Chicago

IN SOME WAYS, THIS PARADE PASSED ITSELF  BY First performed in Chicago by Bailiwick Repertory, now dutifully revived by BoHo Theatre, the potentially pile-driving Parade by bookwriter Alfred Uhry and composer/lyricist Jason Robert Brown reprises an ugly and evergreen tragedy. Their driven musical chronicles the reflexive racism that, a century ago, doomed a suspect stranger. Here…

THE FARM-TO-FABLE REVOLUTION IS HERE One of the most extraordinary things about George Orwell’s novels is their prophetic power; they are perhaps even more relevant now than when he wrote them. Thus, it is incredibly timely that Steppenwolf for Young Adults should mount the present production of Animal Farm. Instead of reading it in light…

LEAPS AND LAUGHS: A STRANGE AMALGAM It’s a worthy experiment, even if the eclectic results seem maddeningly inconclusive. For three more performances, two very different Chicago arts troupes share the same Harris Theater stage in a curious merger of movement and comedy. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and The Second City, bastions of contemporary dance and…

A DREAM WITHIN A DANCE Borrowed from the Pennsylvania Ballet, Joffrey Ballet’s latest offering (running through Oct. 26 at the Auditorium Theatre) is not your usual Swan Lake. Not to be compared with the Trocks’ respectful travesty, the original 1877 production by the Bolshoi, or the psychodrama of the film Black Swan, Christopher Wheeldon’s invigorating…

STEALING CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE The Submission is a devious, double-edged title for Jeff Talbott’s equally transgressive play. It refers both to the cold (as in out-of-nowhere) entry of a script for production consideration in the prestigious Humana Festival, and to the endgame of an ugly quest for dominance between a black actress and a…

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…