iHole

Written by the GayCo ensemble

Showing: GayCo Productions at Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, through Oct. 20.

Tickets: $15

Contact: (800) 838-3006; www.gayco.com

By Web Behrens

Contributing writer

Proving it wants to be a full-service queer community hub, Center on Halsted has partnered with ever-entertaining GayCo Productions, Chicago’s homegrown comedy troupe that’s been bringing the yuks for 11 years now. It’s a great pairing: GayCo gets a home base (and hopefully some increased visibility), while the Center gets some levity in its programming.

With “iHole,” GayCo continues its excellent track record of reflecting upon GLBT life with insight as well as wit, while not being afraid to poke fun of ourselves in the process. Co-opting Apple computer’s ubiquitous marketing for the show’s smirky title as well as its structure (the names of the sketches appear on iPod-style graphics), one early bit includes a funny riff on how gay men flirt via their digital accessories. It gets even funnier as it builds to a perfect punchline, leaping into the future with an imaginary new iPhone feature that Steve Jobs is probably working on as you read this.

All night long, the GayCo-ers take smart advantage of a particular strength: their musicality. Not all comedic ensembles are as willing (nor, more to the point, as able) to launch into song, but GayCo’s got the innate talent to write their own or to tweak a favorite show-tune. This time, they snag the best number from “Chicago”—“We Both Reached for the Gun”—and turn it into a press conference with the Clintons, where Hilary is the dummy to Bill’s ventriloquist act. (Or is she?)

Later, there’s an original number that deserves its own recording—a jaunty yet deep solo about one guy’s journey through adult gay life and the price of assimilation. Until Logo gets a clue and gives GayCo its own show, we can at least hope for a YouTube clip. Normally performed by GayCo co-founder Andy Eninger, last weekend those singer-guitarist shoes were very successfully filled by Homer Marrs, who’s got some great pipes. (Before moving away from Chicago, Marrs performed with GayCo a few years back; now that he’s returned, here’s hoping we’ll see more of him.)

Other “iHole” sketches display further signs of a company maturing, including Judy Fabjance’s funny yet strikingly honest first-person monologue about her new role as a mother, which morphs into a hilarious production number with inept chorus boys. Indeed, the whole cast—rounded out by Jim Bennett, Kelly Beeman, Mandy Price and Robin Trevino—get plenty of opportunity to shine.

The only downside of the evening is a problem endemic to sketch comedy: the tendency for some skits to simply peter out rather than really conclude. Still, director Mary Beth Burns keeps everything humming at a good clip, abetted by accompanist Jimmy Morehead and choreographer Elizabeth Lentz. Through it all, the six-member cast’s sense of fun spreads infectiously, and the revue, while a great overall length, does exactly what it should: Leaves its audience wanting more.

The Busy World is Hushed

Written by Keith Bunin

Showing: Next Theatre, Noyes Cultural Center, 927 Noyes St., Evanston, through Oct. 14

Tickets: $23-$38

Contact: (847) 475-1875

By Lawrence Bommer

CFP theater editor

If emotional anatomy were a course, Keith Bunin would be a full professor. Produced last year off-Broadway, this engrossing domestic drama looks at love and loss from as many perspectives as three complex characters can provide. Hannah, an Episcopal minister searching for ultimate truth, employs Brandt, a gay literary assistant, to ghost-write her research on the Gnostic Gospels, supposedly the closest chronicle to the real Jesus. (Bunin knows how to capture the sleuthing thrills of a “Da Vinci Code.”) Hannah also sees Brandt as a match to be made with her 26-year-old son Thomas, now home to search out the truth about his father’s death. Their assisted romance, however, backfires badly because in Hannah’s home, religion fights love for Thomas’ soul. (Interestingly, the stumbling block here is never homosexuality but faith.)

It’s a believable battle with a lot at stake, because as one character says, “The worst thing is not to love someone when you can.” Doubting Thomas, who has given up on religion, suspects that his mother’s interest in his love affair with Brandt is her way, not just to keep him from once again running away from home, but to recruit him for Jesus. God is real to Hannah because of her love for her son.

But Thomas wants no such divided devotion. Brandt, who searches for a stability greater than the sight of his father slowly dying before his eyes, is painfully trapped between a lover and a benefactor. By the end Hannah’s ferocious faith takes its toll on his as well.

Very few plays pack so many truths into three characters. For a young writer Bunin knows everything about the cross-challenges mothers cast on their sons and the ways that lovers find and lose each other. Instead of busy, empty action, we get a wealth of anecdotes as the characters define themselves by the stories they share.

Just as wonderful, Bunin’s effortless emotional accuracy is marvelously captured by Kimberley Senior’s flawlessly cast, powerfully orchestrated Chicago premiere, a Next Theatre triumph to treasure. Peggy Roeder, always one of Chicago’s finest players, fully inhabits Hannah’s passions and peculiarities, her abstract dedication to the ancient mysteries of the Coptic testaments as palpable as her agonizing desire to hold on to wandering Thomas. A bracingly intelligent actor with all the right emotional instincts, Eric Hellman delivers Thomas’ very independent soul with almost exasperating accuracy: His perverse desire to live only in the moment exposes him to hazards we’re helpless to protect him from. Finally, Dennis Grimes’ good-hearted Brandt is as honest a portrayal of a divided heart as a superb playwright could demand.

The Crucible

Written by Arthur Miller

Showing: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, through Nov. 11

Tickets: $20-$68

Contact: (312) 335-1650

By Lawrence Bommer

CFP theater editor

Some 315 years ago, a witchhunt gave this continent one of its most chilling cases of paranoia and persecution: The townsfolk of Salem, Massachusetts executed 19 innocent fellow humans. Part social repression, part naked plunder, the mass hysteria pitted neighbor against neighbor, making any eccentricity—even a penchant for reading—grounds for false accusation, a sham trial and death by hanging. A feeding frenzy of recrimination masqueraded as righteousness. Can you say Patriot Act?

Clearly, the fever isn’t over. Much as it conveys 1692 Salem, Arthur Miller’s 1953 domestic tragedy targeted Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch-hunt. A taut, topical script, “The Crucible” matters whenever it’s done; fear makes people hunt “witches” in pursuit of a false security. Some 54 years later, Miller’s plot construction still amazes and, with its opera-sized acting opportunities and enough cliff-hangers for a dozen melodramas, few plays ride such a roller-coaster of hope and hate.

A pile-driving Steppenwolf Theatre production, Anna B. Shapiro’s fast-paced staging explores every twist and turn as it heads for its devastating conclusion. Miller registers the town’s terror by focusing on John Proctor, an ordinary farmer forced into a reluctant heroism. Drawn into the nightmare in order to protect his wife, Proctor finally stands up to the true evil—his hate-ridden home town. Miller doesn’t try to cover up these horrors with retroactive psychology or historical revisionism. By rooting them in the raw weaknesses of the Salem citizens, he forces us to ask, where would we stand?

Just as firmly Shapiro roots her heartfelt revival in the flesh-and-blood conflicts that tore up the town, led by tensile-strong portrayals by James Vincent Meredith as John Proctor, a hero for all eras, and Sally Murphy as his much-tested wife. Seemingly dwarfed beneath set designer Todd Rosenthal’s peaked meeting-house roof, the cast of 20 unflinchingly recreate the confusion and cruelty of this colonial civil war.

There’s terrific work throughout—Mary Seibel as an aged woman who even in jail remains the conscience of the community, Maury Cooper as a feisty victim, Ora Jones as the Barbados woman whose tall tales ignite adolescents’ worst impulses, Francis Guinan as the implacable prosecutor, Tim Hopper as a guilt-ridden preacher and Ian Barford as the Salem minister who, caught up in the killings, refuses to halt the hysteria. Most chilling are the young girls, viciously eager to destroy anyone who ever displeased them and led by Kelly O’Sullivan as a whore who strategically re-invents herself as the foe of Satan. It’s a makeover that Mitt Romney can only envy.