Chicago

SERIAL SEX AS A CONTINUUM OF DESIRE There’s not much to learn from Fucking Men  —    an unabashed sexual merry-go-round and a late-night offering from Pride Films & Plays — but there’s a lot to like about it. Tony winner Joe DiPietro (creator of the musical Memphis) based his romp on 19th-century Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler’s much-imitated…

REMAKE YOUR LIFE’”AT YOUR PERIL With some plays what doesn’t happen is the whole megillah. Jen Silverman’s two-character one-act  The Roommate, now simmering in a Chicago premiere by Steppenwolf Theatre Company, plays with possibilities. As you watch Silverman’s character comedy turn into serious stuff, it’s easy to invent several dramas (or at least scenarios) percolating. Here,…

SEA WORLD AS A CITADEL OF CAUCASIAN COMMAND Orcas, it seems, can suffer for our sins. In Tilikum — a world-premiere from Sideshow Theatre Company — the struggle of indigenous people to reclaim their stolen land comes down to a giant fish tank. Playwright Kristiana Rae Colon imagines a white-supremacist version of Sea World. Its…

BEAUTY AND BLOOD Guards at the Taj  is, in the very best sense, unavoidable. To appreciate this grim and great drama by Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,  The Lake Effect), it helps to recall the facts that inspire it: The Taj Mahal means “Crown of the Palace,” but this magnificent marble mausoleum and its…

PIRATES STEALS YOUR HEART Music Theater Works just unleashed 140 minutes of undiluted ecstasy and hilarious nonsense, and the lucky location is Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium in Evanston. True to the topsy-turvy twists and turns of Victorian satire, this gem sounds great with Linda Madonia’s 26-piece orchestra, looks great with awesomely accurate costumes by Jana…

OUR LOST DREAM CITY It’s possible to think that it never happened, that we imagined its splendor to exalt our past. It was the most transient of treasures, with only the Museum of Science and Industry and photos to suggest the Beaux Arts, alabaster magnificence of marvels that bejeweled Jackson Park and the South Side…

THE UNCIVIL WAR Goodman Theatre’s current epic won’t be confused with other dramas. It explores the Civil War as seen and suffered by the slaves. Not the usual perspective but it delivers a very broad canvas for Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks. Running over three hours and requiring two intermissions, Father Comes Home from the…

A LEAGUES OF THEIR OWN You can’t keep a bad man down. Especially when he’s Captain Nemo, the scourge of the sea. Returning to the watery roots of Moby Dick, Lookingglass Theatre Company launches 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas. This 140-minute adventure on the low seas navigates the psyche of a world-wide terrorist in a…

STRINDBERG SET IN SOUTH AFRICA Yes, it’s Mies Julie, not Miss Julie, and it’s by Yaël Farber, not August Strindberg. And that makes a monstrous difference. Repurposed to depict a different divergence between two star-crossed and mismatched lovers, reset in an uprooted country torn between the curse of apartheid and the uncertainty of nationhood, Strindberg’s…

A POWER COUPLE WORTH RECLAIMING Lest we forget two women who long ago shaped their future into our present, witness Bull in a China Shop. Written by Mount Holyoke alumna Bryna Turner, this concentrated one-act pays a conditional tribute to Mary Wooley and Jeanette Marks, radical academics and long-time lovers. The former was President of…

EINE KLEINE SWEDISH SOLSTICE Some 40 years after its birth, A Little Night Music feels like it’s always been here. Wisely and warmly, composer Stephen Sondheim and writer Hugh Wheeler, borrowing from one of Ingmar Bergman’s finest films (Smiles of a Summer Night), compassionately anatomize three mismatched turn-of-the-century couples. They’re midsummer fools of love caught…

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF CENTENARIANS “Life is short. It’s up to you to make it sweet.” No cliché in Emily Mann’s moving 1993 play, this is one of many hard-earned pearls of wisdom in her generous portrait of centenarian sisters. Based on the oral history provided by Sadie and Bessie Delany before their much-protracted…

PATTI QUAKES, PATTI SHAKES. PATTI GETS HER CAKES You can only listen and love: The former Patricia Louise Holt-Edwards oozes energy on stage. She kicks off her shoes in sheer delight. Loving jazz from the outside in, she sets style standards with each new wardrobe. An entrepreneur, she sells her own “Fancy Cakes” on the…

PROMETHEUS  SETS THE STAGE AFIRE Imagination sometimes seems abstract. It’s a term you can’t always savor — until you see it blossom before you. It’s in full force in City Lit’s revival of  Prometheus Bound, the surviving drama from Aeschylus’s trilogy dating back to the fifth century BC. A labor of love spanning 20 years, this eye-popping,…

YOUR FLIES! IS OPEN The running joke behind this unauthorized musical based on a 1954 novel and a 1963 film is how it hides its homage: To avoid copyright infringement, we never hear “Flies” and “Lord” in the same sentence. Critics, happily, needn’t be so coy: A world premiere from Pride Films & Plays,  Flies! The…

NOT A TENNESSEE WALTZ The strangest thing about  Suddenly Last Summer  is that the main character is never seen. But, talked about for 90 minutes by two dangerously partisan women, he’s fully felt. So is the play’s dark discovery: “We all use each other –and that’s what we think of as love.” Jason Gerace’s taut Raven Theatre…