Love Takes Place on Stage in 3 Stages, Starting this Friday

In Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare tells us “Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake,” meaning it embodies contradictions – something anyone who has been in love can vouch for.

Love always makes for a good story because some part of it is always relatable. And what better way to explore all the various sides to love than in a three-part cabaret using – at least some – words and songs that people already know.

Chicago theatre artist Khnemu Menu-Ra has spent a decade crafting his 3 Stages of Love – a three-part semi-autobiographical work that features a blend of Shakespeare and song, as well as original pieces.

“I love how the intimacy of a cabaret setting can create a personal, creative flexibility to share classic favorites in a fresh frame or connect more contemporary material to the broad palette of influences from which it sprang,” Menu-Ra said.

He began with Origins of Love, his first devised cabaret reflecting that he had spent 20 years of his life in theatre, primarily performing musical theatre and Shakespeare. On the heels of that success, he followed it up a few years later with a second cabaret, using different music, more Shakespeare but also a few more personal stories and thoughts in his own words with an even more intimate feel. That show was so well received that he planned a third installment that unfortunately never made it to performance due to the global shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Locked down at home with all kinds of free time, I came up with the notion that all three of my Shakespearean cabarets could be packaged, rewritten and re-branded as a three-part series, 3 Stages of Love...a trilogy, if you will,” Menu-Ra said

“Not in a storytelling sense, where you have to see every part. But each individual cabaret has Shakespeare, song, repeated poems, ideas and sparkling choices that hopefully create a rich, reflective experience about the extraordinary power of love in all its many highs and lows.”

The first part of this revamped trilogy begins its run this Friday, September 8 in the upstairs space at Mrs. Murphy & Son’s Irish Bistro in NorthCenter. Origins of Love frames a sort of classic "boy meets girl/meet cute” and explores what happens next – a situation everyone is familiar with in some way (if not in person, then through all of recorded pop culture and classic art).

Menu-Ra’s is a member of Chicago’s Ghostlight Ensemble Theatre Co. and his company is mounting all three parts over its 9th Season.

"When Khnemu pitched this to the Ensemble, it provided a series of events with the perfect throughline that connects all of what we are doing with this season that is all about love and its many forms and facets,” said Ghostlight Ensemble’s Co-Artistic Director Justin Broom. “Not to mention highlighting the amazing, multi-talented Ensemble members we have in our company."

Menu-Ra will be familiar to Chicago theatre audiences through his work with Ghostlight Ensemble, having appeared as The Bartender in their production Drink the Past Dry this past May and in last fall’s Alabama Story, as well as Holiday Spirits at the Driehaus Museum in December 2024.

Origins of Love has three performances (all good things come in threes): Friday, September 5, 12 and 19. All performances are at 8 p.m. and all are at Mrs. Murphy’s. Tickets are pay-what-you-will and you can reserve your spot in advance here: www.eventbrite.com/e/3-stages-of-love-tickets-1553254870129.

Parts 2 and 3 will take place in 2026. They are:

• Simple Love/Unperfect Actor, which Menu-Ra describes as a “coming of age while emotionally stunted (as so many of we Gen X/Millennial cis males can be)” story, and how “if life and love may never be easy...surely, they can be simple?”
• Extraordinary Love, which he says remembers the past, embraces the present and hopes the future will continue to be anything but ordinary.

“I've really enjoyed people seeing these shows and sharing that we’ve introduced them to music they’ve never heard before, or that they don’t typically understand or connect with Shakespeare, but could grasp the language and/or meanings a bit more clearly now,” Menu-Ra added. “It’s kind of my favorite thing about the cabaret format, because I’ve never really been a songwriter.”

For most people the word cabaret might bring to mind Cabaret – the acclaimed stage musical that explores the decadence of Berlin during the Weimar Republic amid the rising threat of Nazism.

But the art form that inspired the musical (and the book its based on) began much earlier, generally attributed to the opening of Le Chat Noir in the Monmartre district of Paris in 1881. It continues today with performances that features music, song, dance, recitation and/or drama.

The performance venue is usually a pub, bar, restaurant, nightclub or even, occasionally, a casino with a space for performances. The audience is often dining and drinking during the performance. Cabaret is often (but not always) oriented towards adult audiences with an underground history.

At Mrs. Murphy & Son’s Irish Bistro, the pub atmosphere and the availability of drinks and dinner for the audience is part of the draw. 3 Stages of Loves promises to be a true cabaret for those daring enough to join.

3 Stages of Love is devised and performed by Khnemu Menu-Ra with Dani Brady and Jean E. Mueller-Burr. Music by Ellis Douglas on guitar and Jill Waycie on piano. More information is available at: www.ghostlightensemble.com/3-stages-of-love.