Cruising with Neil Labute Down the Autobahn.

Comments (0) By Elaine Liner Thursday, Aug 23 2012

A warning about a technical aspect of all the plays in Autobahn: The actors sit on a revolving platform simulating a car, but behind them is a wall-size screen on which different loops of video show actual streets and highways with moving traffic. The images, shot on highways and city thoroughfares, shake up and down, particularly during the Bench Seat and All Apologies scenes. The effect for a viewer is like sitting on a boat bobbing in tall waves. It made me almost car sick, which perhaps is only too appropriate.

Jazz hands, everybody! Kander and Ebb's Chicago is back, this time with the Lexus Broadway Series at the Winspear. Choreography by Ann Reinking via Bob Fosse stages the best "Cell Block Tango" since ... ever. Leading lady Terra C. MacLeod, playing Velma Kelly, the vamp of murderers' row, resembles Reinking in the most splendid ways, belting songs and dancing with sinuous flare. Playing Roxie Hart, Tracy Shayne is, to be indelicate, older than most Velmas. I won't guess how old, but Elaine Stritch could be her understudy.

Mark Oristano

Cindy Meurthe and John S. Davies get good mileage out of Neil LaBute's seven-play evening, Autobahn, in Addison.

Details

Autobahn

Through August 26 at the Addison Theatre Centre, 15650 Addison Road, Addison. Call 866-811-4111 for tickets.

Chicago

Through August 26 at the Winspear Opera House, AT&T Performing Arts Center. Call 214-880-0202 for tickets

More About

As shyster lawyer Billy Flynn, John O'Hurley, aka "Mr. Peterman" on Seinfeld and a winner on Dancing with the Stars, heaps on the charm. But he doesn't have to lift a heel in this role. He's coasting.

The standout is D. Micciche as sob-sister reporter "Mary Sunshine," played with a jaw-jangling soprano vibrato that's comically pitch perfect. Micciche steals the show from the leading ladies. No crime in that.