THE LAST VICTIMS An urban massacre grabs headlines for days, then burns out as quickly as it erupted. There’s always the next shock of the known to deal with: Without meaning to be cruel, we move on. An aftermath drama, The December Man is Canadian playwright Colleen Murphy’s 90-minute, three-character look at what won’t fade…

DEAF, DUMB, BLIND–AND FABULOUS! Right now there’s a lot of noise in the attic–Mary’s Attic in Andersonville. The uproarious occasion is Miracle!, a gender-bending, cross-dressing romp created by sex guru Dan Savage, the seminal spokesperson (“Savage Love”) for most matters GLBTQ. Losing not a laugh, it was inevitable that Hell in a Handbag Productions, Chicago’s…

A METAPHORICAL MESS “The truth can be cruel.” That’s the twisty motto of the interactive quiz show within Quiz Show, a maddeningly metaphorical one-act from Strawdog Theatre Company. The U.S. premiere of British playwright Rob Drummond’s puzzle piece, this treacherous 75-minute drama morphs like a microbe–from a game show that tests trivia to a lethal…

LIVING A LEGACY At this very moment Islamic State terrorists are on the brink of invading–and possibly destroying–the ancient Roman capital of Palmyra. Loathing any past but their present, their campaign of desecration and vandalism across Ninevah and Mosul, Iraq, as well as precious sites in Syria, echoes the culture rape of the distant Mongols….

DIRTY DOINGS IN DIXIE In a way The Little Foxes is a complete complement to Margaret Mitchell’s antebellum revisionism in Gone With The Wind (which appeared the same year as Lillian Hellman’s mistresspiece). This nasty work also exposes the true South–greed, not glory–half a century later. Hellman’s brilliantly constructed exposé of a monumentally dysfunctional Southern…

DISTURBED DANCES Two years ago Boris Eifman brought his all-absorbing story recital Rodin to the Auditorium Theatre. It delighted audiences with its stream of 1,000-word pictures: The vibrant talespinning depicted a great sculptor and his (outer) inner demons. Less enthralling and more problematic, Eifman’s equally elaborate Up & Down is just that–a roller-coaster focused more…

THE ONCE AND FALLEN DREAM It’s a continuing crisis seen from the inside out, fleshed out with warmth and truth. In The Project(s),  American Theater Company artistic director PJ Paparelli and documentarian Joshua Jaeger create a 140-minute crash course and action meditation on Chicago’s infam0us housing projects. Inspired by Jacob Riis’s pioneering expose How The Other…