Chicago

MISSING MECHE Although Nobel Prize-winning writer Vargas Llosa is known primarily as a novelist, he has also written nine plays spanning a period of sixty years. La Chunga,written in 1986, is the fourth. Its 1945 setting in the city of Piura, Peru, founded by conquistador Francisco Pizarro in 1532, gives the play a somewhat nostalgic…

TWILIGHT IN TIVOLI Following their productions of Brecht’s The Mother and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, venturesome Oracle Theatre brings us another thespian rarity. This fall’s find is Gore Vidal’s adaptation of Romulus by Friedrich Dí¼rrenmatt (The Physicists, The Visit). Cleverly staged by Kasey Foster, this 90-minute curiosity is a playful, anachronistic, and subversive look at…

ALICE IN ANDERSONVILLELAND Fall down the rabbit hole of the thoughtfully absurd Alice, written and directed  by Noelle Krimm. This performance’”a reprise of the popular 2004 staging’”showcases work by multiple companies as well as individual artists. Loose interpretations of Alice in Wonderland’s twelve chapters are executed in local businesses, alleys, and street corners. Upon arriving at…

PARTY LIKE IT’S 1928 A riot from start to finish, Bailiwick Chicago’s The Wild Party is a breathless, exuberant, fast-paced production running for an hour and forty minutes without pause or intermission. Based on New Yorker editor Joseph Moncure March’s narrative poem of the same name, Michael John LaChiusa’s musical adaptation is a colorful celebration…

EARNING THEIR FUTURE At 25 years young, River North Dance Chicago is as old as its current dancers, most born when it began. They grew up to find the perfect home for their non-negotiable talent. Celebrating that quarter century at River North’s Harris Theater home, Frank Chaves’s troupe displays its wares with a program featuring…

CAPITOL CRIMES “A plague on both your houses!” Without naming either political party, that’s just what Maxwell Anderson wished over 80 years ago through his Pulitzer Prize-winning Both Your Houses. Retrieved from 1933 and given Last Week Tonight urgency by the ever exemplary Remy Bumppo troupe, this well-made play is quite a contemporary departure from…

AN ALL YOU CAN ETTA BUFFET A Black Ensemble Theater hit in 2005, At Last: A Tribute to Etta James is back in (the pleasure of) business. It’s also updated to reflect the last decade of “The Matriarch of R&B,” who died in 2012 at the age of 73. Known affectionately as “Miss Peaches,” this…

WINNING SMALL Still potent after 42 years, Caryl Churchill’s corrosive class comedy Owners pits two outlooks on life against each other. In one corner you have Churchill’s now-patented “top girl,” the protagonist and anti-heroine Marion. She’s a predatory user/owner who can never get enough. But for all her snarling self-entitlement Marion is lonely at the…

RED, WHITE AND PAS DE BLEU Marking the 125th anniversary of Chicago’s glorious and historic Auditorium Theatre, American Ballet Theatre, which used to come here every season, is all too briefly making a rare, weekend-only return engagement. They come bearing great gifts: an All-American Celebration of the New York company’s best known works, signature pieces…

SMOKEFALL GETS IN YOUR EYES It opened a year ago in Goodman’s smaller Owen Theatre. Due to rave reviews and popular demand, it’s now the fall opener in the larger Albert enclave. Clearly, Noah Haidle’s Smokefall struck a lot of nerves and vital organs. Its funky fame can put a critic who missed its 2013…

A VANDAL OF AN ENDING Thirty-something actor and writer Hamish Linklater’s The Vandal is one of those plays that starts well and ends poorly. It begins with a middle-aged woman waiting at a bus stop in Kingston, New York. She’s soon joined by a teenaged boy who engages her in conversation. The realism of the…

A WHISTLEBLOWER’S CONVENIENT SUICIDE Urgent, cinematic, and breathlessly intense in everything but its intermission, TimeLine Theatre Company’s true-life exposé of a truth-teller and his martyrdom delivers a heavy dose of thinking theater. Its rather un-ironic title accuses the audience as much as the authorities. Soon to become a feature film, Danny Casolaro Died for You…

LAUGHTER IS THE WORST MEDICINE Humor and hygiene play off each other in Sarah Ruhl’s much-praised but not altogether satisfying 2004 romantic comedy. Now fitfully revived by the new Bluebird Arts troupe, Luda Lopatina Solomon’s staging feels no less half-hearted than this mood-shifting script deserves. Bluebird’s two-act domestic drama is a strange amalgam of magic…

THE MANY LOVE(S OF) DON GIOVANNI Why does Chicago love Mozart’s Don Giovanni so much? Well-received as Lyric Opera’s first production back in 1954, and revived many times over the ensuing decades, including the company’s fiftieth anniversary in 2004, Don Giovanni just won’t go away, despite the titular character’s climactic comeuppance and ignominious death. The…

LOVE AS A MOVEABLE FEAST Conor McPherson’s plays are so rooted in the characters that plot is really revelation. With unforced warmth, he captures loneliness in the act of self-effacement and love as the best way to prove we’re really here. Steppenwolf Theatre’s fall offering The Night Alive is no nocturne’”it’s typically gritty, with self-inventing…

A BEDTIME STORY FOR EVERY ADULT With a justifiably extended run, Route 66 Theatre Company’s richly rewarding world premiere of Caitlin (A Twist of Water) Parrish’s The Downpour is a story as sweet as it is scary’”no easy feat in writing or staging. But director Erica Weiss has a Midas touch, and Parrish’s tantalizingly twisting…

MAD ABOUT JOHN DOE Trap Door Theatre is entered via a long narrow gap between two Bucktown restaurants. Upon arrival, Artistic Director Beata Pilch assigns audience members a number and Mike Steele seats them. Already in costume for their roles as madhouse attendants, Pilch and Steele look suitably frightening and forbidding. This disquieting introduction sets…