“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”

Written by Dale Wasserman based on the book by Ken Kesey

Showing: Open Eye Productions at Strawdog Theatre Company, 3829 N. Broadway, through Aug. 11

Tickets: $20

Phone: (773) 528-9696

By Brian Kirst

Contributing writer

In the mid-1960s, Ken Kesey and his group of friends, the “Merry Pranksters,” drove across the country in a school bus attempting to create art out of everyday life. In their current powerful revival of Dale Wasserman’s “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” adapted from Kesey’s seminal book, Open Eye Productions effectively does the opposite. They incisively make art seem like everyday life. This may never give them the worldwide attention accorded to the Oscar-winning film version starring Jack Nicholson, but it does establish them as providing one of the most masterful theater experiences of the Chicago summer season.

Inspired by Kesey’s volunteer work as a drug-testing guinea pig at a veteran’s hospital in 1959, “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” tells the now-familiar tale of societal rebel Randle McMurphy. Rather than serve jail time, the occasionally violent McMurphy opts to be sentenced into a mental institution. McMurphy immediately is horrified by how the patients, many self-committed, are treated by the well-meaning but wrong doing Nurse Ratched. With a wily bombastic manner, McMurphy begins to spread change throughout the asylum and teaches the timid, doubtful inhabitants to begin to think for themselves. Of course, the controlling Ratched is none too pleased and both comedic mayhem and devastating emotional losses occur before the final lights fade to closing.

Beginning with the psychedelic rock music blaring out during the pre-show moments, director Christopher Maher perfectly sets his tone. He also directs his noteworthy cast with scalpel-like precision. Maher lovingly manipulates his performers like quirky, emotionally charged dancers across Meghan Gates’ perfectly white, completely institutional set. Importantly, Maher also sets up Kesey’s beloved Chief character with a poetic mysticism and an acute heart that lingers long after the production finishes.

Indeed, every member of the ensemble proficiently and accurately creates believable characters. As McMurphy, Mark Pracht begins things with a generic boisterousness. Soon, though, he has etched a fascinating and constantly conflicted personage that manages to tie the audience to him with iron heartstrings. Anne Sheridan Smith, as Ratched, is Pracht’s equal, adeptly providing us with a lonely woman whose cruelness is laced with a true desire to accomplish good. As Chief Bromden, Manny Sosa provides the soul of the show. His powerful, emotionally wrought speeches caress and overwhelm with beauty. As Billy, Anderson Lawfer is the perfect mixture of scattered comedic timing and emotional fragility. Kevin M. Grubb shines with sarcastic intellect as the fearfully closeted Dale Harding. Sam Bianchini, Norman Bowers, Bradford Stevens, David Goodloe and Rachel Crane also fully connect with detailed precision in smaller roles.

Ultimately, one may recall that the favorite mantra of the members of Kesey’s traveling “Merry Pranksters” was “You’re either on the bus or off the bus!” Thankfully, Open Eye Productions is definitely “on the bus” with their incisive, emotionally chilling production of “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.”

“Robin Hood”

Written by Scott Lynch-Giddings

Showing: Oak Park Festival Theatre, Austin Gardens, Forest Avenue and Lake Street, Oak Park, through Aug. 25

Tickets: $25

Phone: (708) 445-4440

By Lawrence Bommer

CFP theater editor

‘Tis pity that Shakespeare never wrote a play about Robin Hood. But despaireth not. A “lost play” from 1596, the next best thing is Chicago actor Scott Lynch-Giddings’ remarkable Shakespeare imitation, a “fanciful historie of that most notable and fameous outlaw Robyn Hood.” True to the Bard (iambic pentameter, groaner puns, rhyming couplets, tedious jokes, grandiloquent metaphors), Lynch-Gidding’s pseudo-Shakespeare, now in a rollicking open-air revival in Oak Park’s Austin Gardens, also recalls the best of his comedies.

Most closely resembling “As You Like It,” “Robin Hood” substitutes Sherwood Forest for the Forest of Arden, features the heroine (Maid Marian) donning male attire like Rosalind in order to accomplish what petticoats cannot, and imagines an alternative arboreal world to the corrupt Duke (here, of course, the vile Sheriff of Nottingham and his wicked protector, the usurping fiend Prince John).

The subject fits like a skin. Shakespeare, who according to legend was arrested for poaching on a nobleman’s preserve, would have sympathized with the Merry Men: Loyally awaiting rightful King Richard’s return from the Crusades, Robin’s freedom fighters defend the poor against the predations of John and his vicious henchmen. Pursuing persuasive parallels, Lynch-Giddings suggests links between plucky Robin and rowdy Prince Hal and between rotund Friar Tuck and rascally Falstaff (from “Henry IV”).

While preserving a rollicking plot familiar from the Errol Flynn and Kevin Costner vehicles, Lynch-Giddings gives his folk hero a touch of Hamlet’s melancholy. A philosophical Robin regrets “the workings of the world, this rack of greed and pride.”

Free of anachronisms, the verse faithfully imitates Shakespeare’s jog-trot cadences, his passion for soaring similes, even the bawdy wordplay and tedious raillery. Though the deliberate rhyming at times resembles a clone of Richard Wilbur’s Moliere translations, overall “Robin Hood” heartily rewards its great inspiration.

Despite an over-plotted second act, Kevin Theis’ rip-snorting 140-minute staging moves matters swiftly, fueled by a literally dashing ensemble who never met a sword fight they didn’t like. Christopher Prentice’s resourceful Robin, Steve Pickering’s deliciously venal Sheriff, Meredith Siemsen’s deftly androgynous Maid Marian, and Alex Reimers’ scurrilous Prince John leave both nothing and everything to the imagination, while David Elliott’s Friar Tuck and Steve Lenz’ Will Scarlock convey the rough and ready extremes of Robin’s band of wealth distributors. Plus there’s a real forest here, enough to make this neo-Shakespeare fully earn its source.

“The Ville”

Written by Bare Boned Theatre

Showing: Monday nights at Mary’s Attic, 5400 N. Clark St., open end

Tickets: $10

Phone: (773) 764-7645

By Brian Kirst

Contributing writer

With stylish clarity, the brand new Bare Boned Theatre has discovered, as did previous generations, that sometimes it’s just about the knack! In the 1980s, The Knack, a power pop band, ruled the radio airwaves; providing sweet solace to young adults consumed with position and monetary indulgences. In the 1990s The Knack provided that same escape for the angst ridden participants of the “Reality Bites” phenomenon. Now with Bare Boned’s diverting “The Ville,” The Knack comes home, once again; this time in an ironic, sexy cover of “My Sharona” by the show’s artful house band, Mary’s Addicts. This turned-out version of the popular love song is the perfect compliment to the characters contained in “The Ville”—a witty, proud contemporary queer generation still wracked with self-doubt and cut short by lost dreams.

Granted, comedy is still the name of the game here in this ambitious project. Whether in the form of drunken escapades or snappy retorts, there is much humor on display in this modern soap opera. With episodes set to change the first Monday of every month, this first go-round introduces us to the characters of “The Ville”—the residents of modern Clark Street and the surrounding gay-friendly neighborhoods. It is Pride Day and lovers connect for the first time and discover flaws in solid relationships; some break apart completely. One sweet character takes the long route to coming out and her divine acceptance provided by “Stevie Wonder and a beautiful lady in white” is one of the first show’s highlights. Overall, the characters are likeably relatable and worthy of future exploration.

Head writer Jeffrey A. Bouthiette and crew provide the actors with splendid material to sink their teeth into. The incorporation of the beguiling all-girl house band is an exciting concept that one hopes also gets more play in future installments. Director Rebekah Walendzak handles the wide-ranging action with enthusiastic aplomb. Despite some minor set change foibles, Walendzak smoothly accomplishes her intricate goals, perfectly incorporating the Mary’s Attic space into the drama and allowing it to freely become a major reference point in the activities.

The young cast shines under Walendzak’s attention, providing subtle shadings to even the most stock characters. Anna Schlegel’s Lainey is a heartwarming mix of confusion and hope. Jayson Brooks provides a sensitive emotional backbone to his sexually adventurous former jock. Mary Hollis Inboden is a master of comic timing. She perfectly enunciates the emotional wreckage of her drunken Denise, a set adrift mother and lover. Mike Simmer maintains perfect balance between the sensitive and the extreme with his three well thought characterizations. Kristen Pickering rounds things out with a competent dose of grace and sensuality.

While some first-time theater companies might have suffered under the weight of such ambitions, thankfully Bare Boned Theater has the knack—and more importantly, the talent—to carry this entertaining vision out. One can surely look forward to more entertaining exploits from the characters in the comical, emotionally exploratory “The Ville.”