C.J. Fernandes

EN GARDE, YOU FOOLS A spirited cast and plenty of swashbuckling fun can’t quite compensate for a forgettable score “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” That terrific sentence opens Rafael Sabatini’s 1921 novel Scaramouche. A smash hit on publication, this swashbuckling adventure has been adapted…

HOOP DREAMS IN HARLEM Young People’s Theatre closes its season with a charming, energetic celebration of childhood, friendship, and community In The Hula-Hoopin’ Queen, the stakes are very low; to an adult, that is. But if you’re a 10-year-old girl like Kameeka (or her friend Jamara), being crowned the Hula-Hoopin’ Queen of 139th Street is…

GUILT TRIP TUTA Theatre turns Dostoevsky’s sprawling masterpiece into a feverish psychological horror story of conscience, damnation, and salvation Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece Crime and Punishment runs around 700 pages and involves close to two dozen significant characters. TUTA Theatre’s production uses as its text a 2003 adaptation by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus: this version…

LOG OFF AND SING Dave Malloy’s brilliant chamber musical turns doomscrolling, loneliness, and internet addiction into something unexpectedly humane I don’t know what I was expecting when I walked into Raven Theatre’s first ever mounting of a musical, but it wasn’t the basement of a church (rec center? YMCA?). Closing out Raven’s triumphant 43rd season,…

IT’S TIME TO RAGNARÖK ‘N’ ROLL  An exuberant Norse rock opera with enough swagger to survive the apocalypse A corner of a decrepit night club greets you as you walk into Lifeline Theatre’s performance space. Shabby chandeliers hang from the ceiling. Tinsel and trash are everywhere. Above the instruments, a broken entablature hangs askew, with…

MOTHER KNOWS BEST— UNTIL SHE DOESN’T A devastating, clear-eyed revival that refuses comfort and lingers long after the lights go down I first watched ‘night, Mother, the Pulitzer-prize winning drama by Marsha Norman, when I was in my early teens. I remember being thoroughly absorbed, if slightly shocked, by its matter-of-fact discussion of suicide. Beyond…

FAULT LINES A glossy production sinks under the weight of a script that mistakes talk for wit Unpleasant, unfunny, misogynistic, and worst of all, boring. Let’s play a drinking game: every time you hear the words “banter,” “witty,” or “verbal” in Scooter Pietsch’s Fault, now on stage at Chicago Shakespeare, take a shot. If they…

CASH, GRIEF, AND THE COST OF RESISTANCE A gripping, immersive premiere dissolves the line between audience and action Steppenwolf’s excellent 50th season continues with Windfall, the new play by Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney (Moonlight). Performed in the Ensemble Theatre, Andrew Boyce’s scenic design eschews a traditional set almost entirely. The performance space is a…

OUT OF THE CLOSET, INTO THE FIRE A messy, ambitious new musical about divorce lands more as play than score— but still entertains Court Theatre closes out its 2025/2026 season with Out Here, a new musical with a book by Leslie Buxbaum, music by Erin McKeown, lyrics by Buxbaum and McKeown, and it’s all based…

ICE FISHING, MALE BONDING, AND ONE VERY TALKATIVE FISH An uproarious and unexpectedly poignant Midwest comedy that finds connection in the unlikeliest of places. “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before”. That line from O Pioneers! by the great…

TRAUMA, TRUTH, AND THE STORIES WE SELL A taut psychological thriller that cuts deep and lingers “Look at this place. Just how rich did our trauma make you?” Of all the devastating zingers hurled about the posh living room of Xochi’s lake house in Both, the brilliant new play by Paloma Nozicka, that’s the one…

A GREAT, GREEN ROOM YOU’LL NEVER WANT TO LEAVE Chicago Children’s Theatre closes out its 20th anniversary season with a picture(book)-perfect triumph! “I wish I might, I wish I may / go live inside my book / to stay in the great, green room” There have been some remarkably effective immersive sets in Chicago black-box…

THE BLUES THAT BUILT AMERICA— AND THE COST OF SINGING THEM August Wilson’s masterpiece lands with devastating force in a blazing Goodman revival Four black musicians amble into a recording studio in Chicago in 1927. They are met by two nervous white men; one a manager, the other the owner of the studio. Both demand…

A GREAT PERFORMANCE IN SEARCH OF A BETTER PLAY Gary Houston towers in a two-hander that never quite lives up to its premise Outside a run-down cottage in rural Connecticut, a white-haired man in his 80s sits in a pleather armchair. The ground is littered with balls of paper. A few feet from the chair…

THIS SLOW-BURNING, DEVASTATING DRAMA REFUSES EASY ANSWERS The Sugar Wife is a gripping and complex examination of morality and the individual’s responsibility towards society The Sugar Wife is set in Ireland in 1850. That year is very important; the middle-class and poor were right in the midst of the Great Famine, while across the Atlantic,…

ARGUMENTS WITHIN ARGUMENTS A fiercely intelligent play that challenges ideas more than it deepens character A large, welcoming room lined with stained wood bookshelves greets you when you walk into Theater #2 at Theater Wit’s home on Belmont Avenue in Lakeview. There are three study tables with lamps emitting a soft light. The shelves are…

ALL FOR ONE—AND A WHOLE LOT OF MEANWHILES A rollicking, cleverly staged adventure that balances spectacle with comic flair Xavier Lagunas, Jack Sharkey and Boomer Lusink Swash your buckler and brandish your sword! Idle Muse Theatre opens its 20th year with a new production of The Three Musketeers, adapted by local playwright Robert Kauzlaric from…

PHILOSOPHY, FARCE, AND ART UNDER SIEGE Witkiewicz’s dense, absurdist text sparks to life— until unnecessary asides break the spell Gus Thomas and Venice Averyheart Theatre does not get much more high-minded than The Cuttlefish, or the Hyrcanian Worldview, now on stage at Trap Door Theatre in Bucktown. This 1922 play from Polish surrealist Stanisław I….