Chicago

WAR IS CONCENTRIC SLICES OF HELL Just as America seems to be expanding rather than concluding our deal with the Devil in the Middle East, Sideshow Theatre Company’s Chicago premiere–a valuable, 100-minute drama–seems all the more topical, valuable and non-negotiable. In the spirit of A Few Good Men, Bill Cain’s pile-driving play 9 Circles exposes…

LOONY TUNES IN EVERY WAY You could call this two-act, two-actor, two-hour romp Irma Vep  meets Singing in the Rain. A charming trifle that’s also a stunning tour-de-deuce, Porchlight Music Theatre’s local premiere features two ostentatiously talented and handsome brothers, Adrian and Alexander Aguilar. They star in a madcap revue created by two very showbiz brothers,…

WHERE BLARNEY GOES TO DIE Who’d have guessed that a 90-minute Irish play would be set in a bar where everyone gets sozzled and crocked much sooner that an hour and a half could ever allow? But in his 1985 exercise in forensic disillusionment, acclaimed Irish author Tom Murphy wants to subvert stereotypes as much…

HEROISM AND ESTROGEN Well worth seeing, this stylized 100-minute tour de theatre nonetheless requires’”and rewards’”an informed audience: It needs eager theatergoers already aware of the story it tells so well. Despite depicting the same tragic tale, Pink Milk is not to be confused with Breaking the Code, Hugh Whitemore’s superb 1986 drama and acclaimed 1996…

AN ARAB ZELIG Supple, swift and slippery, this 80-minute, four-character satire by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (translated by Rachel Wilson-Broyles) skewers Islamophobia and its many mutations. Its trick is to center our self-terrorism on an exotic name borrowed from an old play. Meaning everything and nothing, the fake persona “Abulkasem” takes on as many protean forms…

A HIGHLY ENGAGING SLOWGIRL After a traumatic accident, millennial teenager Becky (Rae Gray) visits her uncle Sterling (William Petersen) in Costa Rica, where her constant chattering disrupts his nearly monastic lifestyle. As the two learn to live with each other, layers of regret, anxiety, and fear begin to surface. Playwright Greg Pierce treats his characters…

A GREAT PLAY (BASED ON SOMETHING) Though little happens and nothing is resolved in the Pulitzer-nominated Thom Pain (based on nothing), the play is oddly and intensely captivating. Will Eno’s extended monologue wades into an ethereal spot where conscience and consciousness collide, using his everyman Thom Pain as a lens to reveal the gaps and…

THE ENSEMBLE IS HOT, THE PLOT IS NOT Sam Shepard loves to level, if not to topple, his characters. In the treacherous course of True West, two brothers exchange identities: The Hollywood hotshot falls into the bottle and his inarticulate loser of a brother gets good fortune from his sibling’s bad karma. (Harold Pinter also…

HOUSE THEATRE PULLS A RABBIT OUT OF ITS HAT The House Theatre has, once again, remounted its wildly successful Death and Harry Houdini at the Chopin Theatre – and why not? It’s still as fresh as ever. The death-defying wonders of the world’s most famous escape artist are recreated right before our eyes, and it’s…

FIRST DISNEYFIED AND NOW ZIMMERMANNED, THIS MUSICAL CAN’T SEE THE JUNGLE FOR THE TREES Not one of the great animations to grace the Disney studio, 1967’s The Jungle Book was certainly a product of its time. Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 collection of quasi-folk tales set in the rain forests of India became a very Americanized adventure…

THE BURDEN OF NOT HAVING A GOOD SCRIPT Having now seen Sideshow Theatre’s The Burden of Not Having a Tail, I can report that, despite its billing, it did little to prepare me for the apocalypse — but then, it didn’t do much for me at all. It’s founded on an interesting idea: A woman…

BIG LAKE BIG CITY BIG TURKEY Chicago to the broken bricks and bone, playwright Keith Huff was at his storytelling best in A Steady Rain, a big hit about a conflicted cop and his crooked crony at Chicago Dramatists (and a lesser one on Broadway). In Huff’’s taut mix of interrogations turned confessionals, two policemen…

THE IMPOSTER HITS HYDE PARK HARD Because religious hypocrisy — specifically “affected zeal and pious knavery” — never goes out of fashion, Tartuffe is forever. Continuing and completing its Moliere Festival (which ends on Bastille Day), Court Theatre’s second offering is the master’s perennially popular “home invasion” comedy. In this domestic dust-up, the title fraud…

A LONG HIKE IN THE THEM THAR HILLS OF SHAKESPEARE Along with its companion piece The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare’s late-blooming “romance” Cymbeline is usually treated as a fairy tale. Rightly so, as it abounds in surprises, reversals and restorations.   Minus any realistic causation and motivation, their pell-mell plots are packed with improbable events — inexplicable…

FLEECING A LEGEND The tickets are free in (re)discover theatre’s generously-meant new work by company member Jessica Shoemaker. Their too-fresh offering is an anachronistic, two-act take on the love story behind the legend of ancient Greek hero Jason and his witch wife Medea. Jason and (Medea) — the strange parentheses hinting at one partner’s curious…

GAY PRIDE AND PREJUDICE The Pride  is an invaluable offering for Pride Month, or any other for that matter. Deeply textured and perfectly enacted, this Olivier Award-winning script by British playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell shifts eras to look at whether sex improves or just persists with time ’” and I don’t mean as we get older….