Best Emerging Theater Company, Reader's Choice: Polarity Ensemble Theatre (Hamlet)

Reader’s Choice

Polarity Ensemble Theatre

In three years Polarity Ensemble Theatre has produced five full-length shows (mostly original adaptations of meaty classics), staged a new-plays competition in a Moroccan cafe, and published a book. By Chicago theater standards they’re slackers, and until recently I’d have said they were indistinguishable from any number of other ambitious but destitute itinerant companies. But their Hamlet, which closed June 15, has made them a force to be reckoned with. Their threadbare, bullshit-free production turned five structurally unruly, linguistically dense acts into an evening of engaged and engaging storytelling—something that big, moneyed, Tony-winning Shakespeare complex on Navy Pier does only on occasion. In Polarity’s relatively green hands, the 400-year-old behemoth felt positively brisk, as though it had been written yesterday. Hopefully they’ll keep proving how vital and contemporary classic theater can be.  petheatre.com. —Justin Hayford

Readers’ Choice

Organic Theater Company

 312-634-0199, organictheater.org.

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