Chicago

ORACLE’S THE MOTHER GETS A WELL-DESERVED REMOUNT My annual theater sojourn to the Windy City this year was a bit of a let down. Spoiled by previous pilgrimages, in which no less than 50% of the theater I saw astounded me, this trip yielded scant results (excepting a few great musical revivals). The final show…

NOW E.T. REALLY CAN GO HOME A justified hit, bright as any of the lights on Michigan Avenue, Lookingglass Theatre Company’s exhilarating adaptation of Antoine de St-Exupery’s classic and cautionary children’s tale may well run through the winter. Despite its total lack of holly or mistletoe,   David Catlin’s ingenious dramatization of this whimsical philosophic classic…

ONCE AGAIN, ATTENTION MUST BE PAID British playwright Nina Raine’s Tribes, which played Off-Broadway last year and has been produced regionally, depicts an oppressively intellectual British family, rich with colorful eccentricity and denied dysfunction. However, the real context for Steppenwolf Theatre’s bold new winter show’”no holiday play in any way’”is silence, the non-negotiable world that…

WAY BETTER THAN A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE Redmoon’s seasonal performances are not events or even experiences, but passages to a fleeting world of contemporary fable, complete with masks, music, machines, puppetry, and particularly in this years’ Winter Pageant, dance.   Forty multi-talented performers take the stage to tell a pigeon’s tale: An unpresuming bird…

A WAY TO GOOSE UP YOUR HOLIDAYS There’s not much of a mystery in Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Goose. Michael Menendian and John Weagly’s adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” stays faithful to the source material, an unusually light tale involving the consulting detective….

OLD LECHERS GET NO RESPECT Merrily set at Christmastide at the height of the swing era, Barbara Gaines’ sumptuous Navy Pier staging of Shakespeare’s slightest comedy is hilarious, certainly funnier than it has any right to be. As always with this company, it’s also as gorgeous to behold as to hear. Its nearly three hours…

CONSCIENCE KEEPING IN A CRACKLING PLOT Taut, true and richly wrought, this 1945 potboiler by unashamed socialist playwright J.B. Priestley remains, three generations later, a clarion call to a new century. Juicy with relentless revelations about a patrician clan who rule provincial Brumley, England, it’s just as much a wake-up call for social responsibility and…

JOFFREY’S JOYOUS JEWEL Now in its 26th annual presentation, the late Robert Joffrey’s evergreen staging of Peter IlyichTchaikovsky’s beloved Christmas ballet blesses both the Auditorium Theatre and the dance pilgrims who flock to it, eager to be astonished. Still sumptuous with Oliver Smith’s lavish and fast-paced scenery, based on the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo’s…

A GAY CHRISTMAS ALL OVER CHICAGOLAND In a major first, the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus just performed its Christmas concert at the prestigious Harris Theatre at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. You can’t get more visible or prominent than this’”and it ain’t over yet. Today the CGMC moves to the ‘burbs to sing at the…

SOME SOULS THWART SAVING We Three Lizas, last year’s in-your-face gay holiday hit, is back with a purportedly new book and an expanded score. Relocated from the Steppenwolf Garage to Stage 773 (where the inferior acoustics of this unmiked show take their toll), it’s as iridescent as a migraine and unstoppably funky. Doggedly insistent on…

TO KNOW, KNOW, KNOW HER: Singer, comedienne and anti-glam diva Sandra Bernhard thrives on delightfully toying with her adoring throngs. I remember the first time I saw her on the David Letterman show when she snarled into the mic: “It’s that time of the month again.” When the audience responded with nervous titters, she nailed…

BURNING THE YULE LOG AT BOTH ENDS Striking a comfortable balance between sticky and sentimental, schmaltz and cynicism, five short plays by as many Chicago writers (and directed by another skilled quintet) combine to create the rightly named HoliDaze. Happily, none of these furtive glimpses of the holiday season’s well-chronicled underside, most set on Christmas…

FRANKINCENSE, MYRRH AND A FEW LUMPS OF COAL Exchanging gifts with relatives you don’t know well is always a bit disappointing. Sometimes that aunt or cousin will give you something you really want, but most of the time you’ll find yourself with clothes that aren’t quite your style or size, or a gift card to…

A CATTY YULETIDE LAUGH RIOT Following the well-earned 15-year run of Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer, Hell in a Handbag Productions replaces it with a worthy winner. David Cerda’s wicked holiday musical Christmas Dearest  is equally destined for Yuletide glory. This alternately crude and clever caricature, a raucous rouser, combines Cerda’s signature icon/diva/screen goddess/rotten mother Joan Crawford…

A CHORUS FE-LINE A prolific author and auteur, Rainer Werner Fassbinder exulted in display of the seamy and hypocritical side of the post-war German bourgeoisie. He directed forty films, wrote twenty-four plays and performed thirty-six roles before his death at age thirty-seven.   His frenetic pace of production is echoed by the structure of his play,…

ASHES TO THEATER Now moving from Andersonville to Lakeview, the best production of 2011 is back to rival any currently playing: No longer sprawling the width of the Neo Futurarium’s stretched-out stage, The Ruffians’ superb, 100-minute Burning Bluebeard is concentrated in Theater Wit’s proscenium space. Its glorious, dream-like make-believe and contagious magic realism feel even…

LEGENDS OF THE HOMELESS As the title suggests, Naomi Iizuka’s uncompromising drama exposes snapshots of the urban underbelly. It focuses, so to speak, on homeless kids, prostitutes and hustlers, and the occasional Greek hero or god, such as Orpheus and Eurydice, who wander very plausibly into their midst. As recorded by the playwright 16 years…