Chicago

THIS FLUTE IS MAGICAL Few operas are more delightful than Mozart’s Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), which fuses fantasy and adventure with high ideals and memorable melodies. Lyric has aptly billed it as family-friendly fare (child tickets are available), playing up the opera’s whimsical elements at the expense of its moral philosophy and social criticism. The…

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…

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…