Don finds out what’s Next.
The set of Next Theatre’s production END DAYS consists of a kitchen and living room side by side
William Dick, Adam Shalzi, Laura T. Fisher, Joseph Wycoff. Photo by Andre LaSalle
but on different planes. The design reflects the unsteady coexistence of faith and reason that forms the central theme of Deborah Zoe Laufer’s award winning comedy.
16-year-old Rachel Stein reacts to her mother Sylvia’s personal relationship with Jesus by going Goth, smoking grass, and trying to be left alone. Rachel’s father Arthur is a depressed 9/11 survivor who exchanged his business suit for a bathrobe and his power lunches for naps.
New neighbor Nelson Steinberg (also 16) dresses as Elvis. His sartorial decision gets him beat up at school, keeps Rachel, his newly beloved, at bay and concerns his rabbi as Nelson prepares for becoming a Bar Mitzvah. And yet, the white jump suit, gold fringe and ultimately the studded belt oddly comfort Nelson.
Joseph Wycoff and Carolyn Faye Kramer. Photo by Michael Brosilow
Sylvia finds her comfort with a very personal Jesus with whom she shares her doubts, her fears, and Starbucks while they sit on lawn chairs and spread the Good News. Rachel’s relationship with Stephen Hawking, often fueled by pot smoke, is more intellectual but no less personal.
The same actor plays Jesus and Stephen Hawking. Hawking gets the better lines but they both provide some big laughs.
END DAYS blends pop culture, astrophysics, Judaism and the Rapture into an engaging look at a suburban family in an existential neighborhood.
To buy tickets, click here. This Sunday, November 8, the playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer leads a post-show discussion after the 2PM matinee.
Peg gets in touch with her inner folky.
Last Friday night we saw Bucky Halker at the Skokie Theatre – the program was the music of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Now, if you’d asked me if I was a fan of the music of Guthrie and Seeger a couple weeks ago, I would have shrugged and said, yeah, I used to like that folky stuff back in the day.
Bucky Halker
But when we got to the Skokie Theatre, Halker was hanging out in the lobby, a friendly good-looking guy greeting folks and chatting before the show. On stage, Halker was that same guy. He doesn’t impersonate the originals. He gives voice to the original artists by absorbing them into his own.
Memories accompanied Halker’s music – singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” around a campfire at summer camp (long time ago!), learning to play Joan Baez (Dylan’s ex-lover, but you knew that already) songs on my first guitar, listening endlessly to Dylan in college and beyond – singing “Union Maid” at a rally in San Francisco during my 15 minutes as a revolutionary – seeing Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie at Ravinia – and taking my 17-yr. old daughter to see Joan Baez and Dar Williams at Park West…
Halker is an historian who enriches his performance with just the right mixture of stories from the artists’ lives and the social history of the music. And he plays a mean guitar. He’s got new CDs out with music from Illinois and will be appearing next in the Chicago area at the Chicago History Museum, November 22. Check him out. You might get in touch with some of your own history.
