C.J. Fernandes

MURDER, MAYHEM, AND A MANUSCRIPT TO DIE FOR Sometimes uncontrollable forces work in your favor. How fortunate then for MadKap productions that on the opening night of their production of Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, Chicago was plunged with little warning into its first winter storm of the season, with sub-zero temperatures, gale-force winds, and heavy snow….

GO ON AND BITE INTO THIS DONUT– YOU’VE EARNED IT It must have been quite a shock to Tracy Letts fans when Superior Donuts premiered at Steppenwolf in 2008. Chicago Theatre’s favorite adopted son had been coming off a streak of intense, gripping dramas, with his most recent one, August, Osage County, cleaning up at…

SHARP CAST, BLUNT SATIRE A Fierce Ensemble Fights for Meaning in Angry Fags Topher Payne’s Angry Fags first made its appearance in 2015, in a world that was decidedly different from what it is now, and Ghostlight Ensemble’s new production at the Lifeline Theatre in Rogers Park is timely. There have been some changes made…

425 YEARS LATER, THE O.G. ROMCOM STILL CASTS A SPELL Writers Theatre in Glencoe, a charming North Shore Chicago suburb, has developed a reputation for impeccably produced theater of extremely high quality. Their newest production, a Midwest premiere of the musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It by Laurie Woolery and Tony-winner Shaina Taub…

THIS HOUSE STANDS ON FAITH AND FURY Invictus Theatre’s The House That Will Not Stand blazes with wit, grief, and grace Following the smashing success of its production of Angels in America, Invictus Theatre Co. notches up another triumph with Marcus Gardley’s Obie-winner, The House That Will Not Stand. In this (very) loose adaptation of…

TOWERING TALENT ELEVATES A MUSICAL AS SCHIZOPHRENIC AS JEKYLL & HYDE THEMSELVES Next up for Halloween, and my second gothic horror in as many days, is Kokandy Productions’ presentation of the musical, Jekyll & Hyde, first produced in 1990 with music by Frank Wildhorn, book by Leslie Bricusse, and lyrics by Wildhorn, Bricusse, and Steve…

A Bite Out of Minimalism: Timothy Griffin’s imaginative adaptation turns Stoker’s most chilling chapter into a voyage of dread, myth, and mind In 1897, Bram Stoker published a gothic horror novel called Dracula and in doing so introduced to the world a character that has fascinated and terrified humanity for over a hundred years and…

ROXIE’S BACK IN TOWN! MY KIND OF PLAY, CHICAGO IS In Jazz Age Chicago, 1924 to be precise, Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner were tried and subsequently acquitted of murder. A young Tribune reporter and aspiring writer, Maurine Dallas Watkins, covered the two (unrelated) murder cases for the paper and later used them as inspiration…

A REVOLUTION LOST IN THE (BEAUTIFUL) NOISE Revolution(s) is the first Owen Theatre production of Goodman’s centennial celebration. With a book by Zayd Ayers Dohrn and music and lyrics by multiple Grammy winning, rap-metal legend Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave), the musical examines the effects of transgenerational economic and racial injustice in modern…

All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.     — Leo Tolstoy The most remarkable thing about Joel Drake Johnson’s Four Places is how it prepares you for what’s to come in its very first scene and still manages to surprise you. Opening in an intimate black box…

DON’T KILL THE FATTED CALF JUST YET — THE PRODIGAL SON RETURNS EMPTY-HANDED “I was fifteen. Do you remember fifteen? For me, it was a special, beautiful room in Hell.” That brilliant line opens Prodigal Son, an autobiographical play from Oscar, Tony, and Pulitzer Prize winner John Patrick Shanley (Doubt, Moonstruck). First opening Off-Broadway in…

A BEAUTIFUL NIGHTMARE IN A HOUSE THAT BLEEDS ART As a fan of the horror genre in every medium, how could I resist the chance to review something as delightfully titled as House of the Exquisite Corpse. That said, given my predilection—some would say, obsession—for avoiding all information about a show prior to viewing it,…

AN OAK WHOSE ROOTS WON’T LET GO A flashlight illuminating a face from below: what else could follow that image but a ghost story. And what better time for a ghost story than the month that culminates in Halloween, that night when the boundary between this and the other world is at its thinnest, when…

ON THE THIRD RAIL: STRONG ACTORS KEEP THIS DUTCHMAN FLYING The Trap Door Theatre is a quintessential Chicago storefront theatre — it’s housed in a converted garage, accessed through a narrow walkway, almost invisible from the street — that has built its reputation on offbeat, experimental productions. Their previous production was the divisive Ghost Fetus,…

SINK YOUR TEETH INTO THIS BLOODY CUT OF MEAT At some time in the future, a band of rebels have staged a successful coup against the United States. The prevailing system of order has been violently overthrown. Cities are razed to the ground, with surviving citizenry housed in camps. Food is scarce. Medicine is scarcer….

CARB-LOADERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! “For the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread…†Alright, so that’s not from Julius Caesar but Coriolanus, that other Shakespeare play about a politician undone by his own ambition and hubris (and that coincidentally also features a character called Brutus), but in this “ad-rap-tation” of the Bard’s…