Theater, Dance, Comedy and Performance in Chicago
A show that portrays “real” Muslim characters who spend half the show in their undergarments, twisting and contorting in all manner of sexual positions, and the other half having deep conversations about the damaging depictions of Islamic characters in popular media.
What does an early twentieth-century Arctic explorer and a modern-day single mother/struggling musician have in common? Almost nothing! And yet they make for the most charming companions in a tale of existential grief and nautical adventure.
Edwards owes his impressive comedy career to working at a drive-thru.
Antonio Edwards Suarez puts in a career defining performance in this insightful meditation on race and identity.
This British musical seems to pull off the impossible. The mesmerizing but highly complex score requires singers and musicians who can manage its intricate rhythms with precision and still act their songs in the guise of the mostly-lower-middle-class English city dwellers they portray.
The early twentieth-century fictional Harlem musician Coalhouse Walker in E.L. Doctorow’s novel—also the centerpiece of this musical—is a powerful symbol of racial injustice. And yet it is astonishing how contemporary it all still feels further into another century.
An incisive, suitably atonal but pitch-perfect Chicago premiere of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning play that leads, relentlessly, to unexpected heights of humor and drama and to the depths of America’s race divides.
The minimum-wage workplace as depicted in this world premiere drama is a nightmare of tedious toil, endless surveillance and absolute disrespect.
Lifeline’s funny, poignant, zippy production of Endesha Ida Mae Holland’s 1990 play about the writer’s life-long journey from the Jim Crow South, through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and on to a Ph.D. and professorships soars.
For Ellyzabeth Adler, founder and artistic director, T.S. Eliot’s heap of broken images is a longtime literary favorite and the source material for the first dance theater piece she created for her company twenty-one years ago. Adler restages CDE’s “The Wasteland”—timely for the anniversary of a poem that permanently scattered shards of language into our collective consciousness one hundred years ago.
“Big River” is a musical based on Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, with songs by Roger Miller. Mercury Theater’s production is crisply moving, superbly sung and highly entertaining.
Get downtown and see this show. It may change you for good. It will certainly raise your standards on what to expect from a musical, including one direct from Broadway.
The Lincoln Lodge’s “Latest and Greatest” show serves up a perfect mix of rising talents and veteran favorites
This is true, exciting storefront theater, set in a literal, narrow storefront on 79th Street in the South Shore neighborhood. It’s challenging, passionate, and beautifully in your face.
May is for musical comedy and edgy new work.
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