Chicago

THE HYPOCRITES PLAYFULLY ROCK THIS BOAT A nautical joyride of musical mayhem, belly laughs, and unadulterated fun, this world premiere adaptation of H.M.S. Pinafore completes The Hypocrites’ Gilbert & Sullivan trilogy. (If you missed the company’s previous productions of Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado, you can catch remounts running concurrently with H.M.S. Pinafore.) Founding…

ARMACOST LIGHTS UP THE NULLITY OF SHINING CITY Hot on the heels of Steppenwolf’s production of Conor McPherson’s newest play The Night Alive comes Irish Theatre of Chicago’s current production of McPherson’s Shining City (2004). Both plays share certain similarities: ironic titles, unexpected endings, sex workers, tense situations, and a preoccupation with life beyond the…

IF THERE’S A BUDDY COP 3, THEN THERE IS NO GOD Strange doings happen for arbitrary reasons in the police station in Shandon, Indiana, the setting for an inconsequential one-act called Buddy Cop 2. Penned by the Brooklyn-based playwriting team of Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen (who call themselves the Debate Society), this Midwest premiere…

EPIPHANY CENTRAL Winner of this year’s ATCA Steinberg Award, Lauren M. Gunderson’s I and You is even more a gift to actors than to audiences. Her taut, 85-minute, two-character drama offers loud and lively exchanges between teenagers Caroline and Anthony. They are mired in adolescent angst and pubescent pipe dreams but blessed with impulsive honesty….

HOLLYWOOD HORROR STORY Director Michael Driscoll brings B-movie exploitation antics to Strawdog’s Hugen Hall stage in Darren Callahan’s Desperate Dolls. This over-the-top, no-holds-barred dose of scary, sexy entertainment packs a swift punch. Scenes change swiftly, sometimes startlingly, seemingly haphazardly, and nearly always seamlessly, keeping nimble stage manager Shannon Golden and her assistant Tala Said fully…

SCROOGE GETS RAPPED These eighty glorious minutes of boom-box beats get into your blood and bones’”and inevitably they reach the heart. Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s latest “ad-rap-tation” from the Q Brothers and Rick Boynton (creators of Funk It Up About Nothin’ and Othello: The Remix) plays the Dickens with a Christmas classic. Inventing perpetual motion as…

CURSES! SAVED AGAIN! Thanksgiving hasn’t happened but, yes, it’s time for the 37th second coming of Goodman Theatre’s beloved cash cow. A Christmas Carol remains their venerable, popular and’”to addicted theatergoing Chicagoans’”invaluable, holiday hallmark. After so many Scrooges and Marleys over two generations, the slightest changes loom large: That, of course, provides the best excuse…

MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY It begins with a woman taking a bath. The lighting is low and there are dozens of candles spread about the set. She slowly gets up and dries off, donning a linen shift and a crimson robe. She is Mary, the mother of Jesus. This simple, but highly effective entrée into…

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER MADE BETTERER AND BETTERER A signature work ripe for revival, the eponymous Lookingglass Alice is back for the holidays and New Year, brilliantly tricked-up with the most aggressive and interactive make-believe this side of Disney. In 100 minutes, adaptor David Catlin’s hip and arch, sine qua non staging of Lewis Carroll’s Through…

LYRIC DOES THE BESS THAT IT CAN After two outings to Spain (Don Giovanni and Il Trovatore) and one to Paris (Capriccio), Lyric Opera is bringing audiences something homegrown, composed by an American and set in South Carolina. Porgy and Bess should be rather familiar to Lyric audiences, since it played here just six years…

A HOLIDAY FOR HUMANITY Playwright Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, and his Speech and Debate’”with its with crackling humor and vivacity’”has some of the most believable, empathetic teenagers ever put on stage. American Theatre Company has an excellent track record for introducing new works. With…

JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH PATSY Patsy Cline, the once and future crossover country icon who made audiences “fall to pieces,” couldn’t be more fondly or accurately recalled. It happens weekly in Rogers Park’s No Exit Café through at least December. Sweet, spunky, and sincere, Fred Anzevino’s revival of the tribute Always: Patsy Cline sums…

AULIS WELL AT THE COURT THEATRE With its new production of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, Court Theatre embarks upon an ambitious three-year venture: to present a trilogy of Greek tragedies chronicling the House of Atreus. Guided by the scholarship of translator Nicholas Rudall (founding artistic director of Court Theatre from 1971 to 1994), director Charles…

A NOT QUITE FRACTURED FAIRY TALE A late bloomer, Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale belies its adage that “A sad tale’s best for winter.” This tragi-comedy has a spring to it as well, contrasting the first act’s stern Sicilian-set tale of one ruler’s instant jealousy (which kills his wife and child) with, 16 years later, a…

GETTING THERE IS HALF THE FUN One of Chicago’s longest running, righteously rooted hits, Hellcab follows a strong and simple formula: Depict the encounters a Chicago cab driver experiences on a very cinematic Christmas Eve. We watch this tried and true cabbie in an actual yellow car (with the top cut away for an unobstructed…

THE SLEUTH, THE DIVA, AND THE NAPOLEON OF CRIME Over many seasons P.G. Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle have been very good to City Lit, rightly since the theater fully returns the compliment. Reviving a past pleasure, director Terry McCabe’s sprightly adaptation of Holmes and Watson puts the cocaine-snorting, deduction-delivering master detective and his brusque…

GETTING ROOTS WRONG The Dark Continent just got a bit less light. Concluding their all-Lynn Nottage season (which featured Ruined and Intimate Apparel), Eclipse Theatre Company offers the sardonic parable Mud, River, Stone, a culture-clashing drama. Nottage stalwartly addresses the challenges faced by African-Americans who want to be both, specifically two upscale New York tourists…