Plays of Note Richard III comes

THEATER

Le : Richard III at Promethean Theatre Ensemble. Right: Two Trains Running at Court Theatre STEVEN TOWNSHEND (DISTANT ERA)/MICHAEL BROSILOW

OPENING

RTyrant times Richard III comes alive in all his malevolence with Promethean.

Steve Scott directs a storefront production of Shakespeare’s wallow into the nature of unadorned power-lust and demagoguery. With a minimal set—a couple benches, steps with a recess to indicate the space for a throne—and little in the way of choreography or any other theatrical gimmickry, Promethean Theatre Ensemble leaves the Bard’s words to work their hard magic. Cameron Feagin commands the stage in the titular role, playing Richard as a self-aware villain, profoundly fl awed but unable to stop himself from conniving his way to the prize he’s convinced himself should be his, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Putting on a play about a tyrant at this moment may either be too on the nose or just timely, depending on your point of view, but in either case, I was moved listening to Feagin reciting words that simultaneously bring Richard his greatest triumph and seal his fate. The Richards of our time possess neither his self-awareness, nor are likely to get their just deserts, as he does. The rest of the cast acquits themselves just fi ne, but it is when Feagin speaks that the play comes alive. I sometimes wished it was a monologue because, like every monomaniac, Richard doesn’t truly see anyone else except for how they may be of use to him. They’re all mere shadows next to his engulfi ng need for complete control. Evil is vanquished in Shakespeare’s play, but I didn’t walk out onto Howard Street feeling things would be OK. I don’t think I was meant to. There’s no way back from where Richard takes us. —DMITRY SAMAROV RICHARD III Through 6/25: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, prometheantheatre.org, $30 ($25 seniors/$15 students).

Cruise control

Seven Days at Sea highlights the love lives of older women.

Margaret Knapp directs the world premiere of Martha Hansen’s fi rst play (presented by Light and Sound Productions) about fi ve women on an Alaskan cruise— each hoping to sight something other than a bunch of glaciers. Bailey (Hansen) is a chattering busybody looking for a fi rst love late in life, Cora (Judi Schindler) is sliding into dementia and using the cruise as a last hurrah, Teresa (Millie Hurley) is freshly divorced and accompanying her cancer-survivor bestie, Audrey (Adrianne Cury), while cruise director Gloria (Stacie Doublin), there to make sure the ladies have a good time, winds up meeting some needs of her own.

These women are good company and the issues they grapple with ring true, but the structure of the play does them no favors. Comprised of what seem like dozens of fi ve-minute-or-less scenes, it’s as if Hansen is afraid her audience will get bored if she lingers or leans in too much. The stage set (designed by Michelle Lilly) is dominated by three beds, the middle of which is stowed away under the ship deck, then brought back out about ten times. During several of these changes, the poor stagehand tasked with handling the bed struggled to jam it behind the decorative panel. I mention this not to point out a bit of opening-night jitters, or a rough spot to iron out, but as an emblem of a piece of drama that’s trying too hard. As she writes in the program, Hansen wants to give voice to older women, who are o en not much heard from. She succeeds in that. Let’s hope next time she also lets them breathe a bit. —DMITRY SAMAROV SEVEN DAYS AT SEA Through 6/5: Thu-Sat 7 PM, Sun 3 PM; Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway, lightandsoundproductions.org, $40 ($30 seniors/$20 students).

RDiner dialogues Two Trains Running gets a superb revival at Court.

This is an impeccable production of a play whose weaknesses outweigh its considerable strengths. It’s the 1960s episode of August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, tracing a century of life in the African American Hill District, and urban renewal shadows everything. (Jack Magaw’s set presents this vividly.) The diner where the play takes place is nearly empty of customers but remains the community center for half a dozen men, each with his own fi xed idea of how to get happy or rich or out of there. Their monologues suggest that the title’s “two trains” represent the material and spiritual worlds—the latter indomitable, while the former ebbs and fl ows in a pattern no one can understand.

So far, so fi ne. But as Chekhov says, if you bring a gun onstage in act one, you have to shoot it in act two. So Wilson’s decision to supply one character with an enormous gasoline can during a conversation about fi re insurance seems ill-judged, unless this is a prose poem rather than a play. The happy ending is unearned. And the one woman (waitress Risa, played by Kierra Bunch) gets nothing to do and little to say: mostly she’s talked about instead of talking.

But nothing can undermine the ensemble’s superb work under Ron OJ Parson’s sensitive direction. A.C. Smith and Alfred H. Wilson, two of Chicago’s foremost interpreters of the playwright’s work, handle the famously iterative dialogue with their trademark fl uency. They are fi rst among equals in a cast which wears its awesome skill lightly. But special laurels for Joseph Primes, who manages to make two lines of dialogue endlessly repeated into an entire life story. —KELLY KLEIMAN TWO TRAINS RUNNING Through 6/12: WedFri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 2 and 7:30 PM; Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, 773-753-4472, courttheatre.org, $37.50$84. v