Chicago

DIXIE DOODLES IN DISTRESS Beth Henley, author of 1979’s Pulitzer-winning Crimes of the Heart, has practically patented the Southern stereotype. Drawling in a stilted patois, Henley’s desperate, demented creatures are hell-bent on self-destruction: They’re pathologically ready to commit “crimes of the heart” to not get their way. 33 years after her masterpiece, Henley is still…

FROM THE MINES TO THE MOON A feel-good story of literal uplift, the new musical October Sky, like the 1999 film, is an anagram of Rocket Boys, the true-life confessional of Homer H. Hickam, Jr. Pushing many buttons, this 150-minute world premiere by Chicagoans Aaron Thielen (book) and actor/composer Michael Mahler (music and lyrics) spins…

WAKING UP FROM THE AMERICAN DREAM The title of Oracle Theatre’s typically invigorating offering, THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THE AMERICAN DREAM IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO, is actually a  proposition by the Cambridge Union Debating Chamber (called the “Arena of Ambition”) in February 1965 at England’s famed Cambridge University. Broadcast by National Educational Television…

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND Whenever it’s revived, it’s hard to imagine a more necessary musical than this 1949 Pulitzer Prize winner. Seventy years after the Japanese surrender, it remains a healing tribute to resilience in adversity and tolerance in the thick of war. Consummate showmen, Rodgers and Hammerstein knew just why Americans need to…

RISING UP FROM DOWN UNDER 23 years ago, mega-entertainer Peter Allen died of AIDS. But The Boy from Oz is the story of a survivor. The self-made star refused to be stifled by the Australian country town of Tenterfield or a drunk, suicidal dad. Encouraged by an unconditionally loving mom, the gay, blond singer-composer moved…

THE NEW DEAD-END KIDS It’s easy to hate the surly slackers in subUrbia, Eric Bogosian’s slice of strife. In this 1994 play, they infest the parking lot of a 7-Eleven’”now changed to a Quickie Mart’”in the bedroom burg of Burnfield, the “pizza and puke capital of the world.” (I guess the mall is too genteel.)…

STILL BREATHING 15 years ago a new show called First Breath launched the About Face Youth Theatre Ensemble. Appropriately, the current showcase  15 Breaths  is presented by the next generation (more or less) and looks back as much as forward. Interestingly, the concerns these GLBT teens address persist like unanswered questions–the generation gap, gender identity, homophobia, coming…

DIVA TO THE TOWEL SET In this summer fluff title tells all–Bette, Live at the Continental Baths (in Chicago, upstairs at Mary’s Attic). This uncredited concoction by Hell in a Handbag Productions, staged and choreographed by Christopher Pazdernik, recreates the Divine Miss M in her gay salad days at New York’s biggest bathhouse. Here, where…

TIME HEALS ALL PLOTS Shakespeare’s strange romance, which begins with gratuitous jealousy and ends with gratuitous forgiveness, is best treated as a fairy tale for grownups: A virtuous queen is condemned for adultery, her supposed spoiler her husband’s equally honest best friend. It suddenly seems as if we blundered from courtly courtesies into an Othello-like…

BLACKBUSTERS A dozen shows in one and a showcase of solos to beat any band, Black Ensemble Theater’s summer blockbuster Men of Soul pays kickass tribute to the greatest soul singers–black and white–of all time. Sensational singing, coming so close to the original vocalists as to be scary-accurate, is the payoff here for over two…

IS IT REALLY HUMAN TO FORGIVE? Heidi Schreck’s powerfully pleasing play exists for its final moment. So this critique will be strategically selective and shorter than usual. In any case, thanks to Yasen Peyankov’s sweetly sensitive staging (a Chicago premiere by Steppenwolf Theatre Company), Schreck’s five characters count as much as the conclusion. Totally grounded…

TIME TRAVEL AS URBAN RENEWAL [Editor’s note: There are some minor spoilers used in Mr. Bommer’s synopsis.] U.K. playwright Alistair McDowell likes to break the rules to reach a crowd. An intriguing U.S. premiere by Steep Theatre Company, his sardonically titled Brilliant Adventures exposes McDowall’s iconoclastic ways: It’s bracingly matter-of-fact about a weird world of…

A DELIVERANCE IN DACHAU Even in the Holocaust’s democracy of death each victim could only die once. But some seem to have died a bit less than others. Remembering the unnumbered thousands of homosexuals killed by Nazi hate more than the six million Jews slaughtered, Martin Sherman‘s still-stirring 1979 drama sums up many losses in…

UNQUIET DESPERATION IN BUCKS COUNTY He’s no longer an angry young playwright and gay avenger, the bad-boy Jeremiah who unleashed scorched-earth provocations (Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You and Beyond Therapy). The sexagenarian Christopher Durang has momentously mellowed. A take-no-prisoners satirist has softened into a surprisingly kind-hearted and compassionate chronicler of foibles. As…

A LEVIATHAN BEACHES ON MICHIGAN AVENUE Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s whale of a tale (or tale of a whale) from 1851, is as unsinkable as its title cetacean. It’s never been more so than in Lookingglass Theatre Company’s summer sensation staged and adapted by David Catlin. In little less than three hours the enthralling panoply…

THE GIFT OF JOY, FROM LONDON TO CHICAGO It’s been 37 years–two generations!–since the Royal Ballet visited Chicago and the Auditorium Theatre. They couldn’t have come bearing a better gift to prove the fondness of absence: Carlos Acosta’s gorgeous, sumptuous, enthralling 2013 staging of one of ballet’s happiest scores and stories. You simply can’t get…

STAGE NOIR This non-dancing, Tony-winning, cinematic musical by the terrific trio of jazz composer Cy Coleman, bookwriter Larry Gelbart and lyricist David Zippel brilliantly lampoons Hollywood stereotypes and censorship. It’s a complicated amalgam, skewering the hypocrisy but going soft on the sentiment. City of Angels contrasts a young writer’s film-noir screenplay (“the reality of fiction”)…

OUR FEATHERED FIENDS This is not Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, a 1963 horror fest about being pecked to death and delighting in Tippi Hedrin and Suzanne Pleshette’s contagious distress. It’s also not Hell in a Handbag’s recently revived The Birds: For all its ingenious thrills that campy creation was hobbled by a kill-joy Camille Paglia…

HISTORY IN A HOLE The America Play was inspired when author Suzan Lori-Parks observed a professional African-American Lincoln impersonator hard at work pleasing a crowd. This strange early work by the dynamic playwright (of Topdog/Underdog fame) is itself a curiosity. (It even features a cabinet of curiosities packed with detritus from American history.) In Oracle…