CATHARSIS IN A BASEMENT It's not easy for actors to lose control without losing the role as well. A master of concentrated dread and systematic despair, Kate Buddeke haunts this solo show. S…
A VERY DISPENSABLE DOOM Famed for her sardonic 1948 short story "The Lottery" and the scary novels We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson was a Go…
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 Edwardi…
DROPPING THE DROPPINGÂ CHANDELIER Andrew Lloyd Webber's mega-musical wants to be an opera about opera to end opera. Ironically, "Hannibal," its first-act spoof of a 19th-century grand oper…
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, th…
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 d…
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 …
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…
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 sacre…
DETECTING LOVE At first Christopher John Francis Boone seems a defective detective: A 15-year-old math whiz, this only child has Asperger's Syndrome. The anomaly is enough to push adolescenc…
CRUMPET COMES CLEAN For 8Â 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…
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 …
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, amon…
GALATEA GETS HER PLAY The source has finally come into its own: Overshadowed by the thunderous success of My Fair Lady, its musical spinoff, Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw's superbly penned,…
SCROOGE GETS SAVED WAY TOO SOON AND FAR TOO EASILY Goodman Theater's holiday happening has now reached the age of 39 (which, of course, is where Jack Benny stayed the rest of his life). A ve…
A HIGHLY ORGANIZED ENCHANTMENT Playwright Alan Knee called Sir J. M. Barrie "the man who was Peter Pan." If so, it was an author's compensation as much as creativity. James Barrie was a shy …
A JEALOUS WIFE WITH BAD GUN CONTROL You can't keep a bad/mad woman down. Not to be confused with A Doll's House, where Ibsen offers an almost feminist defense of a vastly underestimated wife…
STILL BANGING FOR THE BUCKS The incredibly basic concept behind Stomp, a phenom now in its third decade, remains: "Make a rhythm out of anything we can get our hands on that makes a sound." …
"RESOURCEFUL, GRACEFUL""AND RUTHLESS Corporate corruption"it's not just an oxymoron. We associate it with crimes in the suites–but there's also a trickle-down contamination: Compromise…
LEAPING INTO FALL If dance can define, this recital was its own dynamic dictionary: Running through this weekend, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's 39 Fall Series is a celebration in steps. At …
"THE VERY BEST WE NEVER HAD" After reviving the Bard's stirring chronicles in Tug of War, Chicago Shakespeare Theater has mounted another history play. Except this one reveals future history…
CLOCKS ARE COLD COMFORT Call it the ultimate disruption of sexual security/certainty, a double life lived, as La Cage put it, "at an angle." As the title suggests, I Am My Own Wife is a subv…
SO"JUST EXACTLY WHEN WILL THE SUN COME UP? (Hint: 2020) The first Christmas special came early this year: Martin Charnin and Charles Strouse's industrial-strength 1977 heart-warmer, Annie. R…
THE LEGEND THAT GOT AWAY No, this show isn't how fans want to remember Judy Garland at the bittersweet end. End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter's sardonic salute to a star on the skids, is a s…
A MOVING PORTRAIT OF A SMALLER SAINT A show doesn't"can't"get truer or richer than this current 140-minute gem at the Athenaeum Theatre. Perfectly concluding an all-Stephen Adly Guirgis seas…