Chicago

LOCAL BOY MAKES GOOD It’s easy to see what drew Cameron Mackintosh to revive Lionel Bart’s hit musical 18 years ago: Dickens is a lot like Victor Hugo. Like Mackintosh’ smash Les Miserables, the 1960 musical replays an entire novel at warp speed, with fully realized opportunities to depict a swarming cityscape and gloomy Victorian…

A DICKENS OF A PERFORMER It’s been two centuries since Charles Dickens’ birth. Miriam Margolyes, famed for her portrayals in Harry Potter, The Age of Innocence, and William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet offers a well-deserved homage in Dickens’ Women, a one-person tribute directed by Sonia Fraser now playing at Chicago Shakespeare only through Saturday. Dickens’…

A GILBERT AND SULLIVAN FOR 2012 The best show of the year has finally arrived. The Book of Mormon  is a perfectly packaged fusion of the satire we need in a sassy musical comedy  with the entertainment genre that America created and deserves. From the wizards who concocted the all-offending South Park series comes an equally irreverent…

MOLIÈRE FOR DUMMIES Attend David Ives’ The School for Lies’”a manic contemporary travesty’”if you want to fully appreciate Molière’s 1666 masterpiece The Misanthrope, as serious a comedy as the 17th century farceur ever attempted. Brashly brilliant, grotesquely scatological, industriously low-brow, and perversely wrong-headed, this Midwest premiere of The School for Lies at Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s…

A HOLIDAY CHESTNUTCRACKER The Joffrey Ballet is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its holiday production of The Nutcracker, which means audiences have enjoyed an evening of grace, beauty, charm, and magnificent dancing and music for a quarter of a century. The annual holiday event is back at the Auditorium Theatre, billed as “America’s #1 Nutcracker.”…

WHEN THE DECONSTRUCTION OF COMEDY BUILDS LAUGHTER Jeff Garlin, comedian and star performer in HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, appears in his one-man show Closer Than I Appear at the Steppenwolf Theatre Upstairs. Although it is possible to describe the evening through a seemingly free-associative list of objects – a suitcase, plastic jack o’ lantern, orange…

FINDING NEW WAYS TO TURN A BODY The big news from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago as the intrepid troupe launches their four-day “winter series” at the Harris Theatre in Millennium Park? It’s the company premiere of Swedish choreographer Mats Ek’s ambitious 40-minute creation Casi-Casa. Full of glimpses of life caught in its ill-assorted acts, it’s…

CAT CHOKES UP FUR BALLS ONE TOO MANY TIMES You should live so long to meet the Hannukatz, a big 6 foot fur ball of a cat who drops by the Moskowitz family home in Skokie to educate the kids about the true meaning of Hannukah.   If you want to know “How the Jews Began”…

IT’S A WONDERFUL SHOW After a long and trying day, I entered Victory Gardens a bit of Scrooge on Saturday night. So when Christmas-y sweater-wearing performers, their smiles stretching from rosy cheek to rosy cheek, began a holiday sing-along preshow’”a few rounds of “Jingle Bells” and “The 12 Days of Christmas”’”I was dismayed at the…

FIFTY SHADES PUREED The erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey has made millions, maybe billions, of dollars and counting, having set the record as the fastest-selling paperback of all time, surpassing the paperback sales of the Harry Potter series. Author E.L. James wrote fan-fiction as a hobby until her Twilight-inspired work turned into the unbelievably…

D’ARCANGELO DONS A NEW LOOK After presenting a successful string of tragic operas this season, Lyric Opera flexes its comedic muscles with a charming production of Gaetano Donizetti’s opera buffa Don Pasquale. Although this Bel Canto Era opera has been part of Lyric’s repertoire for almost 50 years, this is the first time they have…

IT’S OK TO BELIEVE THAT THE SUN WILL COME OUT TOMORROW Director Rachel Rockwell once again astounds us with an incredibly entertaining rendition of Annie at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora, IL.   Annie   (book: Thomas Meehan, music: Charles Strouse, lyrics: Martin Charnin) is a musical based on the popular Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan…

A SKIRMISH OF WIT THAT CAN ONLY BE SHAW In 1896, George Bernard Shaw planned to beat Oscar Wilde at his own playful plotting and acerbic wit, so he wrote his answer to the recently successful The Importance of Being Earnest. Based on how often Shaw’s You Never Can Tell’”which has a title suggesting a…

DOWN HOME TO HEAL UP It’s hard to make healing feel dramatic. But that’s the challenge to which Julie Marie Myatt mostly rises in this engaging Midwest premiere. In 90 minutes she depicts in fragments’”since these things must be done delicately’”the beneficent aftermath of a haunted veteran’s return to California. Jessica Thebus’ painstaking but pleasure-giving…

HOGWARTS AND ALL The Harry Potter parody called Potted Potter is the joint creation of a couple of Englishmen named Daniel Clarkson and Jefferson Turner (Dan and Jeff on the stage). The duo once worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s children’s network, which explains a lot. Potted Potter advertises that it will appeal to adults…