BOYS WILL BE PIGS The title can mislead: Dogfight is not about World War I flying aces Eddie Rickenbacker and The Red Baron doing loop-the-loops as they shoot each other out of the sky. Dogfight does take place during war, but the title refers to a  much more cowardly act. Conducted by raw Marines in 1963…

THEY DO IT ALL FOR US 14 years ago, terror became a date in the calendar. “9/11” casts an ever darker shadow onto the future. It also remains the latest official loss of American innocence. (Happily, we suffer from such convenient cultural amnesia that we’ll regain it soon enough.) Lest we forget, here’s a two-person…

WHEN GETTING THERE ISN’T HALF THE FUN Call it a combination of Locked Up Abroad and Coming to America. In 90 gorgeously pictured minutes, “multi-racial” performer Debra Erhardt thrillingly chronicles her escape to America 35 years ago when she was 18. Her riveting narration turns  a one-person odyssey into a lavish epic: It enlists our imagination…

DELIVERANCE FROM DROUGHT It’s a terrific recipe for powerful theater. Confront audiences with an unfinished situation amid a collective challenge–with seemingly no way out. Then introduce a mysterious stranger who, like a catalyst, changes everything, maybe even himself. It works wonders with The Music Man, The Petrified Forest, Holiday, Shane, The Lone Ranger, Peter Pan,…

A POOR MAN’S PETER PAN Let’s put two prequels in perspective: What the novel-based Wicked is to The Wizard of Oz, Peter and the Starcatcher, a novel-derived “origins tale,” is for Sir James Barrie’s wonderful Peter Pan. Both “earlier versions” were written long after their celebrated “sequels.” Retrospectively, both provide complementary or alternate explanations for…

BEYOND THE PALE Bad Jews (the provocative title not as anti-Semitic as it sounds) was a 2015 hit at London’s St. James and New York’s Roundabout theaters. In the Chicago area Jeremy Wechsler’s staging has already packed them in at Theater Wit, Northlight Theatre, and now the Royal George Cabaret. Clearly, Bad Jews found its…

PLOYS IN THE ATTIC It’s noble to sacrifice for loved ones who need you. But what if it was for nothing? Arthur Miller’s 1968 family play The Price puts its title to rich use. Ostensibly, it’s about the purchase value of the heirlooms, keepsakes, and antiques in the cluttered attic of a Manhattan brownstone soon…

DIXIE DOODLES IN DISTRESS Beth Henley, author of 1979’s Pulitzer-winning Crimes of the Heart, has practically patented the Southern stereotype. Drawling in a stilted patois, Henley’s desperate, demented creatures are hell-bent on self-destruction: They’re pathologically ready to commit “crimes of the heart” to not get their way. 33 years after her masterpiece, Henley is still…