Lawrence Bommer

WHAT OF OUR  SUFFERING IN THE NIGHT? Ambition should be made of smarter stuff. Nearly three hours of unfocused agitation, What of the Night? begs its own incoherent question. It’s not the night that’s at stake in Marí­a Irene Fornés’s four-play epic. It’s the well-being of an audience who, perplexed, provoked but never enlightened, endure a…

CATHARSIS IN A BASEMENT It’s not easy for actors to lose control without losing the role as well. A master of concentrated dread and systematic despair, Kate Buddeke haunts this solo show. She completely controls it too. Her America, a drama by Chicago writer Brett Neveu that’s part of Greenhouse Theater Center’s “Solo Celebration,” is…

A VERY DISPENSABLE DOOM Famed for her sardonic 1948 short story “The Lottery” and the scary novels We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson was a Gothic gadfly in the Eisenhower Era, full of apocalyptic post-war angst and Cold War panic-peddling. She industriously penned fright-freighted tales of…

FIXING FICTION It’s not your usual detective story: A quaint couple works to restore a villain suddenly lost from countless fairy tales. Mr. and Mrs. Pennyworth depicts a very proper Edwardian couple, a tinkerer and a part-time anthropologist (Samuel Taylor and Lindsey Noel Whiting) who bonded after meeting in the park every Saturday to share…

TCHAIKOVSKY MEETS THE WORLD’S FAIR: A PERFECT NUTCRACKER RECIPE It was a marvel of the ages and the crowning achievement of the 19th century (except maybe the Eiffel Tower). Now, happily, the World’s Fair of 1893 has returned to Chicago. And, since it’s via Joffrey Ballet’s new site-specific Nutcracker (replacing Robert Joffrey’s equally American version),…

NASHVILLE NIGHTINGALES If winter needs warming, Honky Tonk Angels should heat up happy crowds at the No Exit Café in Chicago’s Rogers Park. The bubbly good time delivers a mix of downhome directness and rural sass. Created by Ted Swindley, who gave Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre its 2014 hit Always:Patsy Cline, this roadhouse romp prefers…

HEAVEN MEANS HELL In King Charles III, now playing Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Mike Bartlett imagines what would happen if a king dares to act like one’”and opposes a Parliamentary proposal to fetter freedom of the press. (Hint: It doesn’t end well.) A similar speculation tears through Lucas (Isaac’s Eye, Death Tax, Hillary and Clinton) Hnath’s…

PICKING UP OUR PIECES The neatly punning title of The Second City’s 105th Mainstage Revue, The Winner:of Our Discontent, implies an anti-Trump evening. But, unlike SNL, there’s little rage and more resignation against the possible dying of democracy. Though raucous even by Second City norms and curiously free of running jokes (or many sight gags)…

A SWEET AND SOUR “TWIST” In the month of December, Goodman Theatre simply goes schizoid. On one end of its block-long Dearborn Street lobby is the Albert Theatre, where the sacred cash cow A Christmas Carol continues to attract traditional holiday lovers. (A smugly complacent look at a non-threatening Ebenezer, by now it’s more a…

CRUMPET COMES CLEAN For 8  boffo holiday seasons at Theater Wit, Mitchell Fain has been better known’”and locally famous’”as Crumpet, the irascible, impish and subversive Macy’s elf in David Sedaris’s hilarious monologue The Santaland Diaries (based loosely on Gogol’s equally manic Diary of a Madman). A trouper in tights, Mitchell Fain only missed 2  of 252 performances…

TO “MAKE CHRISTMAS GREAT AGAIN” You can’t keep a good elf down. Very loosely based on the 2003 film starring Will Ferrell as a love-seeking non-elf named Buddy, Barney the Elf  repurposes the flick’”and some favorite tunes in its parody score’”to deliver a feel-good “found” musical. Certainly in 2016 a reminder of the rewards of tolerance…

SHAKESPEARE’S TOTAL SLAUGHTER It’s a daunting statistic: In the 37 plays written by William Shakespeare, there are 74 onstage deaths. (The demises of Ophelia, Cordelia and Lady Macbeth, among others, don’t count because they occur between scenes.) That comes to two partings per play, though most of the comedies keep everyone alive until the end….

GALATEA GETS HER PLAY The source has finally come into its own: Overshadowed by the thunderous success of My Fair Lady, its musical spinoff, Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw’s superbly penned, radiantly witty, and still-urgent drama from 1914, has long been overshadowed and undervalued. True to its mission to forge thinking theater from polished performers, Remy…

SCROOGE GETS SAVED WAY TOO SOON AND FAR TOO EASILY Goodman Theater’s holiday happening has now reached the age of 39 (which, of course, is where Jack Benny stayed the rest of his life). A very annual treat, A Christmas Carol (a play, not a song) is envied by Chicago theaters as the cash cow…

A JEALOUS WIFE WITH BAD GUN CONTROL You can’t keep a bad/mad woman down. Not to be confused with A Doll’s House, where Ibsen offers an almost feminist defense of a vastly underestimated wife, his poisonous 1891 domestic drama Hedda Gabler depicts a very different “helpmate.” Here a bored and bitter housewife transforms her contempt…

“RESOURCEFUL, GRACEFUL”’”AND RUTHLESS Corporate corruption’”it’s not just an oxymoron. We associate it with crimes in the suites–but there’s also a trickle-down contamination: Compromises slowly curdle into white collar, then blue collar, crimes’”or at least betrayals’”of trust, solidarity, and integrity. A cunningly specific Steppenwolf Theatre world premiere, The Fundamentals is steeped in its subject and setting….