THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

BY SCOTT C. MORGAN

A 10-year anniversary is more than an apt time to look back and reflect. But instead of just staying stuck in the past, Teatro Luna also looks to its future with a revamped take on an earlier show called Generic Latina.

GL 2010: Not Your Generic Latina uses the revue format of sketches, monologues and songs to explore the diversity of Latina lives today. First time director and show developer Miranda Gonzalez has certainly culled a wealth of great and touching material for GL 2010 from nine writers ( many doubling as performers ) , even if the show started weakly on opening night.

Perhaps it was Gonzalez's teary-eyed and overlong introduction to the show, which was more appropriate as a post-show curtain speech. Or maybe opening-night jitters briefly got the better of cast member and hip-hop lyricist Marilyn Camacho, who sounding underpowered against the over-amplified music. Her initial attitude lacked the insouciance inherent in her lyrics celebrating Latina pride and diversity.

Thankfully, everything vastly improved to defy initial impressions to make GL 2010 a very funny and touching exploration of modern Latina lives. Every performer gets a chance to shine in a thought-provoking monologue ( often autobiographical ) and prove her comic skills while doing really fun character work in sketches touching upon issues like American biases against the Latino community, homophobia within the community and economic class disparities.

One recurring sketch involves three Latina mothers dishing about their grown kids and modern changes in society. Called the "Comrades," Andrea Morales, Jessi Perez and Camacho each hilariously inhabit these women who are forever tapping on the window to remind their kids that Mama is watching.

Notions of skin paleness are interestingly contrasted by Morales in the context of Brazilian culture which prizes tanned beauties, and by Marie Antoinette Flores on her ability to pass for Caucasian in suburban Lombard. A very personal reflection on a name change by Lauren Villegas is also impressive for its celebration of Latina matriarchal strength.

Squeaky-voiced Maria Alyssandra Ortiz also stands out a plenty, particularly in comic sketches involving a young girl attracted to Will Smith on TV ( despite her grandmother's racist protestations ) and a dramatic one involving a lesbian who is cut off from her family.

Perez might not be fully articulate about her love/hate ( mostly hate ) relationship with the musical West Side Story, but she does offer some strong points about how individuals from a minority group can feel culturally misappropriated.

The great strides and drawbacks for Latinas in America are thoroughly and thoughtfully explored throughout GL 2010. But the great thing about Teatro Luna's production is that instead of feeling like a lecture, it's a welcoming celebratory of cultural pride and identity.

THEATER REVIEW

Low Down Dirty Blues Playwright: Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman At: Northlight Theatre,

9501 Skokie, Skokie. Tickets: 847-673-6300; www.northlight.org; $39-$54 Runs through: July 3

BY JONATHAN ABARBANEL

A kick-ass club act needs energy flowing both FROM the stage and TO the stage. Even the most pumped performers need some return on investment, and that's missing at Northlight Theatre. The middle-aged-and-up ( and almost exclusively white ) audiences for this show may be knowledgeable about The Blues—any reasonably hip child of the 1960's should be—and are attentive, but they just don't get a groove on.

Then again, there isn't a lot to groove about in Low Down Dirty Blues. It's a pleasant 85-minute revue performed by a talented veteran company, but it doesn't have a strong presence or make an overall emotional impression. Mostly this can be laid at the feet of creators Randal Myler and Dan Wheetman, who've assembled it from a series of bland choices.

It's set in a typical small club/tavern ( authentically designed by Jack Magaw ) , Big Mama's, and Big Mama herself ( Sandra Reaves-Phillips ) welcomes the crowd ( the audience ) . She calls on three regulars to take turns rendering songs, which they introduce with brief and generic personal stories neither deep enough nor fresh enough to be of value. The show doesn't purport to be a history of The Blues and it certainly isn't, conveying no info at all about the various songs offered. Couldn't Myler and Wheetman find some way to give the show more depth and consequence?

The 22 songs themselves aren't pure blues, strictly speaking, as several are drawn from jazz, R&B and gospel idioms. Overwhelmingly, the songs focus on sexual double-entendre party blues ( "Don't you jump my pony if you can't ride" ) , and on familiar and/or upbeat numbers such as "I Got My Mojo Workin'," "Baby What You Want Me to Do" and "Born Under a Bad Sign." Those seeking, say, Delta blues will find only a hint in guitarist James A. Perkins, Jr.'s bottleneck licks on "Shake Your Money Maker." Surprisingly, there are few songs of heartbreak or hard times, both mainstays of The Blues. There's even one out-and-out folk song written and performed by cast member Mississippi Charles Bevel, his "Grapes of Wrath," which he plays and sings beautifully.

The company features singers Beval, Reaves-Phillips, Felicia P. Fields and Gregory Porter, and the instrumental trio of Perkins, Frank Menzies ( acoustic piano ) and Michael Manson ( bass ) . All seven are skillful and versatile masters of their material, and all are capable of so much more. Why, for example, do we wait for the curtain calls for ( too-brief ) instrumental solos? The company delivers what is asked of them and it's very good and often fun, but so little is asked of them. Ya' can't force an audience to shout, but ya' can give 'em something to shout about and see where it goes.

THEATER REVIEW

No Exit. Playwright: Jean-Paul Sartre. At: The Hypocrites at the Athenaeum, 2936 N. Southport. Phone: 800-982-2787; $20-$25. Runs through: July 11

BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE

You know the story by now: the stuffy room in Hotel Hades occupied by three unpleasant people with nothing to do for eternity but to get on each other's nerves. Experienced playgoers also know that its author was a philosopher, not a playwright—expertise making for fascinating dialogue, but minimal physical action. And so however irresistible performers may find this enigmatic scenario, for audiences, visual boredom is too often an additional torment to those featured in Jean-Paul Sartre's unique vision of Hell.

But not with Sean Graney at the helm, under whose direction this well-worn classic all but shimmers with imagination and energy: the infernal parlor now sports shocking-pink walls arranged in forced perspective and accessed by a drop-shutter door leading, upon utterance of the password "boom", to a dark and smoky void like the inside of a furnace. The smirking valet is dressed in Napoleon drag. The furniture consists of a naked male mannequin and three chairs widely varying in comfort. A pair of globes conceal video and audio components—at a touch, incidental music ranging from "I Want Candy" to "Don't Stand So Close To Me" may suddenly compound the sensory overload. Lipstick and toothpaste are called into play for writing on, or sticking things onto, the aforementioned day-glo walls, and a purseful of small change clatters over the floor. Even the clothes worn by the doomed inmates ( one of whom is initially done up to look suspiciously like the playwright ) are booby-trapped with invocations of the play's theme.

Swaddled in decor vibrant enough to dance the oba-oba by itself, the actors can't afford to wallow in twitchy Stanislavskian subtleties, but must plunge immediately into physicality, amplifying their personae's kinetic response while still allowing the frustration that fuels it to gradually increase in intensity over the 90 minutes of the production's duration. And if the results sometimes veer irreverently close to slapstick, the doomed adversaries romping and shrieking like children on the nanny's day off—well, doesn't Sartre, himself, finally proffer his existential prisoners escape in the form of an irony-fueled laughter that liberates them from their pain, in turn guiding them to acceptance of their fate? Whoever said that damnation had to be gloomy?

THEATER REVIEW

Inherit the Whole

Playwright: Dana Lynn Formby. At: Mortar Theatre Company at the Athenaeum, 2936 N. Southport. Phone: 773-935-6860; $20. Runs through: June 27

BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE

"WHY IS THIS FAMILY SO DRAMATIC?" bellows its most vocal member after breaking down the front door less than five minutes into the play. The answer is soon apparent—because Dana Lynn Formby, the author of this world premiere drama, has endowed her filial unit with the juiciest premise for free-floating conflict since Titus Andronicus.

The year is 1984 and we are in a remote cabin in the Colorado Rockies. The Cranzin clan patriarch—a drunken, sadistic badass, by all reports—has just died, presumably by his own hand. He leaves three grown sons, all suffering varying degrees of psychological damage as a result of their abusive sire ( Doug is also a Vietnam war veteran, compounding his pain ) . Paul and Jake's wives are likewise afflicted by fallout from the ties that bind—Lisa clings to the submissive role prescribed by her church, while Kaiann ( pronounced "kay-ANN, like the pepper" ) chafes under guilt engendered by their invalid daughter's hospitalization. Also figuring prominently in the exposition are two guns and a knife, handed round with curious nonchalance by their owners—oh, and a cache of gold allegedly buried under the cabin floor by the late Papa Cranzin.

There's enough potential upheaval in these elements to fuel a nine-season soap opera, but Jason Boat's direction has his cast arriving onstage at such a high level of intensity that there's nowhere for them to go for the rest of the two hours it takes to exhaust all the issues and options. ( Imagine August: Osage County with the story starting at the "I'm in charge here" speech. ) The otherwise capable actors have no recourse but to coast along on their own momentum as they dutifully recite the this-is-the-cross-I-bear monologues which Formby has thoughtfully provided for each one and to recoil in appropriate shock at the obligatory power switcheroos that flare up, only to die quickly—keeping the status quo intact—until there are only two solutions left. Both, predictably, involve the aforementioned firearms.

It's no crime to bite off more than you can chew, however. ( Did I mention the repeated negotiations regarding division of the loot? Or the trenchful of fragrant soil shoveled up in full view of the audience? ) If Mortar Theatre's inaugural production often staggers under the weight of its own ambitions, there's still sufficient talent and expertise in evidence to earn it a second chance to achieve its goals.

THEATER REVIEW

Celebrity Autobiography

Playwright: Various celebrities. At: The Royal George Theatre, 1641 N. Halsted. Phone: 312-988-9000; $32.50-$39.50. Run through: Open run

BY JERRY NUNN

Many fans love a good celebrity autobiography. It can give them a chance to peer into the mind of a rich and famous person. While audiences love to build up a star, they can have just as much fun tearing them down.

This production was created by Eugene Pack from studying over 300 autobiographies, books on tape and memoirs. The words are not changed and each performer simply stands on a blank stage with a microphone to read excerpts from selected works.

The show has played for the past two years in New York off-Broadway but is looking for a possible new home in Chicago on a monthly basis.

While there is a rotating cast of comedians and actors, a recent performance included Scott Adsit, Tim Kazurinsky and Laura Kightlinger. It was my celebrity interview, Mario Cantone, who stole the show with constant mugging and slight looks to the audience. A few of the performers milked the material a bit too much, although the material seemed to lend itself that way. It was easy to tell the performers were having fun and bringing the audience along with them for the ride.

The stories came to life when the speakers changed their voices or facial expressions to suit the celebrity. With celebs such as Ivana Trump, Sylvester Stallon and Zsa Zsa Gabor, the camp factor was high. Some selections were very unusual—such as those on Kenny Loggins and Suzanne Somers—providing laughs from the crowd. More current biographies, such as Tiger Woods' and 'N Sync's, appealed to younger audience members. The problem with going back too far is that fame is fleeting and sometimes viewers won't understand all the inside jokes, such as with Elizabeth Taylor or Debbie Reynolds.

What really seemed to entertain was to see the cast come together and combine different readings together. The Loni Anderson and Burt Reynolds medley rang true with a gum-chewing Scott Adsit spot-on with his characterization.

There is a powerful lesson contained in the show for celebrities themselves: Watch the use of puns and resist the temptation to cash in on 15 minutes of fame.

There is talk of this production running once a month. With plenty of material to choose from, these readings could go on a lifetime.

Editor's note: The Chicago premiere of Celebrity Autobiography was on the weekend of April 30. At present there are no firm plans to bring the off-Broadway show back to Chicago. But we would like to run this Celebrity Autobiography review just in case the show's producers would like to try again in the Windy City.