Dan Zeff

THE STEPS TO SUCCESS They say that timing is everything. Timing certainly is everything in The 39 Steps, the English spy spoof that occupies a delightful, often amazing, and even suspenseful two hours at the Drury Lane Theatre. The antecedents of The 39 Steps go back almost 100 years to John Buchan’s 1915 thriller novel…

NOTHING BEASTLY ABOUT IT The Chicago Shakespeare Theater is presenting the best musical production of the summer, but audiences will have to see it in the daytime. The production is Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, and while it’s billed as a family musical (a code phrase for children’s show), this show distributes its pleasures equally…

OEDIPUS  REX POTENTLY UPDATED  TO THE BARRIO Oedipus El Rey is Luis Alfaro’s vision of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex seen through the prism of modern Latino life, specifically gang culture as it melds with the traditions and values of the barrio in east Los Angeles. The drama at Victory Gardens is powerful and riveting, which proves that a…

FRESH NEW REVUE AT SECOND CITY Four of the six performers in the new Second City e.t.c. revue We’re All in This Room Together never appeared on a Second City mainstage before. And this is only the second show for the other two players. But youth and inexperience were not a factor on the opening…

HERO NEEDS TO ZERO IN ON THE BOOK Hero, a brand new musical at the Marriott Theatre, has enough warmth and humor to provide a pleasant evening of light summer entertainment, but the work of composer/lyricist Michael Mahler outshines that of the problematic book by Aaron Thielen, so whether or not the show has the…

LITTLE-KNOWN CHICAGO DISASTER BECOMES TOWERING MUSICAL Eastland: A New Musical is the Lookingglass Theatre’s stunning meditation on one of the most terrible disasters in Chicago history: On the morning of July 25, 1915, an excursion boat overloaded with 2,500 people tipped over while docked along the Chicago River in downtown Chicago. The death toll was…

ABBA-DABBA-DO Delivered by an exuberant and attractive cast of young singers and dancers, Dancing Queen is an all-singing-all-dancing, high-energy nostalgia show that tries to churn its audience with happy memories of the songs of ABBA and other disco flag-wavers of the 1970’s. Even with no story and no dialogue, the hits, as they say, just…

THESE MUPPETS ARE NOT FOR PUBLIC TELEVISION There is something disconcerting about watching an R-rated Muppets show. After all, for decades the Muppets television shows and movies have been the gold standard for family entertainment, funny and endearing for children and droll and hip for adults. Now comes a 75-minute live show called Stuffed and…

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO THE WEDDING DINNER? Immediate Family, written by Chicago actor and playwright Paul Oakley Stovall, is part sitcom and part dysfunctional family drama, garnished with racial and gay humor that flows into racial and gay tensions. As directed by Phylicia Rashad, it’s a pretty good play right now, but needs some tweaking…

THE  LIBRETTO NEVER REALLY WORKS, BUT THIS PRODUCTION SURE DOES Camelot is a good musical that should be better. After all, it was composed by the team of Lerner and Loewe, of My Fair Lady immortality. And it takes as its subject one of the great romantic legends in Western culture, the reign of King Arthur…

GO FOR THE PERFORMANCE, NOT THE SCRIPT Like most one-actor plays, the new show at Writers Theatre is more satisfying as a performing showcase than as a drama. The play carries the tantalizing title of The Blonde, the Brunette, and the Vengeful Redhead, identifying three of the seven characters impersonated by an exceptionally versatile actress…

BAD COP GOOD COP The cynical title My Kind of Town acknowledges the pop song that celebrates Chicago but also a likely culture of police brutality. This is the work of investigative journalist John Conroy, who wrote 22 articles on police torture in Chicago from 1990 to 2007. Conroy may not be an experienced professional…

WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THE STORY? The tortured elements in the  life of the great rhythm and blues artist Marvin Gaye would be  fascinating fodder for a  powerfully tragic stage play. Either that, or bypass  his story, concentrating instead on the ample material Gaye left behind for a terrific musical revue. The Black Ensemble Theater premiere of The Marvin…

AN INCREDIBLY BRIGHT LIGHT The Light in the Piazza opened on March 12 at Theo Ubique and has now been extended into midsummer, and counting. It’s gathered a sheaf of rave reviews and the tiny theater is sold out by the week, possibly the most improbable local hit in recent memory. It’s not that we…

A SMALL LITTLE CREATES HUGE RESULTS For its scintillating revival of A Little Night Music, Writers Theatre has condensed the Stephen Sondheim classic into a chamber musical. The action is played out on a small thrust stage enclosed by lacy floor-to-ceiling curtains. The only set is a raised two-step platform in the middle of the…