C.J. Fernandes

THE HAIRY APE COMETH This gleefully unhinged musical comedy is a strong play’s journey into wisecracks The Goodman closes out its centennial season in spectacular fashion with a big, brash new musical composed by Mark Hollmann (Urinetown), lyrics by Hollmann and Jay Reiss (Spelling Bee), and book by Reiss and Erin Quinn Purcell. Directed by…

CRITIC’S BITE A gripping solo performance anchors this haunting tale I had not encountered arithmomania in any form of entertainment media in well over two decades. Now it’s popped up twice in a few weeks on two different Chicago stages: in Kevin Douglas’ hilarious Untitled Vampire Play at Lookingglass, and now in Black Button Eyes‘ sharp…

BAD FENCES MAKE GOOD COMEDY Big laughs bloom from a tiny patch of disputed ground. In a tony suburb of Washington, D.C., a young upwardly mobile Hispanic couple move into their first house, a charming fixer-upper with a small backyard. Pablo Del Valle (Rio Soliz Ragazzone) is an attorney—the only one of color—in a prestigious…

THE WEIGHT OF HERITAGE A thoughtful work that doesn’t always come together An unusual and ambitious production, L.M. Feldman’s A People is a sort of theatrical mosaic. Mounted by Arts Judaica and YI Love Jewish and currently playing at Theater Wit in Lakeview, the show attempts to condense five thousand years of Jewish culture and…

OUT OF TUNE WITH CHEKHOV Chekhov’s quiet desperation is drowned out by one very loud performance What would a season of theater be without a Chekhov play? Or five? Following Red Theater’s excellent The Seagull in February, we now have a new iteration of Uncle Vanya from AstonRep Productions, currently on stage at The Edge Off-Broadway…

SUCKING FACE Chemistry, comedy, and a little bloodlust make for an irresistible evening. Is there a quality more indefinable and unpredictable than the chemistry between two people, whether in real life or on stage or screen? It cannot be predicted by mien, talent, or secondary sexual characteristics. It’s either there or it isn’t. And in…

GETTING CAUGHT UP WHEN THERE’S A CATCH A baffling experiment eventually reveals a powerful emotional core Why? That one-word refrain was what repeatedly popped up in my head through most of the first hour of Mia Chung‘s Catch as Catch Can, the final production of Steppenwolf’s mostly excellent 50th season. The show features three actors—two…

[Editor’s Note (June 2026): Raven Theatre’s astounding production of Octet, originally reviewed by Stage and Cinema in May, transfers intact to the Goodman Theatre for a limited engagement beginning July 15, 2026.] 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…

THE GHOSTS IN THE FAMILY TREE Tom Stoppard’s final play is as intellectually dazzling as it is emotionally devastating “Barbarism will not be eradicated by culture.” That line, spoken midway through Leopoldstadt, the final masterpiece by Tom Stoppard—one of the greatest playwrights of his, or any, generation—made my stomach do a flip. Merely one of…

LOVE ON THE RANGE, PAIN ON THE HORIZON A beautiful musical framework strengthens a stage adaptation that never quite resolves its competing impulses In 1997, a short story from Pulitzer winner Annie Proulx appeared in the pages of The New Yorker. Beginning in the 1960s in Wyoming, it was a restrained yet heartbreaking tale of…

THE TRAGEDY’S THE THING A few baffling choices can’t derail the explosive clash at the heart of Anouilh’s classic There are a number of missteps in this production of Anouilh’s Antigone, presented by the Promethean ensemble at The Den Theatre. Fortunately for the show, they’re almost entirely confined to the relatively unimportant parts. Jean Anouilh’s…

FIFTEEN MINUTES FOREVER Terry Guest turns pop-art icons into a meditation on immortality I may have passed on the foil-lined photo booth—too Bug for me—on my way into Jackalope Theatre’s intimate performance space at The Broadway Armory, but its presence is merely the first indication of the imagination and inventiveness awaiting audiences in the world…

WITH ITS BASES LOADED, THEO UBIQUE HITS ANOTHER GRAND SLAM A clever, heartfelt revival proves this Golden Age favorite still knows how to play ball There’s a bit of a curveball early in Theo Ubique’s sparkling revival of Damn Yankees, the classic 1955 musical from Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, with a book by George…

TRUTH, CONSEQUENCES, AND CONTAMINATED WATER A superb production of Ibsen’s classic finds unsettling echoes in the present day There are plays that endure because their themes and characters are universal, allowing them to be reinterpreted for different eras, locations, and so on—the oeuvre of a certain bard from Stratford-upon-Avon comes to mind. And then there…

DANCING THROUGH THE DECADES A mesmerizing theatrical collage that rewards surrender over analysis One never quite knows what to expect from the good folks at Trap Door Theatre, and I’m sure they wouldn’t want it any other way. The company restricts itself to furiously political works from lesser-known authors; they have a fondness for the…

PUNK, PRAYER, AND PURE CHAOS The Conspirators’ neo-commedia take on Molière finds fresh mischief in a timeless satire What could be better than a saucy, irreverent, seventeenth-century French farce? How about a saucy, irreverent, seventeenth-century French farce performed in the twenty-first century, that marries a punk aesthetic to a modern interpretation of a sixteenth-century Italian…

SIGNALS IN THE STATIC A Red Orchid’s compelling world premiere favors empathy over satire, sometimes at the expense of deeper exploration Thus far, 2026 has been an uncommonly good year in Chicago for new work, bringing forth plays and musicals that push against the boundaries of theatre, in terms of both narrative and construction. The…

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA York Walker’s Southern Gothic keeps its secrets close and its audience on edge “Everybody got a secret” That is the line that opens Covenant, the gripping play by York Walker, now playing on the Owen stage at the Goodman. It is about as tight a summation as can be…

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…