Footlight Footnotes Private Lives at Shakespeare, Killer Joe at Profiles, Macbeth at City Lit

Welcome to Footlight Footnotes, The A.V. Club’s lowdown on the most interesting and notable productions in the city. Today’s performances: a dry divorce comedy, a trailer park tragedy, and the Scottish play. 

Private Lives at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

If George Bernard Shaw and Mean Girls’ Regina George had a love child, he would look a lot like Noël Coward, a catty bitch hidden behind dry intellectual wit. Coward’s Private Lives revolves around exes Amanda (Tracy Michelle Arnold) and Elyot (Robert Sella), who've been divorced five years, have remarried, and are honeymooning at the same resort. Sparks fly, old flames reignite, and they run off to Paris to fuck, drink brandy, sing Cole Porter tunes, and commit several acts of domestic violence. The couple’s new spouses, Victor (Tim Campbell) and Sybil (Chaon Cross), discover their own abusive-dependent dynamic as they join forces searching for their missing partners. Despite the play’s overarching theme of “love the one you hit,” the Gary Griffin-directed production manages to stay likable because the chemistry between Arnold and Sella feels like it has been stewing for five years. Private Lives is not for everybody—the dialogue feels like an old Hollywood romance—but it's enjoyable despite the exaggerated scenario and characters.

Killer Joe at Profiles Theatre

Killer Joe, the first play by Tracy Letts, who would go on to write the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning August: Osage County, revolves around Killer Joe Cooper (Darrell W. Cox), the detective/hit man hired by Ansel Smith (Howie Johnson) and his son Chris (Kevin Bigley) to collect the life insurance policy on Chris’ mother’s life. Naturally, things don't go so smoothly. Directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member Rick Snyder, the production delights in watching the audience squirm. In Profiles’ tiny space, the script's over-the-top action is almost overwhelming, with full-frontal nudity from both sexes along with one of the most disturbing scenes of sexualized violence in recent memory. Cox gives an outstanding performance as Joe, a cool gentleman in the first act who transforms into a force of nature by Act II, barreling through the Smith family like a tornado with a short temper and an unbridled sex drive.

Macbeth at City Lit Theater

Shakespeare is all about language. No matter what kind of high concept is tacked onto the script, if the actors don’t have a handle on the words, it all falls apart. Susan Hart, director of City Lit’s Macbeth and one of the city's top verse coaches, succeeds in creating a production that is both articulate and intelligible without sacrificing drama or suspense. The Weird Sisters (Heather Townsend, Shawna Tucker, and Sarah Pretz) dominate the show, towering above the rest of the cast with balding heads, gothic makeup, and acting creepy as hell. Not simply manipulative and power hungry, Lady Macbeth (Cameron Feagin) is given more dimensions with the added depth of a traumatized mother, a welcome departure from the character’s typical portrayal. Steve Hadnagy’s uneven Macbeth suffers from over indulgence during soliloquies, slowing the pace of the already long production, but succeeds in capturing the character’s descent into madness. The major pull of Macbeth is the actors’ amazing handle on Shakespearean verse, and despite some odd directorial choices, like a Japanese Bhutto to open and close the show, its familiar scenes—the witches, the slaughtering of Macduff’s family—are an intense staging of a classic tragedy.