Tag Archives: Spotlight Theater

Review: Spotlight Theater’s Jake’s Women

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So last month (January) I went to New Lenox, IL to see a friend of mine in Jake’s Women by Neil Simon as produced by Spotlight Theater. Now this was directed by first time director: Nicole Fleming. Now if you remember, a few months prior I saw Spotlight Theater’s production of The Deadly Game which I really enjoyed… this show, however, brought out a very different perspective.

Essentially Jake’s Women revolves around Jake, a writer, who is at a crossroads in his life, his second marriage is failing, he’s slowly losing his sanity, and he’s trying to hold on to the only piece of light to get through the darkness. However, the women that he talks to aren’t in his reality, they are versions of the women in his reality that have a permanent residence in his head.

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Review: Spotlight Theater’s Deadly Game

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Just last weekend my beau and I motored our way down to New Lenox to watch a mutual friend’s production of The Deadly Game by James Yaffe.

Spotlight Theater is fairly new to the New Lenox area (no pun intended), but it is definitely not new to the world of community theater. Originally from the Homewood area, it was difficult to have to uproot from an established area and move to not only somewhere fairly new, but a town that already had an established community theater group in vicinity. Is there room for two community theater groups in this sleepy southwest Chicagoland town, only time will tell. However, if closing night is any indication then I suspect that Spotlight Theater will be around for some time.

The production is about a quadrille of retired friends: a prosecutor, a defense lawyer, a judge and the extra. All of whom relax together at an isolated home out in the middle of Switzerland and play an old “parlour game” to pass the time.

During one of their get-togethers an American businessman happens upon them, finding himself stuck in the storm and unable to continue on his trip to town. After a little bit of time warming up by the fire and having a bit of alcohol and food he is invited into their parlour game playing the defendant.

And so begins a court enactment where each of the players re-enact their roles that they’ve played in their life and the American businessman being grilled for a “crime” that he may or may not have committed.

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