Chicago

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…

AN OCCASION WHERE YOUTH IS NOT WASTED ON THE YOUNG The Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras (CYSO) consists of more than 100 musicians. They’ve received an international reputation as a premier orchestral ensemble, and recently performed at the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah Country Club.  At their Fall Concert  in  Orchestra Hall, the youth performers file to their chairs…

WORTH THE FARE Hellcab opened in Chicago in 1992 for a 12-performance run and the immediate audience buzz had the show playing for the rest of the decade. Now it is is back at the Profiles Theatre to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary. To the legion of playgoers who flocked to the original production for…

RETRO GERSHWIN STILL BESTS TODAY’S STANDARDS Like the unsurpassable Crazy for You, My One and Only is more than more than a dozen recycled Gershwin tunes. In the spirit of those daffy Jazz Age musicals and Gershwin’s own Princess Theatre offerings (here the model is Fred Astaire’s 1927 romp Funny Face), this Tony-winning song-and-dance spectacle,…

MINING MEMORIES Adam Guettel’s Floyd Collins remains the ultimate spelunking musical as it depicts a cave explorer entrapped by both hard rock and a media spectacle. The Burnt Part Boys, a 90-minute slice of coal by bookwriter Mariana Elder, composer Chris Miller and lyricist Nathan Tysen (originally premiered by Playwrights Horizon), is less ambitious and…

NOT IN THE CARDS Northlight audiences should cut the theater’s revival of The Odd Couple some slack. The production took a major hit when co-star George Wendt was forced to drop out of the show only a few days before the scheduled opening for medical reasons. So the production pulled Marc Grapey out of the…

THERE’S A HOLE IN DONUTS’ PROMISING STORY Arthur Przybyszewski, the gray bearded and ponytailed proprietor of a donut shop in Chicago, enters his store one morning to find it vandalized. Two policemen and the whistleblowing next-door neighbor are already there, witnesses to the trash, tossed chairs, and graffiti. Arthur enters without a word, examines the…

TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE PLAY Developed by Raven Theatre’s Workshop Series, these ten hit-and-run “playlettes” by John Weagly take only 52 minutes to rearrange reality into quirky juxtapositions and odd angles. Everything seems immediately familiar, then instantly not: An apparently innocuous wolfman refuses to be called a werewolf as he suffers a stomach ache from the…

HERE. THEN. NOW. WHEN? WHAT? WHY? Which 1970’s TV show had the nicest Nazi’s’”was it Wonder Woman or Hogan’s Heroes? Which cartoon character is stoned most of the time’”was it Shaggy from Scooby Doo? Why did the Howells pack so many clothes when they were only going on a three hour tour?   As three grown…