Chicago

A GOLD RUSH NATIVITY You could call it a second coming of Christmas from our Golden West. Delivered with the grit and gusto of 19th  century raconteur Bret Harte,  The Christmas Foundling  is a likable tale from the California Gold Rush, specifically a late-blooming nativity on Christmas Eve. Norman Allen’s 2001 period piece, now warmed up by directors…

A MELLOW YULE Back in the day velvet-toned Nat King Cole practically owned Christmas. His TV specials were characterized by what his recreator Evan Tyrone Martin calls “bold simplicity.” His trademark was his famously smoky voice (ironic because he died at 45 of lung cancer). Nat King Cole made inroads where mainly white performers had…

A WELL-MEANING YULE CONFECTION THAT’S A BIT DIFFICULT TO SWALLOW For dogged seekers of sentimentality for whom  The Gift of the Magi  or  It’s A Wonderful Life  are insufficient tinsel treacle, help is on the way! You will  love  Raven Theatre’s unashamedly heartwarming, aggressively feel-good  Cold Town/Hotline: A Chicago Holiday Story. An 80-minute world premiere written and directed by Eli Newell, this…

ODDBALL OUTCASTS It pays homage to the goofy compassion exhibited by claymation holiday specials, especially the iconic classic where the inhabitants of the Island of Misfit Toys are rescued by Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Now a world premiere musical by Pride Films and Plays staged by director/choreographer Donterrio Johnson, America’s Best Outcast Toy — An…

REAPPRAISING A CASH COW Consider this a kind of conditional  mea culpa: In past reviews of Goodman Theatre’s A Christmas Carol, I’ve faulted the production’s trivialization of Charles Dickens’ 1847 ghost story, a tale intended to scare Victorian readers into avoiding the ugly life and dire fate of Ebenezer Scrooge. Rather than deal with a contemptible,…

THE PLOT THIN-ENS Can lightning strike thrice? Over two decades later, it’s happened again — a third collaboration between author/director Eric Simonson and the world-famous, nine-member Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Like The Song of Jacob Zulu  in 1992 and  Nomathemba  in 1996, Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s world premiere Lindiwe, co-directed with Jonathan Berry, is imbued with the ensemble’s seamless a…

DÉJí€ VU MEETS GROUNDHOG DAY “Birth was the death of him”: Terse to the point of cruelty, Samuel Beckett devours the human experience in six words, repeatedly juxtaposing graves with cradles.  Waiting for Godot, his minimalist masterpiece, takes nearly three hours for the same result. But Beckett succeeds in his life-long task — to “find the…

AN EDWARDIAN WAKE-UP CALL You can’t keep a good play down. Produced under the pseudonym of K.G. Sowerby, the Edwardian drama  Rutherford and Son  was a huge hit in 1912 — until the playwright was later revealed as a woman, Githa Sowerby. Perhaps due to male resentment of the play’s depiction of a brutish dad, it disappeared…

PICKED, PECKED, AND PACKED Some solo shows can be valued simply for their superb simulations of someone else’s story. Others succeed because we pay extra special attention when the chronicler actually experienced what they’re sharing. Packing, an About Face Theatre world premiere by and from Chicago theater artist Scott Bradley, has the best of both…

A SHOW THAT CASTS A SPELL Whether it really works or it’s just self-fulfilling wishful thinking, magic can misfire.   Detailing a downhome tragedy set in Memphis during the Depression, Hoodoo Love, Katori Hall’s 2007 musical drama tells a sad and simple story of thwarted and twisted passion so strong it needs the blues to chronicle…

IT WOULD BE A CIN TO MISS THIS Forty-three years ago, the Black Ensemble Theater produced their first and most definitive musical, a promissory note that’s been richly redeemed over five decades. Just as  The Wiz  opened up a childhood classic to even more make-believe, in 1976 –and now–The Other Cinderella  represented playful revisionism in action. Created, composed…

THE HURT OF HATE Dirty laundry demands an airing. Given the disunion afflicting our republic, a play like  N  (short for the “N word”) has healing to share. A provocative world premiere by Chicago writer David Alex at the Greenhouse Theater Center, this 100-minute character piece stirs up the sometimes static tale of an evolving relationship between…

HATE CRIMES ROCK A SUBVERSIVE COMEDY This show can never be nice: Along with  The Taming of the Shrew, a comedy built squarely on misogyny,  The Merchant of Venice, a tragicomedy festering with anti-Semitism, remains the Bard’s most problematic play. But Shakespeare wrote it. Felt from all sides, there’s humanity to spare. Truth overcomes prejudice as an…