Chicago

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…

SPANISH WINE IN FRENCH WINESKINS: CLíSICO AND CHARMANTE Jules Massenet (1842-1912)’s Don Quichotte is a delightful opera that, in contrast to Wagner’s Das Rheingold or Berlioz’s Les Troyens, makes few demands on the audience. It is relatively short, tells a well-known story, and balances comedy and drama without overweening tragedy. Although the current production is…

“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….

LEAPING INTO FALL If dance can define, this recital was its own dynamic dictionary: Running through this weekend, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s 39 Fall Series is a celebration in steps. At its heart are two justly popular world premieres: Turning the transience of dance into enduring, grateful memories, the pieces instantly justified the hours of…

“THE VERY BEST WE NEVER HAD” After reviving the Bard’s stirring chronicles in Tug of War, Chicago Shakespeare Theater has mounted another history play. Except this one reveals future history, not the Hundred Years War or War of the Roses, and, though it’s in blank verse, it’s not Shakespeare. Engagingly staged by Gary Griffin, King…

WHEN BIGGER ACTUALLY IS BETTER Everything about Les Troyens is big. Hector Berlioz’s massive opera boasts 5  acts, lasts nearly 5  hours even with numerous small cuts (and two 30-minute intermissions), has 22  named roles, and requires a vastly expanded chorus (about 100 singers) and 2  orchestras (the main one in the pit and another offstage) as well as…

CLOCKS ARE COLD COMFORT Call it the ultimate disruption of sexual security/certainty, a double life lived, as La Cage put it, “at an angle.” As the title suggests, I Am My Own Wife is a subversive true-life tale of a human born Lothar Berfelde and dying as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who redefined more than himself….

THE LEGEND THAT GOT AWAY No, this show isn’t how fans want to remember Judy Garland at the bittersweet end. End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter’s sardonic salute to a star on the skids, is a sometimes-sadistic portrait of an imploding diva. A festering Chicago premiere by Porchlight Music Theatre, Quilter’s retro take on “Little…

A MOVING PORTRAIT OF A SMALLER SAINT A show doesn’t’”can’t’”get truer or richer than this current 140-minute gem at the Athenaeum Theatre. Perfectly concluding an all-Stephen Adly Guirgis season, Eclipse Theatre’s Chicago premiere The Little Flower of East Orange is powerfully personal, authentically intimate, and convincingly detailed’”a harrowing look at raw redemption. Solidly rooted in…

BAROQUE AND BURLESQUE’”A TOXIC MIX What happens when a so-called revival needs resuscitation? That’s the D.O.A. problem with this perverse collaboration between Chicago Opera Theater and Culture Clash, an “iconic” California-based performance troupe who live down to their name. Billed as a “Restoration spectacular,” Henry Purcell’s 17th-century gem The Fairy-Queen, performed three years before the…

PERFECT PRECIPITATION Of all the legendary Oscar-winning films destined to become stage musicals (42nd Street, Grand Hotel, Fame), Singin’ in the Rain, the 1952 MGM movie musical starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor, seems the most inevitable. It always had too much energy not to seem to burst from the screen. A tribute…