Back in 2011, and then again in 2013, Court Theatre presented one of the best shows I’ve seen on a Chicago stage: An Iliad. Building on Robert Fagle’s English translation, adapter/deconstructors Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson turned Homer’s Trojan War epic into a bravura solo (performed by Timothy Edward Kane) that not only retold one of the founding stories of Western civilization but sent it vibrating up through the generations, into our time, and across our spines.
For all that O’Hare and Peterson bent The Iliad—sharply—toward their own ideas about war, they also made plenty of room for both its resonance as a landmark and its power as a yarn. They let it be told. Indeed, they let it be told by an apparently immortal Poet who was as magnetic as he was mad. Nothing of that sort happens in The Good Book. The title turns outs to be sneeringly ironic. The three-hour show is a debunking.
Through 4/19: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2:30 and 7:30 PM Court Theatre 5535 S. Ellis 773-753-4472courttheatre.org $45-$65
