Chicago

GAME. SET. NOT QUITE MATCH. Tennis great and feminist icon Billie Jean King gets the biography treatment in Billie Jean by Lauren Gunderson. Opening the new season of Chicago Shakespeare, this crowd-pleasing world premiere follows Billie Jean from her childhood in the 1950s through to the US Open in 2006 when the USTA National Tennis…

AN EXTREMELY FEMINIST PLAY. OR IS IT? Never meet a man, they say. What happens if we have to work with one? Artemis Books & The Well-Meaning Man poses the complex question of how, if at all, men should be allowed into women’s safe spaces—or if it’s unethical to exclude them. The Village Theater’s world…

A FITFULLY AMUSING THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM IN SKOKIE A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is a glorious farce, a 20th-century construction based on the characters and situations from the works of the old Roman playwright Plautus. The book is by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (who…

BIG TOP, BIGGER DREAMS: ETHIOPIA FLIPS THE SCRIPT AT NAVY PIER (OR “GRAVITY? NEVER HEARD OF IT!”) Despite their being a part of nearly everyone’s lives, dreams hold a never-ending fascination in our psyches and imaginations.  And all around the world, they routinely act as a fuel that focus and power our aspirations. One of…

SEND IN THE CLOWNS Farce is not a style of performance one sees too often these days and that’s probably because it is extraordinarily difficult to pull off, requiring complete commitment from cast and crew to its sensibilities, razor-sharp comic timing, physical comedy chops, and tight pacing and direction. There’s a lot that can go…

CHICAGO-BORN AND HEAVEN-SENT, THIS IS NOT A REVIVAL. IT’S A RECKONING. Angels in America is one of the greatest plays in the American theatre canon. Period. Tony Kushner created a two-part epic story of unforgettable characters, both lovable and despicable, that captures a moment in American history—the Ronald Reagan era—that changed our community forever. If…

COLOR ME DISAPPOINTED I came to see the Goodman Theatre’s current production of The Color Purple with a complicated history. I devoured Alice Walker’s novel three times as a callow teenager and recoiled from Spielberg’s 1985 Disneyfied cinematic adaptation, abandoning the VHS midway through. Since then, The Color Purple has been adapted into a Broadway…

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ What is theatre? This was the question that popped into my head as I took my seat in the tiny TUTA Theatre space in Chicago’s Ravenswood Manor neighborhood, ready to take in their production of Celine Song’s Tom & Eliza: a…

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO BAGHDAD: COMEDY BUMPS INTO HISTORY TO CREATE A MASTERPIECE We sometimes forget how much the theatrical stage can be a place of true discovery—until we stumble upon islands of magic like Iraq, But Funny, a marvel now running through July 20. Written by the immensely talented Lookingglass…

SICKENINGLY FUNNY Noah Diaz’s You Will Get Sick, which opened last night at Steppenwolf, is an odd bird of a play. It begins with an irresistible premise: a middle-aged woman, Callan, responds to a flyer promising “$40 $20″ to anyone who will receive a phone call from a stranger; the only requirement being that she…

STORYTELLING THAT LAUNCHES A THOUSAND SHIPS There is a moment in Court Theatre’s fourth (!) iteration of An Iliad where The Poet holds a flashlight below his chin—I immediately flashed back to memories of ghost stories told in a tent while lights were supposed to be out. The conceits of Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s…

A MUSICAL COMEDY TO REMIND YOU WHY YOU FELL IN LOVE WITH THE ARTFORM IN THE FIRST PLACE “In 1982 a man called Larry put himself in a lawn chair, got some 42 balloons, and went to sixteen thousand feet up in the air. This actually happened. You can look it up,” creator Jack Godfrey…

TO KNOW HYMN IS TO LOVE HYMN It’s not unusual to hear creatives, especially Black creatives, quote Toni Morrison when talking about what inspires them to write, paint or compose. “If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” That notion seems to have…

UNCONVENTIONAL SPIN, DARING THEATER, CAUTIOUSLY RECOMMENDED There are sequels and there are sequels. Few can be considered as aspirational or as pioneering as Taylor Mac’s Gary, a continuation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus now playing at Redtwist Theatre. Easily the Bard’s most sensational blood fest, Redtwist brought Titus’s “vicious circle of revenge and counter-revenge” to their…

Red Theater’s Kairos Makes Us Look at Time and Life from an Unexpected Perspective Chance encounters rarely end this interestingly. In Lisa Sanaye Dring’s new play Kairos—premiering now at The Edge Off Broadway by Red Theater—a run-of-the -mill fender bender leads to love and the opportunity to attain immortality. The latter prospect raises a myriad…