Goodman Theatre artistic director Robert Falls will direct "The Jacksonian," a new play by Beth Henley at the Geffen Playhouse in early 2012. "The Jacksonian" is set in Jackson, Miss., in 1964 and takes place on the night of a murder.

THEATER REVIEW: "Stage Kiss" ★★½ Through June 5 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.; Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes; Tickets: $25-$78 at 312-443-3800 or www.goodmantheatre.org

In one of the best moments of Sarah Ruhl's “Stage Kiss,” a Goodman Theatre world premiere that still needs a lot more work, an actor reflects on why audiences like watching sex in the movies but barely tolerate it on stage.

The answer, says the character named He, is that people watch movies alone in the dark, whereas people in a theater are always aware of those around them. But a kiss, the actor argues, has a place in both mediums. On film, it is voyeuristically enjoyed. In the theater, it completes an idea.

And that, he argues, is why theater is always superior to film. And it's also why stage actors (as distinct from porn stars) have to be good looking. Sex is sex, but nobody wants an ugly idea.

“Stage Kiss,” then, is an exceedingly thoughtful play. This is, in essence, a riff on the ramifications of an actor being required, as a condition of employment, to kiss another actor eight times a week, or more. Regardless of the kisser's feeling for the kissee, this is problematic. As Ruhl's character She observes, you either have to kiss a stranger and make it look like you know him, or you have to kiss someone you know and make him look like a stranger. In “Stage Kiss,” wherein old flames She (Jenny Bacon) and He (Mark L. Montgomery) rekindle a passionate but dysfunctional relationship after kissing each other on stage, the latter assignment proves to be the more challenging of the two.

 
Playwright Sarah Ruhl listens as director Jessica Thebus speaks at a rehearsal for "Stage Kiss" at the Goodman Theatre.

On Tuesday night at the Oriental Theatre, I watched a seemingly hesitant young actress (too young to have her union card) be kissed, caressed and partially undressed by another young actor. In public. That's a requirement of making your living doing “Spring Awakening,” of course. These actors are professionals, playing characters. And if that rich moment of sensuality were not there and not fully expressed, the show would not work. If you're not willing to be kissed, etc., etc., you'd better not audition.

But theaters are also workplaces, and if that kind of stuff was going on in any other workplace, somebody would hopefully be on the phone to human resources.

Actors, though, have to kiss and be kissed eight times a week. Whether or not they like the kisser or the kissed. Actors Equity draws the line at actual sex acts — it's right there in the production contract — but kissing is as much a part of the actor's trade as the painter's brush or the plumber's plunger. And you can't just turn around and say that you don't much like the guy or gal with whom you must lock lips, as a condition of employment. Not the point.

“Stage Kiss,” the premiering and much-anticipated Sarah Ruhl play at the Goodman Theatre, was inspired by that fascinating conundrum.

“It really came about after being in a lot of rehearsal rooms watching actors kiss,” said Ruhl, a writer who grew up on the North Shore and has become one of America's leading and most fascinating scribes. “They'd have to kiss each other over and over again.”

Chicago's Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel took in the Goodman Theatre's production of "God of Carnage" Saturday night. And so did Michael Shannon, the A Red Orchid Theatre ensemble member who was recently cast as the villainous Zod in the upcoming "Superman: Man of Steel" movie. They were not sitting together.

"God of Carnage," the play about parents and behaving childishly, now on the mainstage of the Goodman Theatre through April 17, is a Chicago Groupon daily deal. More and more Chicago theaters have gravitated toward Groupon as a way to sell some tickets and get a little publicity and this one has proven a popular one.

Check out Chris Jones' review here.

(Posted by Doug George)

THEATER REVIEW: "El Nogalar" ★★½ Through April 24 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.; Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes; Tickets: $10-$42 at 312-443-3800 or www.goodmantheatre.org

At one juncture in Tanya Saracho's “El Nogalar,” a riff on Anton Chekhov's “The Cherry Orchard” reset in northern Mexico, we hear cello music and elegiac chatter about the emotional weight of an orchard (pecans rather than Chekhovian cherries, but you get the idea). And then those regretful strings are suddenly — and mercifully — replaced by zesty and contemporary Mexican music. The sad, rich folks leave the stage and are replaced by a vibrant young character named Dunia (played, by a similarly vibrant actress named Yunuen Pardo). She's a housekeeper — and is so warm, highly intelligent and ambitious, she wants to bust out of this play.

She is, in short, precisely the kind of character to whom the gifted Saracho, who does not need to be worrying about chronicling regret or squeezing her talents onto a story first plotted by Chekhov, can really give voice. Moreover, she is the kind of character about whom we hear too little in the American theater. We've got plenty of stories about rich people with ennui and empty lives.

 
THEATER REVIEW: "God of Carnage" ★★★ Through April 17 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.; Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes; Tickets are $25-$78 at 312-443-3800 or www.goodmantheatre.org

Post-show dining is always tricky in Chicago, where Loop restaurants tend to close confoundingly early. But with “God of Carnage,” the new show at the Goodman Theatre with a running time of 73 minutes, you can make such reservations with impunity. And you will arrive at your eatery of choice after having enjoyed an amuse bouche with enough substance to spark conversation and yet not too much to spoil your dinner.

If every production at the Goodman Theatre fell into the category of theatrical aperitif — and had a running time shorter than the movie “Gnomeo & Juliet” — then the Chicago theater would not be the Chicago theater. Yasmina Reza's little takedown of urban child-rearing is about as a commercial a comedy as you can imagine. And, frankly, it certainly doesn't need a theater with the size or resources of the Goodman.

Myra Lucretia Taylor plays Mary in the Goodman production of the same name. "Mary" closes March 6 in the Goodman's Owen Theatre.

When Myra Lucretia Taylor's agent sent over the script to a new play called “Mary” at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, he offered some advice to his client: “Have a drink before you read it,” he said. Smart guy.

If you've seen “Mary” at the Goodman Theatre, or read the coverage of playwright Thomas Bradshaw's controversial play, you'll know that Mary is a slave who lives with a white family in Maryland in the 1980s. Neither Mary nor the family for whom she cooks and does chores (and who stick a racial epithet in front of her name when they speak of her) sees anything wrong in this horrendously archaic situation.

And in the final scene, Mary (who belatedly receives an education) delivers a blisteringly homophobic monologue that seems designed to destroy any sympathy that the audience may have developed for the character. All in all, this is the kind of role that many African-American actors, even actors who are perfectly willing to take great risks, just would not care to play. You might say, as a Goodman Theatre spokesman allowed, that the role was “challenging to cast.”

Taylor did not partake of that suggested vino, nor did she throw the pages down in horror. “I was intrigued,” she said, over lunch last week. “I thought, this is going to be controversial and I want to be part of that discussion. But I did think it might be a bit tricky. Especially in that final monologue, I thought people might become angry at the actress.”

Tricky was putting it mildly.

 
James (Scott Jaeck), David (Alex Weisman), Jonathan (Eddie Bennett) and Dolores (Barbara Garrick) have dinner while Mary (Myra Lucretia Taylor) tends to them.

• "Mary" at the Goodman Theatre: A provocation without much truth (review Feb. 14)

• "Jackie and Me": Powerful baseball play wins over the audience (review  Feb. 14)

In a space of 48 hours last weekend, I saw a play, Steven Dietz's “Jackie and Me” by the Chicago Children's Theatre, wherein a white kid goes back in time and changes races to learn about Jackie Robinson, and another play, Thomas Bradshaw's “Mary” at the Goodman Theatre, wherein a white family in 1980s Maryland still keeps African-Americans as domestic slaves.

You sometimes hear, especially at election time, that Chicagoans don't like talking about race. Perhaps. But the Chicago theater certainly does what it can to encourage the conversation.

In many ways, these two pieces were polar opposites. “Jackie and Me,” which is aimed explicitly at young people, is an inherently hopeful play about race relations in America. Its message is one of reconciliation and empowerment: The young Polish-American hero takes a walk in someone else's shoes for a while and gets to better understand a hero who was formerly little more than a celebrated name on a school poster.

You could argue, I suppose, that it is simplistic or Pollyanna-ish. Or you could argue that it celebrates our power to learn, eventually, partly through empathy and partly through certain individuals who had the courage to hit their way past the ignorant.

 
THEATER REVIEW: "Mary" ★★ Through March 6 in the Owen Theatre at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.; Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes; Tickets: $10-$42 at 312-443-3800 or www.goodmantheatre.org

Provocation is a legitimate goal for a young playwright. Audiences at well-heeled joints like the Goodman Theatre can be complacent. So goad away. Just know that act of provocation is not an indemnity policy against the need for structural integrity. And truth.

In Thomas Bradshaw's “Mary,” which I saw at the Goodman Sunday night with a suitably shocked crowd, we meet two young college men in the early 1980s. They're gay. This we intuit not from their ordinary conversation, but, at least in May Adrales' outré production, from their stereotypical attire and simpering chatter.

One young man, David (Alex Weisman) invites the other, Jonathan (Eddie Bennett), to come home to his family home in Southern Maryland during Christmas vacation. Jonathan does so, and is chagrined to discover that David's parents still keep slaves.

You read that right.

Mary — actually, the affectionate term used in the family sticks a racial epithet in front of that name — lives with her husband Elroy in a cabin on the old plantation. The pair, played by Myra Lucretia Taylor and Cedric Young, have spent their lives — like earlier generations of their family — tending to the domestic needs of David's parents, James (Scott Jaeck) and Delores (Barbara Garrick), who find this the most normal thing in the world and who alternate between behaving as recognizable 1980s parents and as patronizingly beneficent Southerners of some 200 years prior.