Defiant To The End

Chicago’s distinctive and aptly named Defiant Theatre closes its doors forever this week with a production of Anthony Burgess’s classic of violence and societal manipulation, A Clockwork Orange. “Anyone who’s been watching the distinctive theatrical work of Defiant — the original bad boys and girls of the off-Loop — over these last 10 years quickly gets [director Christopher] Johnson’s meta-point. Defiant is over… The original people have gone soft, gotten married, acquired proper jobs. You can’t keep churning out the old ultra-violence, as Alex would say, on a shoestring in those circumstances.”