“Best Actress”

**** If you are “into” Drag and Gdender Bending, love old movies, love old actresses, or just love life, you will have a ball at The Chopin Theatre, as they present, on their “Main Stage”, The Grelley Duvall”Best Actress” . a two act musical revue, written by Alex Grelle with Jesse Morgan Young. The production is the World Premiere and while it is not my favorite type of theater, this show is full of laughs and some highly talented performers.

The show, directed by Kasey Foster and choreographed by Erin Kilmurray and Kasey Alfonso, is a mixture of film, live action and music, with puppets tossed in just to make it extra special. The show looks at film stars of yore. Women like Meryl Streep, Kim Novak ( I am unsure as to how many young audience members even remember her), Jodie Foster, Shelly Duvall ( from the film “Popeye”), Jane Fonda, Mary Tyler Moore and a host of others. How can they compete with Grelley Duvall?

This amazing cast of performers play many roles and are able to switch characters and often genders at will. The film clips lead into scenes that are more like skits. They bring Hollywood legends to life and show us a side of them that one might never expect to see. All this is added to with music from  Musical Director, Aunt Kelly and her crew: Dan Gianaris, Max Loebman, and Sarah Weddle. They are great and handle quite a few musical pieces: “I Feel Love”, ” A Chorus Line” ( where they do a special number reflecting the number “All I Need Is The Music and The Mirrors”, but with three other dancers giving us the illusion of the images from the mirrors! Very slick! They also do “Someone There To remind Me”, “Let Me Dance For You” and they take scenes from movies like “Ordinary People”, “Poltergist”, “Heartburn”, “Doubt” and even do some spoof commercials, such as American Express and Calvin Klein’s Obsession. these are just plain fun.

In addition to the amazingly talented Grelle ( who came up with the concept as well), the cast is composed of:Kara Brody, Madigan Burke, Lolly Extract, Darling Shear, Patrick Stengle and Mary Williamson. The show moves quickly and is tighter than I would have thought based on the numbers of set changes  a very clever set designed by Caitlin McLeod. The lighting (Quinn Chisenhall) and sound (Maya Nguyen) are right on and the costumes ( Alaina Moore) and wigs (Keith Ryan) truly help to make the scenes look as if the performers walked off the video screen onto the stage. The video work is a combination of old films and newly directed bits that work in conjunction with the originals. Great work by Glam Hag, Eon Mora, and Drew Angle. Last, but certainly not least is the props person Jackie Berland. There were a ton of props needed.

Now that we covered the performers, let’s talk puppets! Lolly Extract, and Madigan Burke, bravo! They were very neat and added a great deal to the overall production. As I said at the very onset of this review, while this may not appeal to every theater patron, if you just wan to have some fun and you love movies ( in particular old movies), I think you will have a blast. This is not for children and may not be for your grandparents, but if you are a young liberal theater patron, understand that you will laugh.

“Best Actress” will continue at The Chopin Theatre located at 1543 West Division thru April 12th with performances as follows:

Thursdays     8 p.m.

Fridays          8 p.m.

Saturdays     8 p.m.

Sundays       6 p.m.

Run time is 2 hours and 15 minutes including a 15 minute intermission.

Industry Performances March 26th, April 2nd and April 9th at a special $25 rate

To order tickets, visit www.ChopinTheatre.com

To see what others are saying, visit www.theatreinchicago.com, go to Review Round-Up and click at “Best Actress”.