theater Wit? And die-hard musical-theater fans should be singing the praises of Bailiwick Chicago for the bravery to tackle two Broadway flops like Carrie: The Musical and Michael John LaChuisa's version of The Wild Party. Both were seen in viscerally exciting productions.
Other top-notch intimate productions include Mercury Theater Chicago's Broadway-caliber take on Avenue Q and Porchlight Music Theatre's near-environmental approach to reviving Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Big-time competition
The suburban scene for top-notch musical theater is bound to get more competitive now that the Paramount Theatre in Aurora is eligible for the Equity Jeff Awards. The fact that the Paramount is producing shows like Cats, Les Miserables and Mary Poppins so soon after these musicals were seen at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire and Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrace offers audiences a chance to compare and contrast the strengths of each of these venues.
The Lyric Opera of Chicago is also continuing its experiment with producing post-season musical theater with a very well-attended opera-scale production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. But that doesn't mean the Lyric is neglecting its operatic core. Two of its best productions from 2014 included Sir David McVicar's approach to Dvorak's fairytale opera Rusalka, which conveyed environmental disaster and the crumbling of European monarchies on top its basic story of a water nymph who falls in love with a prince. There was also Robert Falls' dark and violent 1920s take on Mozart's serial seducer Don Giovanni that was full of welcome theatricality.
My kind of tryout town
Chicagoans had many opportunities to boast about seeing shows in Chicago before New York audiences. The world premiere of Sting's musical The Last Ship was a major event at the Bank of America Theatre this past summer, while tickets were scarce for the starry revival of Kenneth Lonergran's This is Our Youth at Steppenwolf Theatre Company ( unfortunately both shows haven't proved to be the major draws on Broadway as they were in Chicago ).
There's no word yet if the world-premiere musical Amazing Grace or if the Goodman Theatre's Jeff-Award-winning revival of Brigadoon are going beyond their Chicago berths, though the current Steppenwolf premiere of Lisa D'Amour's Airline Highway has already confirmed a Broadway date for April at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
There's also plenty of activity for Chicago productions that are headed off-Broadway. Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's The World of Extreme Happiness will be hosted by Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center Stage 1 in February after this scathingly dark look at factory workers in modern-day China previously played Chicago's Goodman Theatre and London's National Theatre.
Playwrights Horizons also has two acclaimed plays that made their world premieres in Chicago on its docket. Bruce Norris' sex swinger party comedy The Qualms, originally seen at Steppenwolf, arrives at Playwrights Horizons starting this May, while the Thanksgiving-set drama The Humans by Stephen Karam will make the leap from its recent production at American Theater Company to New York next fall.
Painful losses
The Chicago theater scene was a lot poorer due to some painful losses in 2014. Evanston-based Next Theatre couldn't overcome its financial troubles and unfortunately shut down. Next Theatre was celebrated for offering the Chicago-area premiere of Larry Kramer's AIDS drama The Normal Heart and the world premiere of the acclaimed musical Adding Machine.
We also saw the loss of actors Sati Word, Trinity P. Murdock, Bernie Yvon and Molly Glynn. The latter two both died on the same day: Sept. 6.
Yvon, a Broadway veteran with numerous credits at the Marriott Theatre and Drury Lane Theatre, was killed in a car accident as he was headed to a Saturday morning rehearsal of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown at Theatre at the Center in Munster, Ind.
And just hours earlier that same day, Glynn died from injuries suffered during a freak accident when an uprooted tree fell on her during a fast moving storm while bicycling with her husband, fellow actor Joe Foust, in Erickson Woods near Northfield the day before. Glynn had extensive theater credits in theaters ranging from Northlight Theatre in Skokie to Steppenwolf Theatre where she originated a role in the acclaimed drama Orange Flower Water.
Another major loss was the passing of Sheldon Patinkin, the chair of the Theater Department of Columbia College Chicago and an artistic consultant of The Second City, at the age of 79. Patinkin's influence was felt on generations of theater artists.
