Outdoor ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ has the power to transform
A working man joins his comrades in the woods to rehearse a "most lamentable comedy." But someone's made an ass of him — literally. "Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee," cries...
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‘Lysistrata’ returns, with no end of war in sight
Aristophanes' urtext for the battle of the sexes has inspired so many reimaginings and adaptations (including Spike Lee's recent contemporary Chicago take, "Chi-Raq") that putting them all up at the...
The play ‘This’ all about the midlife moment of doubt: leave or remain?
They have known each other as allies for decades. There's comfort in that familiarity. But then — things change. They begin wanting different things from each other. Perhaps they are...
Eliza makes all the right moves in Oak Park ‘Pygmalion’
Two years ago at the Goodman, Amanda Drinkall left a mark in "Venus in Fur," playing a seemingly innocent actress who teaches an older male director a few things about...
Ben Hecht’s remarkable and frustrating life, on display
One evening with Ben Hecht can't begin to cover everything in his prolific career. But James Sherman gives it a good shot in his self-performed solo, "The Ben Hecht Show,"...
What happens when your tortured-artist story turns out to be fake?
Christopher Chen enjoys exploring the art of artifice and political manipulation. In "The Hundred Flowers Project" (produced in 2014 at Silk Road Rising), Chen used a collaborative theater project about...
10 hot shows for summer, from SpongeBob to Sondheim
We know: you're stressing about whether you can obtain tickets for "Hamilton" when it rolls into town in September. But there are plenty of great shows to see before then,...
When white vice principal, Muslim student meet, nothing is as it seems
The big map of North America on the wall of the vice principal's office isn't all that it appears to be in Rajiv Joseph's "The North Pool." Dr. Danielson, the...
Malvolio has an ax to grind in alternative take on ‘Twelfth Night’
His very name suggests "malevolence." But Malvolio, the nearest thing Shakespeare provided to an antagonist in "Twelfth Night," gets a chance to air his numerous grievances against the world in...
Resonant story is lurking somewhere in ‘Spinning’
If, as Eugene O'Neill once wrote, there is no present or future, only the past happening over and over again, then is it ever possible to make amends for past...