The Bomb-itty of Errors
Still, Chicago is becoming notable as a haven for hip-hop theater, a grassroots form that merges the rhythms of hip-hop with theatrical narrative and manages to transcend both. Not exactly a well-defined genre, it dances back and forth between crackpot experiment and marketable commodity. So the way is open for anyone and everyone, artists and audiences alike, to embrace it.
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Local performer Cleetus Friedman uses the music as a platform for questioning identity and challenging the notion of what it means to be “hip-hop.” Strawdog Theatre has boarded a time machine back to hip-hop’s golden age and had a blast goofing on Run-DMC and the Fat Boys: the company’s hip-hop/bowling romp Return to the Howard Bowl spawned an even more successful hip-hop/roller-skating sequel, The Ball of Justice. And on one weekend last spring you could take in Factory Theater’s glib B-boy-culture and break-dance homage Poppin’ and Lockdown, then hop a bus the same night and catch the all-female musical Cinderella, a Hip-Hop Tale of an Illegal Alien at the Theatre Building.
The writers have taken more than a few liberties, of course, with Shakespeare’s original–especially with the characters. A conjurer named Pinch has been transformed into a happy-go-lucky Rastafarian herbalist who attempts to cure Antipholus of Ephesus of his marital problems with a vial of elephant urine. Angelo the jeweler has become Hasidic merchant MC Hendelberg, who’s done a custom job for the same Antipholus: a solid gold steering wheel necklace (Club and all). And with four actors playing 12 parts, including female roles, each logs serious stage time depicting transparently unconvincing women in some hilariously awful drag outfits.
