Orestes

Dream Theatre Company presents the Final Chapter in the 2010 Agon Trilogy: Orestes written by Chicago playwright Jeremy Menekseoglu. The show runs Thursday, July 15 through Sunday, August 15 at Dream Theatre 556 W 18th Street. Performances run Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 7pm. Tickets are $18 or $15 if purchased through www.dreamtheatrecompany.com.
ORESTES is the Final Chapter of Jeremy Menekseoglu's Agon Trilogy. Six months after the events of Electra
Led by Persephone and Cassandra,… Show more both who hate the very air she breathes, a desperate and battle hardened Electra ventures into the bowels of Hell to rescue her dead brother and to witness a fate truly worse than death itself.
ORESTES features Anna Weiler, Theresa Neef, Alicia Reese, Annelise Lawson, Bil Gaines, Giau Truong, Rachel Martindale and Jeremy Menekseoglu.
About Dream Theatre:
Since 1998 Dream Theatre has performed all original productions that include: Electra; Agamemnon; Aelita \ Shiny Boxes; The Black Duckling; Somewhere in Texas; Sequestered; Cold; The Samaritan Syndrome; Baby Killers; SlowAnna; Anna, in the Darkness; Medea; Antigone; Ismene and Sister 121. Dream Theatre strives to deliver the highest art in its most raw, unflinching and entertaining form.
Praise for The Agon Trilogy:
"Menekseoglu-who also plays the title role-makes it a small, stunning portrait of power dynamics in a relationship that by turns echoes those between Edward Albee's George and Martha, Orson Welles's Charles and Susan Kane, and Sophocles's Antigone and Creon. Oh, and Jean Cocteau's Belle and Bete, too." "HIGHLY Recommended" -Tony Adler, Chicago Reader
"I am now a fan of Dream Theatre because they do not shy away from being theatrical. I feel there has been a developing trend to create plays that want to be movies, but Dream Theatre embraces the theatrical experience." "The play has a timeless quality juxtaposing Ancient Greek names and places with contemporary vernacular, and an old time radio feel." "It is a Herculean achievement (no pun intended) to create a two-person play that never feels over spoken...." "Dream Theatre's mission is to "Leave no member of the audience to feel as a mere spectator, but to be at the very center of the play", and they do just that with the preshow. The performance began from the moment I entered the lobby, and continued until I got to my seat." -Chris Arnold, Steadstyle Chicago
"As a first installment, Agamemnon is a harbinger of good things to come. It will certainly be exciting to watch as Menekseoglu steers the Dream ensemble through the next two plays of his Agon Trilogy." "Agamemnon is an odd and oddly fresh performance that hits intriguing notes." -Ian Epstein, Chicago Theatre Blog
"Dream Theatre's Electra is AWESOME." "The second part of artistic director/playwright Jeremy Menekseoglu's reinterpretation 'Electra' delivers as a chilling, profoundly moving, deeply disturbing piece of theater that will continue to haunt you after the show's over." "As Orestes and Electra, Menekseoglu and Anna Weiler together are wonderful" -Neal Ryan Shaw, NewCity Chicago
"Menekseoglu orchestrates his characters' epic brutality to thrilling effect." "a sophisticated, harrowing reworking of Aeschylus's Oresteia." Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader
"Clearly, this Chorus owes a debt to Surrealism and Dadaism in modern drama. However, what can be relished most about Menekseoglu's Chorus is how thoroughly they resurrect the Erinyes, or the Furies, from Aeschylus' original Oresteia." "Electra satisfies with its cunning, invention, and witty adherence to Classical tradition." -Paige Listerud, Chicago Theater Blog
As well as receiving critical acclaim for the first two installments of the trilogy, here are some other things said of Dream Theatre Company's work: The October '09 production of The Black Duckling received a Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Incidental Music. Tony Adler from The Chicago Reader described their Critic's Choice production of Somewhere In Texas a "full-blown psychosexual nightmare, complete with devil babies. It's the damndest thing." Kerry Reid called their 2008 production of Medea "remarkable The nihilism and narcissism of the grown-ups comes through with chilling intensity." Randy Hardwick from Chicagocritic.com said about Medea, "Menekseoglu's skill at balancing the cerebral and classic with the duty to entertain is singular and this show will do nothing but further his growing reputation." and Ismene as "high art brilliantly written as good as it gets. It is the best show in this category that I have seen thus far this season." Fabrizio O. Almeida said that Baby Killers was "A performance style rarely seen on the American stage (and) rarely executed as well as it has been done here... This inchoate blend of science fiction, melodrama, expressionism and the macabre lingers in the imagination like a strange dream..." And "...given Chicago's plethora of offerings on any given night, you're unlikely to see anything like this anywhere else."

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