Preview - Friday, October 26th
Opening Night- Saturday, October 27th* - showtime 8:30pm
NO SHOW - November 23rd (day after Thanksgiving)
Runs Friday and Saturdays at 8:00 and Sundays at 7:00
Closes- December 1st
Industry Night - November 26th
Factory Theater at the Prop Thtr 3502 N. Elston Ave, Chicago.
TICKETS:
$10.00 Preview
*OPENING NIGHT: Ticket price is $30 for show, open bar before and after show,plus the raffle
$20.00 general run
$5.00 Industry Night
Starting on Friday, November 2nd.
Runs Fridays and Saturdays at 10:30 (No shows Thanksgiving weekend) thru Dec 1st.
Tix Price $15.00.
Dirty Diamonds Show Synopsis:
A man in Las Vegas for the first time soon gets tangled up with a femme fatale, who entices him into a plan to recover some buried diamonds. Together, along with the woman's ex-boyfriend, they work to recover the diamonds in time to hand them over to a murderous drug kingpin. Little do they know the kingpin has other plans for them.
Reviews
By Nina Metz | Special to the Tribune
October 31, 2007
Stan is just a regular guy, a thirtysomething insurance adjuster from Naperville visiting Las Vegas for the first time. And while his buddies sleep off their hangovers, Stan gets sucked into crime spree that will lead to his own backyard in the Chicago suburbs.
"Dirty Diamonds," which wraps Factory Theater's 15th season, is one of the troupe's less deranged shows, infrequent as they are. Factory's productions may lack a bursting, over-the-top spirit (note the absence of a sprawling cast), but they offer up something better: a work of theater that is deftly constructed and resolutely funny.
Written by Mike Beyer, who also stars as the aforementioned Stan, the caper is set in motion when Rita (Heather Tyler) walks into a hotel cafe wearing a slinky black dress and Lucite heels. If there is a lesson to be learned it is that one should never trust a woman wearing a slinky black dress and Lucite heels to breakfast. (Alan Donahue's excellent set design morphs from a nondescript hotel restaurant, to a hotel suite, to a suburban living room.)
Rita is up to no good, and she eyes Stan for the easy mark that he is. Tyler's portrayal is neither too aggressive nor too subtle; it walks that tiny space in between. Watch as she casually lets a condom drop from her purse, like the proverbial carrot dangled in front of Stan's widening eyes.
Soon, the glowering waiter from the café (Matt Engle) intrudes on their cozy twosome, and all three head back to Illinois where Stan's yard is turned to mulch in the quest of buried treasure. The arrival of a goon named Fishman (Dave Skvarla) brings the drama to a head, and the ensuing chaos includes an impressive, scarily comical airborne choking maneuver courtesy of fight choreographer Anthony Tournis.
"Dirty Diamonds" may be populated by archetypes, but they are believable within the framework of Beyer's script. The production is expertly directed by Manny Tamayo.) The play is pure genre—a square gets mixed up with a criminal element—but a genre done well can be blissfully entertaining.
Time Out Chicago / Issue 141 : November 8, 2007
November 14, 2007
Review
Dirty Diamonds
Factory Theater at Prop Thtr. By Mike Beyer. Dir. Manny Tamayo. With Beyer, Heather Tyler, Matt Engle, Dave Skvarla.
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS Beyer and Tyler stay in Vegas.
Stan’s a nice guy from Naperville, a thirtyish insurance adjuster in thrall to a controlling fiancée. He’s the kind of guy who goes to Vegas for a buddy’s bachelor party and turns in early while the other guys hit the strip club. He’s more excited by the prospect of his own upcoming honeymoon in Branson, Missouri. But a chance encounter over a solo breakfast (he went to bed early, after all) with a femme fatale named Rita sends his life careening in an unexpected direction.
Beyer’s script has twists and turns that we rarely saw coming, so far be it from us to reveal too many specifics. We will say that if you’re expecting the kind of screwball wackitude the Factory often (though not exclusively) specializes in, think again. Though there are plenty of laughs, the light tone of the setup is merely misdirection for the darker, more dangerous funny to come. (In terms of implausible Vegas-set stories, this is a closer relative of Peter Berg’s 1998 film Very Bad Things than of Ocean’s Anything.)
Dirty Diamonds is probably too packed with illicit references and screamed obscenities to make any inroads with the Jeff committee (and we wouldn’t mind more variation from hollering hothead thug Engle), but it had us leaning forward in our seats. That’s largely due to the grounding the lurid story is given by Beyer’s own nuanced portrayal of a regular guy in over his head. As Stan, Beyer makes a thoroughly convincing transition—from a timid suburbanite who lets his fiancée run his life and admits he doesn’t have much in the way of balls, to a guy who grows a pair precisely when they’re needed.
— Kris Vire
New City Tip of the Week
Dirty Diamonds
Valerie Jean Johnson
Infidelity, theft, deception and cold-blooded murder are very, very, wrong. They can also be a hell of a lot of fun, for the safe-from-harm theatergoer, at least. Mike Beyer’s new play, is a high-pitched, ninety-minute whirlwind of sex, greed, lies, violence—and what appeared to be macramé (or was it a collage of pastel cotton balls?). The playwright can be seen onstage as well, as Stan, the quintessential good-guy who, while in Vegas for a buddy’s bachelor party, is seduced by the beautiful and manipulative Rita (Heather Tyler), and lured into a dangerous scheme to recover a cache of stolen diamonds supposedly buried in his Naperville backyard. Matt Engle gets a lot of laughs as Rita’s trigger-happy, lunatic ex-lover, and Dave Skvarla raises the creep factor almost beyond my comfort level as crime boss Fishman. Prop Thtr’s intimate black box is a great space for this company, and Alan Donahue’s set takes great advantage of the room’s potential. Lengthy scene changes bleed the momentum a bit, but the actors’ stamina brings you right back in—they are obviously having a great time up there, and inviting us to do the same. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it is a fairly clever, certainly entertaining effort at noir parody—bring your friends, grab a drink and watch these characters self-destruct.
From the Chicago Reader
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Factory Theater's darkly funny noirish thriller begins with a familiar premise: a shy straight arrow becomes enmeshed in the life of a dangerous, complicated woman with a shady past. But playwright Mike Beyer (who also cowrote the long-running 1995 hit White Trash Wedding and a Funeral) spins a story out of it so tight, so packed with twists, and so full of intense, eccentric Elmore Leonard-like characters that you never think about the plot's holes and outrageous coincidences. It helps that the show is well performed by its energetic four-member cast; Heather Tyler is particularly fine as the skittish, Barbara Stanwyck-esque femme fatale. --Jack Helbig
