MOUNT VERNON — “Don Juan in Chicago,” a comedic mix of a little Faust, a little Seinfeld and even a bit of Mozart, opens at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 3, at Cornell College in the Plumb-Fleming Studio Theatre of Armstrong Hall.
Performances continue Dec. 4, 9, 10, and 11 at 8 p.m., and Dec. 5 at 2 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults and $5 for seniors, students and children. Reserve tickets through the Cornell box office at 895-4293.
Don Juan is a handsome, rich, sexually naive nobleman in 16th-century Spain. His servant, Leporello, urges him to find a girlfriend and lead a normal life, but the Don is more interested in finding the meaning of life through books and alchemy. Afraid that he’s running out of time, Don Juan cuts a deal with the devil that grants him and Leporello immortality as long as the virginal Don Juan beds a different woman every day. Unfortunately he falls in love with the first woman he seduces, Dona Elvira. Infuriated by the Don’s abandonment, Elvira cuts her own deal with the devil: she won’t die until she sleeps with Don Juan a second time.
Four hundred years later in Chicago, exhausted by endless sex and still pursued by Elvira, Don Juan grapples with the sexual mores of contemporary urban America.
Playwright David Ives has a “lively wit and original mind, and a neatly topsy-turvy way with life’s little realities. (‘Don Juan’) is a brashly funny way to spend a couple of hours,” writes a New York Post critic.
The Cornell production is directed by Jody Hovland, founder and co-artistic director of Riverside Theatre in Iowa City and artist-in-residence in theatre and communications studies.
“Don Juan in Chicago” contains adult language and situations and may not be suitable for younger patrons.
