FIXING FICTION It’s not your usual detective story: A quaint couple works to restore a villain suddenly lost from countless fairy tales. Mr. and Mrs. Pennyworth depicts a very proper Edwardian couple, a tinkerer and a part-time anthropologist (Samuel Taylor and Lindsey Noel Whiting) who bonded after meeting in the park every Saturday to share…

TCHAIKOVSKY MEETS THE WORLD’S FAIR: A PERFECT NUTCRACKER RECIPE It was a marvel of the ages and the crowning achievement of the 19th century (except maybe the Eiffel Tower). Now, happily, the World’s Fair of 1893 has returned to Chicago. And, since it’s via Joffrey Ballet’s new site-specific Nutcracker (replacing Robert Joffrey’s equally American version),…

THIS FLUTE IS MAGICAL Few operas are more delightful than Mozart’s Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), which fuses fantasy and adventure with high ideals and memorable melodies. Lyric has aptly billed it as family-friendly fare (child tickets are available), playing up the opera’s whimsical elements at the expense of its moral philosophy and social criticism. The…

NASHVILLE NIGHTINGALES If winter needs warming, Honky Tonk Angels should heat up happy crowds at the No Exit Café in Chicago’s Rogers Park. The bubbly good time delivers a mix of downhome directness and rural sass. Created by Ted Swindley, who gave Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre its 2014 hit Always:Patsy Cline, this roadhouse romp prefers…

HEAVEN MEANS HELL In King Charles III, now playing Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Mike Bartlett imagines what would happen if a king dares to act like one’”and opposes a Parliamentary proposal to fetter freedom of the press. (Hint: It doesn’t end well.) A similar speculation tears through Lucas (Isaac’s Eye, Death Tax, Hillary and Clinton) Hnath’s…

PICKING UP OUR PIECES The neatly punning title of The Second City’s 105th Mainstage Revue, The Winner:of Our Discontent, implies an anti-Trump evening. But, unlike SNL, there’s little rage and more resignation against the possible dying of democracy. Though raucous even by Second City norms and curiously free of running jokes (or many sight gags)…

A SWEET AND SOUR “TWIST” In the month of December, Goodman Theatre simply goes schizoid. On one end of its block-long Dearborn Street lobby is the Albert Theatre, where the sacred cash cow A Christmas Carol continues to attract traditional holiday lovers. (A smugly complacent look at a non-threatening Ebenezer, by now it’s more a…

CRUMPET COMES CLEAN For 8  boffo holiday seasons at Theater Wit, Mitchell Fain has been better known’”and locally famous’”as Crumpet, the irascible, impish and subversive Macy’s elf in David Sedaris’s hilarious monologue The Santaland Diaries (based loosely on Gogol’s equally manic Diary of a Madman). A trouper in tights, Mitchell Fain only missed 2  of 252 performances…

TO “MAKE CHRISTMAS GREAT AGAIN” You can’t keep a good elf down. Very loosely based on the 2003 film starring Will Ferrell as a love-seeking non-elf named Buddy, Barney the Elf  repurposes the flick’”and some favorite tunes in its parody score’”to deliver a feel-good “found” musical. Certainly in 2016 a reminder of the rewards of tolerance…

SHAKESPEARE’S TOTAL SLAUGHTER It’s a daunting statistic: In the 37 plays written by William Shakespeare, there are 74 onstage deaths. (The demises of Ophelia, Cordelia and Lady Macbeth, among others, don’t count because they occur between scenes.) That comes to two partings per play, though most of the comedies keep everyone alive until the end….