Displaying items by tag: Facility Theatre

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the greatest farces ever written. His wordplay caricatured high society, and clever pay-offs are hilarious when executed properly. The play was first performed on February 14, 1895 (Valentine's Day). The premiere took place at the historic St James's Theatre in London. Wilde famously subtitled the work “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” a reminder that its brilliance lies in treating absurdity with absolute sincerity. Unfortunately, No Dogs in the Kitchen Theatre Company’s recent production, directed by Genevieve Corkery, misses the mark when bringing this beloved play to the stage.

For those unfamiliar, the classic comedy follows two high-society bachelors, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, who invent secret personas to escape the boredom of everyday life. Trouble arises, however, when Jack (going by the name of “Ernest”) proposes to Gwendolen, who is intent on only marrying a man with that specific name. Matters are complicated further when the carefree, mischievous Algernon also dons the moniker “Ernest” to woo Jack’s ward, Cecily, who shares the exact same romantic obsession with the name. To find happiness, the lovers must quickly untangle a web of ridiculous misunderstandings and mistaken identities. The true brilliance of Wilde’s script lies in its wordplay and sharp societal satire, taking the audience on a wild, hysterical ride where the utterly absurd is treated with the utmost importance.

Founded in 2023, No Dogs in the Kitchen is still a young company, and a certain learning curve is both natural and expected as they continue shaping their artistic identity. Their past work has already shown a clear interest in bold, unconventional staging, often embracing heightened physicality and playful absurdism. That adventurous spirit is a defining part of their aesthetic, and it’s evident the ensemble values experimentation and a willingness to push familiar texts in unexpected directions. While this production didn’t always find harmony between those impulses and Wilde’s finely tuned verbal wit, the company’s enthusiasm, imaginative framework, growing technical confidence, and emerging vision suggest they have the tools to grow into a distinctive and compelling presence within Chicago’s storefront theatre scene.

The cast of No Dogs in the Kitchen’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” at Facility Theatre.Photo: Alex Albrecht

That said, where this production struggles is in its apparent distrust of the script, adding jumbled and superfluous elements that only serve to undercut the humor it tries so hard to generate. It is as if the creative team didn't believe the script was funny enough on its own, choosing instead to pile on unnecessary subtext that needlessly deviated from - and was unsupported by - Wilde’s text.

This staging regularly undermines its own comedic timing with added, cartoonish sound effects that reduce wit to silly gags. From boinging springs to breaking plates, it felt as if someone was trying to use every button on a soundboard. Furthermore, a heavy hand of physical humor frequently distracts from the brilliant dialogue. During several monologues, cast members distracted the audience with routines like fighting on a sofa. Another oddity occurred in the final act when multiple cast members broke the fourth wall to deliver lines - a trick they hadn't used up until that point. It’s unclear why there was such distrust in the source material, and why a surplus of additions was believed to be the solution.

The performances also suffered from this same directive, often relying on over-the-top delivery. Mitch Karmis, who played two different butlers, mugged for the audience and utilized an almost cartoon-like physicality. David Lovejoy portrayed Lady Bracknell as a Mommie Dearest caricature instead of the formidable, sophisticated society matriarch who delivers scathing lines with dry, icy wit. The performance moved between widely contrasting vocal registers, creating an uneven tone that often felt out of step with Lady Bracknell’s traditionally controlled presence. It was also unclear why, in the final act, Lady Bracknell suddenly transformed into a flirtatious aggressor who growled at Jack and threw herself at the butler. Another odd decision was to have Dr. Chasuble played by Sara Corkery in a rubber race mask.

Amidst these choices, there was a bright spot in Garret Weigel’s Jack. For the most part, Weigel found the right balance between inventive character choices and a respect for the script. Jack could easily be played as a boring straight-man when up against the whimsical Algernon, but Weigel added a distinct flair to his interpretation without straying too far from the original play.

It is genuinely unfortunate that the production chose to deviate so drastically from the text. When done faithfully, The Importance of Being Earnest is a true theatrical gem. While there were moments that elicited genuine laughter, they occurred when the text was allowed to speak for itself, rather than being buried under extraneous gags.

While this hyper-stylized, over-the-top version might appeal to theatergoers seeking a radical, alternative spin on a classic, those looking for a faithful, witty adaptation of Wilde’s masterpiece will likely find this production is not the one.

The Importance of Being Earnest runs through July 26th at Facility Theatre. For more information and/or tickets, visit https://nodogsinthekitchen.org/.

No Dogs in the Kitchen Theatre is thrilled to continue its third season with The Importance of Being Earnest, written by Oscar Wilde and directed by Genevieve Corkery. "The Importance of Being Earnest" will play July 9-26 at Facility Theatre in Chicago. Tickets are now on sale at nodogsinthekitchen.org. Press is encouraged to join on opening night, July 9. The cast includes Garrett Wiegel, Gus Thomas, Michaela Voit, Jasmine Luethy, David Lovejoy, Gretchen Kimmeth, and Mitch Karmis.

This "trivial comedy for serious people" is just the antidote for our trying times. First performed in 1895 and featuring broadly witty waggery, memorable characters, and mistaken identities, "The Importance of Being Earnest" is Oscar Wilde's most enduringly popular play. The farce focuses on two bachelors who invent fake personas to escape their social obligations. Romantic complications and hilarious revelations about true identities and the insignificance of marriage and reputation ensues.

The production team includes Sara Corkery (Assistant Director), Kasia Olechno (Stage Manager), Eric Edstrom (Assistant Stage Manager), Grace Patterson (Intimacy Coordinator / Sound Designer), Tom Fitzmaurice (Tech Director / Scenic Designer), Eli Green (Lighting Designer), Emma Millisor (Costume Designer), Joan Starkey (Dramaturg), Sydney Clayton and Alix Burhardt (Wardrobe / Production Assistants), Lilly Caines (Scenic / Production Assistant), and Jeff Landsman (Producer).

Production Details:
Title: The Importance of Being Earnest
Playwright: Oscar Wilde
Director: Genevieve Corkery
Cast (in alphabetical order): David Lovejoy (Lady Bracknell), Garrett Wiegel (Jack), Gretchen Kimmeth (Miss Prism), Gus Thomas (Algernon), Jasmine Luethy (Cecily), Michaela Voit (Gwendolen), and Mitch Karmis (Lane).
Location: Facility Theatre (1138 N California Ave., Chicago, IL 60622)
Dates: Regular Run: July 9 through July 26, 2026
Curtain Times: Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30pm, Saturdays at 3pm and 7pm, and Sundays at 1pm and 5pm.
Press performance: Press are encouraged to attend opening weekend.
Tickets: $35 Adult, $25 Student/Senior. Tickets are currently available at nodogsinthekitchen.org.

About the Artists
Oscar Wilde Born in Ireland in 1854, Oscar Wilde grew to become one of the most famous and well-regarded writers of his time. Outside of his dramatic work, Wilde published poems, political essays, and one novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde's work is often viewed within the context of Aestheticism, a movement in which he was a key participant and remains a quintessential example of. Other plays include An Ideal Husband and Lady Windermere’s Fan.

Genevieve Corkery
As a lifelong theatre-lover and Chicagoland native, Genevieve (she/her) is thrilled and lucky to be creating work in the city she calls home. After graduating from Tulane University in 2022, Genevieve returned to Chicago to begin making a name for herself. Over the past three years, she has been lucky to work with Big Noise Theatre, Impostors Theatre Co., Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, The Marriott Theatre, and Trap Door Theatre, where she is an associate ensemble member. She has trained with Susan Hart Shakespeare, The Artistic Home, and The Annoyance. Genevieve is a co-Artistic Director of No Dogs in the Kitchen Theatre Company, where she has had the privilege of directing Airswimming, and performing in The Wolves. When not singing, performing, directing, writing, or tooting on her bassoon, she enjoys watching Classical Hollywood Cinema, going for long walks around the city, eating peanut butter, changing her hair color, and cosplaying as a real young professional on her laptop at local coffee shops. She is proudly represented by Gray Talent Group.

About No Dogs in the Kitchen Theatre
Joining the robust, proud tradition of Chicago storefront theatre so late in the game is no mean feat. Luckily, there is no “too late” in the theatre. In an art form that is constantly changing and growing, the conversation never concludes. We hope to assert our unique vision for what live performance can and should be, which stories and voices deserve to be highlighted, and what meaningful change we can effect with our work. While developing our artistic direction and focus, we explore texts that are political, absurd, controversial, and thought-provoking. We seek out  obscure or rarely produced texts that we believe should be well known, new texts that we can develop in unprecedented ways, and old texts that we can revive with some creative reimagining to speak to the current moment. In the ephemeral, ever-threatened and endlessly evolving performing arts, we believe it is important to draw from our rich roots, consciously engage with our present reality, and work towards shaping a more inclusive and sustainable future.

For additional information, visit https://nodogsinthekitchen.org/importance-of-being-earnest

Santa Fe-based Theater Grottesco's new show, produced with Fay|Glassman Duo of Urbana, IL, is having its Chicago premiere at the Facility Theater on California near Division, brings a new approach to the performance and script design. The one-hour “Action at a Distance. . .in 2025” consists of six different plays, all performed simultaneously by the troupe of four actors. Devised by Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman, “Action at a Distance” is probably unlike anything you will have experienced; it was for me.

The plays involved are these:
1. A family with a crying child frantically prepares to evacuate their home in advance of a hurricane.
2. An international human rights lawyer flees her international arms-dealing partner.
3. A filmmaker interviews a doctor who volunteered at the Occupy Wall Street tent camp in 2011.
4. A union local hosts an address by a revolutionary Venezuelan union leader.
5. An artist prepares a gallery installation of the UN negotiator's office for the 1948 Palestine Mandate, just before the negotiator’s assassination by the Stern Gang.
6. A financial mogul is unnerved by a rock, with a photo attached, smashing his window.

Each of these descriptors, provided by Fay|Glassman, suggest provocative and even enticing drama. They are not, however, played in a sequence of say, six 10-minute plays performed consecutively. Instead, all six are performed at once. Perhaps to ease the audience into what is without question a jarring experience, the performance begins with a clearly identifiable scene from the fifth play in the series.

In this one, the Artist (Apollo Garcia Orellana) is arranging the installation of the UN negotiator’s desk. A kaffiyeh scarf on a coat rack cues us to the scene as the Artist types words that would have appeared in the typewriter moments before the negotiator was assassinated. The Artist is carefully arranging the negotiator's books, sets his chair at the angle it occupied, while another character, perhaps his spouse (Elizabeth Glass), nibbling on a sandwich, nitpicks at his work and intimates the futility of the project as a whole.

“You’re doing a whole installation about Palestine and you’ll never get another grant,” the spouse declares, to which the Artist retorts, “It’s genocide.” He encourages her to find something to occupy herself, as she devilishly rearranges the gloves on the desk each time the Artist places them just so - a subtle skirmish between the two.

Soon enough two new actors enter the scene, and we can determine we are witnessing play number three, the camera-toting Documentarian (Danielle Louise Reddick) interviewing the Volunteer Doctor (John Flax) about his time in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. The characters offer exposition by self-description. If I recall accurately, the Artist is still upstage, doing some stage business from his scene, while the Documentarian and Doctor deliver their lines stage front. “When did you first get involved in Occupy Wall Street,” the Documentarian queries. The Doctor later reveals, “My mother told me that racism was the best way to control white people.”

That scene dissolves as Reddick now becomes an adult trying to comfort and distract an unseen child as her family prepares to evacuate before a hurricane. A suitcase is rolled into the action and the rest of the company joins a flurry of angst-ridden preparation flavored with recrimination and peremptory orders as they all prepare to flee.

Soon Reddick introduces an unseen speaker to an unseen audience. “Everyone, this is Dr. Lenzo, from Venezuela,” and we know the address by a revolutionary Venezuelan union leader has commenced - the fourth of the plays. And so on until all six plays are in motion on stage.

Striking lines jump out from the individual plays, and at times all the players are involved in a scene in which the dialog has meaning for all of them. “Would you take that out in the hall please?” On the whole, “Action at a Distance. . .in 2025” has no obvious meaning, and seems like a jumble of vaguely related utterances that finally give way to a single, diminishing spotlight on a one actor, and then darkness.

It was only in the discussion with the cast and the co-creator of the script, Jeff Glassman, that some light was shed on what the viewers had witnessed We learned that half the play is partly unscripted, and that the occasions in which an actor is playing to an invisible person are called “manifested absences.” Glassman declares that never happens in theater, though that is patently incorrect, and the one-sided phone conversation is a familiar example.

The six plays run largely independent of each other, except for two occasions when the action of all of them converge. Garcia Orellana holds up a color coded timeline, explaining, “There are two places where we all land on the same page.” This timeline reflects the acting and directorial planning to keep the action straight. 

The effect, regardless of the intellectual construct behind it, seems Dada-esque. Though in some respects the show is engaging, it wasn’t particularly enjoyable or satisfying for me.
An over-arching theme for the stories is one of failure, Glassman says.“It points at the fact that there are many failures around us that are compounded. There’s no excuse for it.” Viewing “Action at a Distance . . .in 2025” requires real effort from an audience member, and certainly the activation of their imagination. “In order to get out of that [failure],” Glassman says, “we have to use imagination.”

As to the style and structure of the show, Glassman poses a question. “Why is theater about one person going through life?” In other words, why is it about a protagonist encountering obstacles and reaching some kind of resolution, along a linear timeline? Why not dispense with timeline, and allow multiple themes to be expressed simultaneously on stage in a play?
“Dance, music, have done that,” Glassman says. Why not theater?

Here's why. Music is purely aural, dance is visual and aural. Humans can hear and see multiple themes running simultaneously and register them in a wide panorama of experience that affects us non-verbally. Plays use words. The words don’t have meaning when they aren’t delivered in a reasonably sequential manner. They just become a word salad. We come away with very little.
Theater Grottesco describes this as “immersing audiences in a constantly shifting mosaic of interactions and emotions,” and “much like the bustle of a crowded airport, ‘Action at a Distance’ captures the unpredictability within human connections.” Somehow, I think sitting in the concourse of Terminal 1 is more enjoyable than this Facility Theater show.

Perhaps Glassman’s approach would have validity if it were used for a single play, not six of them at once. For me, it was an interesting thought experiment, and it will be intriguing to see if anything comes from any quarter of the theater world, in the development of this approach. “Action at a Distance” runs through November 16, 2025 with performances at 3 pm and 8 pm.