VENUS | Suzan-Lori Parks
Steppenwolf Theatre | NEXT UP!
CHICAGO PREMIERE
set | Scott Davis
lights | Nastassia Jimenez
costumes | Emily Tarleton
sound | Kevin O’Donnell + Andre Pluess
photos: Michael Brosilow
“Director McLeod delivers a compelling example of strikingly crafted theater in Steppenwolf Theatre’s NEXT UP production of Venus. She and her excellent ensemble prove that painstakingly executed vision goes a long way to bring order to the bedlam of a script that abstracts a story….McLeod extracts every opportunity for emotional connection while simultaneously realizing a riveting spectacle….a rare theatrical delicacy." -Chicago Stage Review
“Scenic designer Scott Davis’s creepy jumble of skeletons and specimen jars suggests a blend of circus sideshow and musty exhibit hall, while Emily Tarleton’s exquisite costumes range from Venus’s fake-native ‘feathers’ to the ghostly white threads of Ann Sonneville and John Stokvis as Parks’s chorus. Langford, as Venus, and Hoerdemann, as the freak show’s proprietor, deliver rich performances, while McLeod’s immersive use of the in-the-round staging implicates us as viewers of both the play and the Venus spectacle.” -TimeOut Chicago
“Parks uses repeated poetic verse and farcical humor to soften the subjugation history lesson. McLeod paces the show tight with a lyrical tone [and] uses the incredibly talented ensemble in a swirl of jumbled scenes of before and after, staged and unstaged, imagined and real.” -ChicagoNow
