Displaying items by tag: David Catlin

Lookingglass Theatre Company today announced a new leadership structure that brings together four longtime members of its acclaimed ensemble and new Board leadership, marking an exciting next chapter for the Tony Award-winning Chicago theater company.

Ensemble Members Ericka Ratcliff and David Catlin have been elected Co-Artistic Directors. Former Lookingglass Creative Producer Philip R. Smith will become Executive Director and Ensemble Member and co-founder David Schwimmer will serve as Producing Director. Most recently, Ratcliff was Literary Manager at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. David Catlin was the founding co-Artistic Director of Lookingglass, then served as Artistic Director from 2003-2010 and is a tenured Associate Professor and Head of Acting at Northwestern University. Philip R. Smith has been the Associate Director of Advancement at Writers Theatre after decades of working in multiple leadership roles at Lookingglass.

Lookingglass also welcomes new leadership to its Board of Directors, with Marci Masur serving as Board President and Deann Bayless as Board Chair.

The transition comes as Ensemble Member Kasey Foster completes her three-year term as Artistic Director, during which Lookingglass emerged from its post-pandemic pause, returned to producing and laid the groundwork for an ambitious new era for the company. Artistic Directors at Lookingglass are elected by the company's ensemble to three-year terms.

The new leadership structure comes at a moment of renewed artistic and institutional momentum for Lookingglass, building on nearly four decades of boundary-pushing work while setting the stage for an ambitious future. In 2026, Lookingglass celebrated two successful productions in its recently renovated space and hosted the most successful gala in its history. The company also recently signed a new 20-year lease at the Water Tower Water Works, securing its home for the next generation of Lookingglass artists and audiences, while exploring expanded programming, partnerships and earned-revenue opportunities designed to support continued artistic and institutional growth.

Ratcliff and Catlin will share responsibility for the artistic vision and programming of Lookingglass, extending the company's deeply collaborative approach to its artistic leadership. Together, the four leaders bring decades of experience as artists, directors and producers at Lookingglass, pairing deep institutional knowledge with distinct perspectives and a shared commitment to the company's defining values of collaboration, transformation and invention as they build on Lookingglass's artistic legacy and shape what comes next.

"What excites me most about stepping into this role is the sheer range of talent in this Ensemble, and the opportunity to figure out together how we can continue to create the settings for risk, experimentation and ambitious work that might feel impossible anywhere else," comments Ratcliff. "That is the unique power of Lookingglass. The impossible is the point, but the purpose is what makes the risk matter. We want to honor the history and DNA of Lookingglass and continue to push it forward, giving our artists and collaborators room to make work that surprises us, challenges us and feels deeply connected to this city."

"Collaboration is a core value that courses deep in the veins of Lookingglass– nearly four decades deep," says Catlin.  "Kasey, alongside our incredible staff and board, led us through unprecedented challenges so that we can take the baton and steward Lookingglass' signature immersive, transformative, and inventive storytelling, to ignite the imaginations of Chicago audiences in their favorite castle on Michigan Avenue."   

As Producing Director, Schwimmer will build on his renewed involvement with Lookingglass, focusing on producing, partnerships, fundraising and expanding opportunities for the company's work and artists. Earlier this year, the Lookingglass co-founder described his renewed commitment to the company as "doubling down," as he expanded his involvement and efforts to strengthen the theater's long-term sustainability.

"I'm thrilled to join this 'Dream Team' in a more official capacity," notes Schwimmer. "Lookingglass cannot have asked for a more experienced, passionate, fun and tenacious group of go-getters to grab the helm. To quote the White Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, this gang not only believes in 'as many as six impossible things before breakfast' — but DOES them."

As Executive Director, Smith will oversee the company's administrative and organizational operations, working alongside Ratcliff, Catlin and Schwimmer to support Lookingglass's artistic ambitions and long-term institutional growth. Smith has been involved in the artistic leadership of Lookingglass since 2000 and has helped produce more than 70 productions for the company.

"What has kept me rooted at Lookingglass for more than three decades is its willingness to imagine what might seem impossible—and then find a way to make it possible," says Smith. "That is what draws so many people to this great theatre. My goal, with this remarkable team in place, is to lift up and bring together their singular imagination, care, and experience around a clear vision: to build a sustainable and thrilling producing model that gives Lookingglass the freedom to do its most ambitious and distinctive work and then to share it with Chicago's unrivaled audiences."

Lookingglass also welcomes new leadership to its Board of Directors, with Marci Masur serving as Board President and Deann Bayless as Board Chair. Masur and Bayless bring extensive experience spanning business, philanthropy, civic engagement and Chicago's arts community and will work alongside the company's new leadership team as Lookingglass continues to strengthen its institutional foundation and expand its reach.

"Lookingglass reflects Chicago at its best: inventive, collaborative and unafraid to try something no one has seen before. That spirit has been part of the company's heartbeat for nearly four decades. This leadership team knows it deeply and has the vision to carry it forward. The more people we bring into that experience, the stronger Chicago's creative future becomes," notes incoming Board President Marci Masur.

ABOUT THE LEADERSHIP TEAM

ERICKA RATCLIFF, Co-Artistic Director
Ericka Ratcliff has performed at Lookingglass in Black Diamond, Around the World in 80 Days and Peter Pan (A Play), as well as assistant-directed and dramaturged Thaddeus and Slocum: A Vaudeville Adventure. Her additional credits include work with The Second City, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Northlight Theatre, Alliance, Milwaukee Rep, Pittsburgh Playwrights Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Congo Square Theatre, The House Theatre of Chicago and others. She most recently served as Coordinating Producer for Goodman Theatre's 100 Free Acts of Theater and as Literary Manager at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, following her time as Artistic Director of Congo Square Theatre.

DAVID CATLIN, Co-Artistic Director
David Catlin is a founding Ensemble Member, actor, writer, director and former Artistic Director, Managing Director, and Director of Artistic Development at Lookingglass. Catlin's extensive directing and acting credits at Lookingglass span the company's history including Lookingglass Alice, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Moby Dick. Catlin is an Artistic Associate with Actors Gymnasium and is Head of Acting at Northwestern University.

DAVID SCHWIMMER, Producing Director
David Schwimmer is a co-founder of Lookingglass and an actor, director and producer in theater, television and film. His Lookingglass directing credits include his adaptations of Studs Terkel's RACE and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. His television and film credits include Friends, for which he received an Emmy Award nomination; American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, for which he received a second Emmy nomination; Band of Brothers, Curb Your Enthusiasm, the Madagascar films and, most recently, Goosebumps for Disney+. His extensive directing career spans theater, television and film.

PHILIP R. SMITH, Executive Director
Phil Smith is a longtime Lookingglass Ensemble Member who has been involved in the artistic leadership of the company since 2000 as Casting Director, Artistic Director, Producing Director and Creative Director, helping to produce more than 70 plays. As Creative Producer, he co-served as Casting Director, produced many of the annual galas, and acted as a primary artistic liaison to the Development Department.

Prior to joining this new Lookingglass team, Phil spent two years as Associate Advancement Director at Writers Theatre in Glencoe, where he played a leading role in securing $1.3M in production support for the Jeff Award-winning production of Leopoldstadt.

In his return to Lookingglass in this new leadership role, he is especially energized by working together with this great community to help generate the structure, resources and momentum needed to create and present the bold, inventive, and deeply engaging work that has long been a Lookingglass trademark.

MARCI MASUR, Board President
Marci Masur is a strategic executive and civic leader known for advancing complex, high-impact initiatives at the intersection of business, philanthropy, and Chicago's civic community. Most recently, as a Managing Director at a leading financial services firm, she oversaw a global real estate portfolio and led a significant investment in its Chicago headquarters. Her career has centered on organizational strategy, operational transformation, major capital projects and building partnerships across the corporate, government and nonprofit sectors. A committed advocate for Chicago, Masur has helped strengthen institutions that shape the city's future.

DEANN BAYLESS, Board Chair
Deann Bayless is one of the nation's foremost women restaurateurs. Together with her husband, Rick Bayless, she opened Chicago's Frontera Grill in 1987, followed by Topolobampo, with both restaurants earning the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Restaurant award. Bayless has served on the boards of Chicago Public Media and Women Chefs & Restaurateurs and, with Rick Bayless, established the Bayless Family Foundation to support Chicago's theater community.

THE LOOKINGGLASS ENSEMBLE
The Ensemble includes: Atra Asdou, Kareem Bandealy, Walter Briggs, Mara Blumenfeld, J. Nicole Brooks, David Catlin, Thom Cox, Larry DiStasi, Kevin Douglas, Christine Mary Dunford, Laura Eason, Anthony Fleming III, Raymond Fox, Kasey Foster, Joy Gregory, Doug Hara, David Kersnar, Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi, Anthony Irons, Louise Lamson, Wendy Mateo, Dan Ostling, Andre Pluess, Ericka Ratcliff, David Schwimmer, Joey Slotnick, Phil Smith, Heidi Stillman, Tracy Walsh, Andy White, Temple Williams III, Matthew C. Yee and Mary Zimmerman.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Lookingglass welcomes David Reifman, Melanie Pickett, Michael Costabile and David Quinn to its Board of Directors. They join current Board members Steve Armstrong, Deann Bayless, Alexandra Bradbury, Chanon DiCarlo, Charlie Frankel, Lee Golub, Mike Harrington, Turiya Luzadder, Marci Masur, Nina Nashif, James Oh, Jennifer O'Neill, Bob Palffy, Carolyn Ravichandran, Abbie Roth, M.D., Yasmeen Soin, Catie Walsh Headtke, Steve Weiss, David Catlin, Ericka Ratcliff and David Schwimmer.

STAFF
The Lookingglass staff includes: Philip Smith (Executive Director), David Catlin (Co-Artistic Director), Ericka Ratcliff (Co-Artistic Director), David Schwimmer (Artistic Producer),  Olivia Tritschler (General Manager), Kasey Foster (Outgoing Artistic Director), Molly Bunder (Director of Education and Engagement), Katie Tuttle (Interim Director of Development), Scott Letscher (Director of Ticketing and Audience Services), Mark Bracken (Director of Production), Kate Sullivan Coombs (Managing Producer), Mantra Radhakrishnan (Grant Manager), Spencer Diedrick (Donor Relations and Data Associate, Front of House Associate), Annaliese Baker (Marketing Manager), Kimberly Lawson (Sales & Partnership Coordinator), Libby Lane (Scene Shop Coordinator), Skate Ehling (Technical Director), Dan Machalinksi (Technical Director), Savana Nix (Costume Director), Ally Perparos (Sound Supervisor), and Aaron Lichamer (Lighting Supervisor). Front of House: Gabriella Ashlin (House Manager Lead),Tamara Becker (Concessions Lead), Spencer Diedrick (Front of House Associate), Ashley Keys (Front of House Associate), Delaney Spielman (Front of House Associate), Ashley Keys (Front of House Associate), Kosi Achife (Front of House Associate), M.J. Krystosek (Front of House Associate), Nathan Short (Front of House Associate), Paulette Maher (Front of House Associate), Sage Peacock (Front of House Associate), Ty Bonneville (Front of House Associate). Teaching Artists: Katy Boza, Isabella Bradley, Melissa Briskman, Molly Bunder, Milo Christner, Claudio Jean Carlos, Fay Florence-Steddum, Larry Grimes, Claribel Gross, Ariya Hawkins, Risha Hill, Juliet Kang Huneke, Louise Lamson, Ellie Levine, Michelle Moe, Laura Murillo Hart, Kelly Nesheim, Edmund O'Brien, Michaelyn Oby, August Petry, Austin Rambo, Ky Rambo, Alyssa Ramos, Sivan Spector, Myra Su, Autumn Thelander, Oskar Westbridge, Scott Westerman and Matthew Yee.

ABOUT THE LOOKINGGLASS 2026/27 SEASON
Lookingglass Theatre's 2026/2027 Season is currently underway with the Chicago presentation of Kowalski, featuring Johnny Galecki and Jacob Moskivitz, followed by two signature Lookingglass world premieres: Ensemble Member and Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman's adaptation of The Yearling and Ensemble Member J. Nicole Brooks' second play in a planned trilogy about Chicago mayors, Prince Hal.  Subscription and Memberships are available now for purchase at lookingglasstheatre.org or by phone at 312.337.0665. The Lookingglass box office is located at Water Tower Water Works, 163 E Pearson St at Michigan Ave.

Subscribers unlock special discounted tickets, priority seating, and a range of additional benefits. Lookingglass three show Subscription Series pricing starts at $224.00.  Lookingglass Memberships offer exclusive perks, including access to Premium Center Seats, VIP ticketing, priority access to limited-run experiences, invitations to exclusive rehearsal events as well as many other benefits. Pricing and details of benefits for both Members and Subscribers can be found at https://lookingglasstheatre.org/join-us/membership/.

ABOUT LOOKINGGLASS THEATRE COMPANY
Founded in 1988 by graduates of Northwestern University, Lookingglass Theatre Company is a nationwide leader in the creation and presentation of new, cutting-edge theatrical works and in sharing its ensemble-based theatrical techniques with Chicago-area students, teachers and organizations through Education and Community Programs. Guided by an artistic vision centered on the core values of collaboration, transformation and invention, Lookingglass seeks to capture audiences' imaginations, leaving them changed, charged and empowered.

Recipient of the 2011 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, Lookingglass has built a national reputation for artistic excellence and ensemble-based theatrical innovation. Notable world premieres include Mary Zimmerman's Tony Award-winning Metamorphoses and The Odyssey, J. Nicole Brooks' Her Honor Jane Byrne, David Schwimmer's adaptation of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Studs Terkel's Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession, Matthew C. Yee's Lucy and Charlie's Honeymoon, Heidi Stillman's Cascabel, created in collaboration with renowned Chef Rick Bayless, and David Catlin's Moby Dick and Lookingglass Alice.

“Don Quixote of La Mancha” is considered the oldest European novel, but it gets a fresh and exciting new treatment in “Circus Quixote." This is Lookingglass Theatre’s inaugural reopening after a year off while it retooled its much loved Water Tower Pumping Station location at Michigan and Pearson in Chicago.

In “Circus Quixote,” Cervantes’ beloved novel and it’s timeless characters—the delusional knight errant Don Quixote; the farmer turned squire Sancho Panza; the target of Quixote's courtly services Dulcinea (Laura Murillo Hart); his niece Antonia (Andrea San Miguel) who burns the books on chivalry that led to his madness—all spring to life.

The script by David Catlin and Kerry Catlin, who share director credits, brings in Spanish and latin-inflected English, but holds to the core of the tale—updated with added visions of quests that are now ever more familiar in our age of the revitalized renderings of Lord of the Rings.

Unlike Broadway’s 1965 musical “Man of La Mancha,” this version incorporates acrobatics, courtesy Evanton’s Actors Gymnasium—circus and movement choreography by Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi— along with stunning puppetry (remarkable creatures large and small designed by Grace Neediman) and dashes of slapstick. The show includes sword fights aloft on ropes (kudos to Micah Figueroa as 
Quixote's frequent adversary Sansón Carrasco), members of the troupe "jousting" with windmills by climbing the blades in arial feats, and riding Don Quixote's famed Rocinante, an engineered baroque steam punk rocking chair which at one point holds seven of the troupe in motion.  

Eddie Martinez as Sancho Panza

The newly coined English word “quixotic” (for impractical or foolish causes) was drawn from the novel soon after its publication in 1605. And the cogent notes of this tale of the hopeless aspirations maintains the poignancy as eventually even taking those he loves on a fool's errand, jousting at windmills and battling an imaginary giant.
Eddie Martinez as the faithful but questioning Sancho Panza (and a stand-in for Cervantes) is remarkable.

But the highest accolades must be given to Laura Murillo Hart, an absolutely stunning performer on multiple levels. As Dulcinea, in whose service Quixote launches his quest, Hart casts a spell on the theater whenever she appears, vocalizing in haunting melodic strains (composer Kevin O’Donnell’s music is arresting), sometimes accompanying herself on guitar.

In Act II Hart is transformed into a mustachioed, hoop-skirted clergyman, her clerical garb becomes an elaborate puppet showcase, a half-dozen or more characters appearing variously in a mini stage at the skirt front, and from her billowing sleeves. It’s an endlessly entrancing performance, and Hart demonstrates an incredible range in her many roles. At Lookingglass, a star is born with Hart’s performance.

Laura Murillo Hart

The relaunch of Lookinglass Theatre has provided "Circus Quixote" a generous run through March 30, 2025 at 163 E. Pearson at Michigan Avenue. 

Founded in 1988, Lookingglass has been on hiatus for a year while it reset its business model. Founding member David Schimmer of “Friends” fame has joined the board, and appeared last month along with Governor JB Pritzger to dedicate the rejuvenated space, with a redesigned lobby, bar and cafe open for business at 163 N. Pearson. Funding by the Illinois Arts Council and Joan and Paul Rubschlager made possible the return of Chicago’s dreamiest theater that has years of memorable shows under its belt, including (to site just one) director Mary Zimmerman’s 1988 “Metamorphoses” which went on to win her a Tony in its 2002 Broadway transfer, and returned to Lookingglass multiple times.

Lookingglass has over the years offered a balance between inventively staged serious drama such as the 2009 Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” the Jackie Robinson story “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting” (2012) or “Death Tax” (2014); and more energized spectacles like “The Little Prince” (2013)  and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (2018)  Lookingglass also develops an in-between type of show embodied in 2016’s “Thaddeus and Slocum” (2016), and like all its work, presented with verve, powerful dramatics, and incisive illumination of our condition as humans.

(Updated Feb. 17, 2025.)

Really? Another ‘Frankenstein’? The 2018/19 season was the year of ‘Frankenstein’. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s classic gothic thriller, four theatre companies produced wildly different adaptations of the novel. If you find yourself wondering whether these companies knew of each other’s productions, they surely did. The beauty of the Chicago theatre landscape is that there’s a lot of room for good storytelling. Lookingglass Theatre wraps up their season with a bold adaptation from the same team who brought us ‘Moby Dick’ and ‘Lookingglass Alice’.

Conceived and directed by David Catlin, this take on ‘Frankenstein’ is as visually stunning as it is insightful. The in-the-round staging makes this telling feel more active, as the entire performance space is used throughout. Shifting around in your seat feels like a more engaging way to view the show. Not knowing where the monster or the next loud sound will come from, heightens the sense of terror. Catlin’s production is scary. Many of the other productions discounted that this is a horror story originally intended by Mary Shelley to scare guests at a party.

While nearly all the productions tried to weave Mary Shelley’s personal life into the retelling, Catlin’s version cuts right to the heart. In fluid transitions between Shelley’s life and ‘Frankenstein’, we get to see the range of Cordelia Dewdney’s talents as an actress. The show may be titled after the scientist, but this is a play about Mary Shelley. Dewdney’s dialogue as Mary Shelley is heartbreaking when considering her real life. Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel also turns in a strong performance in a variety of characters, all of which she plays comically large with a faux pregnancy belly.

The balance of good casting, inventive storytelling and arresting staging distinguish this production. Catlin has chosen to frame his version almost as children playing dress up while exchanging ghost stories. And since the characters are adults, there’s a simmering sexiness to this production. Sexy and ‘Frankenstein’ are two words rarely seen in the same sentence, but somehow Lookingglass achieves just that, making this a delicious evening at the theatre. Thrills, chills and titillation, the pillars of entertainment.

Even though we are now 201 years out from the original publication of ‘Frankenstein’, don’t sleep on this striking production at Lookingglass. For those with a grey memory of the novel from high school, or only familiar with the Universal-Boris-Karloff film version, Lookingglass serves up an unforgettable night of scary fun.

*Extended through September 1st

Lookingglass Theatre Company opens its 30th Anniversary Season with the return of the award-winning “Hard Times”, adapted from Charles Dickens and directed by Artistic Director and Ensemble Member Heidi Stillman , in association with The Actors Gymnasuim. It was first produced at Lookingglass in 2001, and some of the artists involved this season were part of the original production.

The story takes place in post-Industrial Revolution England. In a gloomy fictional small town dominated by mills and factories, art has very little presence. When a travelling circus comes to town, the circus clown manages to get his daughter Sissy (played Audrey Anderson; this is both her Lookingglass and professional debut) admitted to the best school in town. The school headmaster, Mr. Gradgrind (injecting his role with a very precise old-British flare, Raymond Fox is excellent), soon realizes that Sissy doesn’t belong in his school and makes it his business to notify her father in person. But the clown had skipped town, leaving his daughter behind. Mr. Gradgrind kindly offers her a place in his home and his school, alongside his two children, Louisa and Tom. But Sissy is from a different world, the world where imagination rules, the right words are ones that come from the heart, and mathematics is just an abstract subject that can’t be applied to life. Not exactly cut out for school, she’s left to stay home and care for Mr. Gradgrind’s wheelchair-bound wife while he spends increasingly more time out of town as a newly elected member of the Parliament.

The most important person in town is the mill-owner and banker Mr. Bounderby (the bombastic Troy West), a self-proclaimed self-made man. He has an eye on Louisa, so when she reaches an appropriate age [of twenty], he asks her hand in marriage. Mostly joyless Louisa (Cordelia Dewdney), whose only passion is her brother Tom (JJ Phillips), agrees, hoping that this will help advance her brother’s carrier in banking. Some of Dickens’ characters are quite difficult to relate to in part because of their excessive wordiness and overly dramatic demeanor, and Louisa is certainly one of them. Nevertheless, all characters are very well developed, the most entertaining of them being Mrs. Sparsit, Mr. Bounderby’s paid companion. Played by Amy J. Carle, who also plays Drunk Woman and Pufflerumpus, she’s manipulative and sarcastic and infuses her role with just the right amount of drama.

The circus performances are effortlessly woven into the plot (Circus Choreographer Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi), and are like a breath of fresh air in town’s otherwise utilitarian existence. The circus is colorful and joyful, and it’s easy to see the stark contrast between the worlds of art and creativity versus business and hard menial work. Even Louisa starts dreaming of circus in her lowest moments.
Scenic Designer Daniel Ostling created a highly mobile set that’s both imaginative and practical; it provides ever-changing scenery, and the whimsically painted back wall is capable of becoming magically translucent to allow “dreams and memories” to enter the stage.

While the well-to-do townspeople are being bored with their lives, majority of the town’s inhabitants, the poor miners and factory workers, “work day and night with nothing to look forward to but a little rest”. Struggling to stay alive leaves little room for anything else, much less romance, so when miner Stephen Blackpool (David Catlin, who also plays Sleary) asks his workmate Rachael (Atra Asdou, who also plays Mrs. Gradgrind) to spend time with him, she’s far too hopeless to be interested.

All in all, things are as expected: the wealthy run things, the poor have nothing, and a travelling circus is a refuge from it all. If running away with the circus was ever a good option, Tom, who finds himself in trouble with law, doesn’t hesitate for a moment.

“Hard Times” is being performed at Lookingglass Theatre through January 14th. For more information visit www.lookingglass.org.

Winner of four Jeff Awards, including Best Production, and fresh off a national tour, Moby Dick, adapted and directed by David Catlin from the book by Herman Melville, returns to the Lookingglass Theatre. The play is produced in association with The Actors Gymnasium, a circus and performing arts training center.

The story is narrated by adventurous Ishmael, a sailor en route to sign up with a whaling ship, Piqued. Ishmael (superbly played by Jamie Abelson at evening performances) first lands in an overcrowded hotel, where the innkeeper casually informs him that due to lack of room he’ll have to share a bed with another fellow. His muscular, tattoo covered bedmate, Queequeg (the absolutely splendid Anthony Fleming III), is a son of a Polynesian island king, who is on his own soul-searching journey. The two men bond and decide to board the ship together.

The rest of the show takes us onto Piqued. The ship is a testosterone infused man-cave; the sailors do what real men are supposed to do: they go out to dangerous sea to hunt down whales in order to obtain whale oil, a valuable commodity at the time. Their jaw-dropping circus-inspired acrobatic fits of agility (choreography by Sylvia Hernandez-Distasi) add to the feel of masculine energy and the everyday struggle to stay alive.

But Piqued’s disheveled and angry Captain Ahab (fiercely played by Nathan Hosner) is not interested in whale oil, he’s got a score to settle: the giant white whale named Moby Dick bit off his leg during their previous encounter. Captain has been at sea for a very long time, and in his insanity he imagines that the white whale represents all the evil in the world, and thus it must be destroyed. It’s pure all-consuming madness!

Costume designer Sully Ratke’s clever use of fabrics play games with our minds: an oversized woman’s skirt swallows drowning men, a vast piece of white silk brushing past our heads is a giant white whale.

The feminine energy in the play is very distinct. The three female actors (Kelley Abell, Mattie Hawkinson, Cordelia Dewdney) play all the female parts as well as the three Fates. They set the mood with their eerie presence and graceful movements, while their beautiful voices provide live score (sound designer/composer Rick Sims). Sometimes they are just lurking around, and other times they are the forces of nature and nature itself. One of them turns into a whale carcass being stripped of meat and drained of oil by sailors in a vaguely sexual way.

That feminine energy is of stark contrast to the mere mortal men’s struggles to survive. It’s Man vs. Nature, and nature can never be conquered. Spoiler alert: in the end, the Ill-fated ship is swallowed by the over-sized skirt. Vengeance is a two-way street.

About the venue: Lookingglass Theatre is housed in Water Tower Water Works, the historic still functioning water station built in 1869, which pumps 250,000 gallons of water to the north side of Chicago every day. Separated from the theatre space by a glass wall, it feels like a time warp, which sets the mood perfectly for this mid-19th century classic. For more information on this show or to purchase tickets, visit www.Lookingglasstheatre.org.

"But how does one know if they've gone mad?" asks Alice of the elusive Cheshire Cat as he swings on a rail, hanging twenty feet off the ground. "You see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased," he answers. "Now, I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry." He grins and disappears, leaving a baffled Alice to contemplate the difference between madness and sanity, the similarities they share, and whether or not they might just be one in the same.

Set in the alternate world that exists beyond – or through – the parlor mirror, Lookingglass Alice is based on Lewis Carroll's sequel to the ever-familiar Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Through the Looking-Glass. So instead of going down the rabbit hole, we literally step through the looking-glass into a dreamy (and sometimes nightmarish) world of opposites, nonsense, and whimsy, as if we too have dozed off after a game of chess and awake to find a new dimension waiting for us above the fireplace mantle.

With or without its befitting name, the Lookingglass Theatre couldn't be a more apt setting in which to tell this tale, with its open, industrial structure taking the viewer out of the space of traditional theatre and promising something more immediate and exciting.

Part children's entertainment, part Cirque du Soleil, part vicarious drug trip, Alice takes the audience on a journey simultaneously magical and dark, funny and frightening, alarming and calming, and above all, surreal. Characters have different proportions through the looking-glass, some excessively tall, some uncharacteristically small; one can run fast for hours and wind up in the very same spot from which they started; Red Queens float on umbrellas in the ocean; cats play with oversized balls of yarn (or is it you who are under-sized?); Alice spins so fast on a suspended hoop you don't know which end is her head and which are her legs – the visual equivalent of how both the audience and the heroine feel after their disorienting passage into the world within the mirror.

A very physical show, Alice is the sort of spectacle meant to be enjoyed by all types of audiences. Young children might be best left at home – the loud noises, confusion, and surreality of it all can be a little overwhelming – but it's undoubtable that physical feats like continuous two-person backflips, the lifting and balancing of actors as though they were weightless, and an anxious finale where Alice wraps herself in ropes mid-air and falls without hitting the ground will impress adults, teens, and kids alike.

Remarkably executed by a vastly talented five-person cast, Alice is less a play than it is an experience. It's colorful and unpredictable. What it lacks in plot, it makes up for in intrigue. Where it forgets logic, it remembers absurdity. You may run in place for ninety minutes and end up in the self-same spot, but you'll have gained a gleeful acceptance of your own madness and the insight that our world is not always as it looks.

Lookingglass Alice, directed by David Catlin, is playing at the Water Tower Water Works space at 821 N Michigan Ave through February 15th, 2015.