Once Upon a Time…Later

Grimm – Theatre Above the Law

Theatre Above the Law is bringing back a show it premiered last Halloween season, Grimm. The show features several Grimm fairy tales set inside an imaginary bar with a framing story of Jacob Grimm looking for his missing brother, Wilhelm. A few stories have carried over from the last production and a few new ones have been added. The result was a delightful evening.

Come to the Fun Home

Fun Home – Paramount Theatre

Fun Home is the story of writer and artist Alison Bechdel contemplating her relationship with her father, who she discovered as an adult was gay, like she is. Based on her real family, Bechdel turned the story into the graphic novel of the same name in 2006. In 2013, it was turned into a musical with book and lyrics by Lisa Kron and score by Jeanine Tesori, eventually picking up the Tony for Best Musical.

The Playboy of the Western World

The Playboy of the Western World – City Lit Theatre

At a pub in County Mayo, Ireland in 1907, a young man stumbles and says that he has just killed his father with a shovel. After telling his story, he instantly becomes a local celebrity, with the town celebrating his bravery in standing up to his horrible father. Things get more complicated with the father, apparently only injured, shows up looking for him.

Murder is Such a Drag

A Fine Feathered Murder: A Miss Marbled Mystery – Hell in a Handbag Productions

Hell in a Handbag is back with it’s most ambitious project that I’ve seen. In the grand tradition of Clue or Gosford Park, David Cerda and company are tackling the country manor murder mystery. All the standards are here. The society maven. The aging aristocrat. Servants with secrets. And a quiet but shrewd spinster watching everyone from behind her knitting. The only way you can be sure that you didn’t accidentally buy tickets to The Moustrap is just about all the women on stage are drag queens.

You’ll Be Charmed

Lucy Darling: Indulge – Rhapsody Theatre

Here’s a sentence I haven’t gotten to type very often in the last few years: a new theatre is opening! In the former space of the Mayne Stage in Rogers Park, the Rhapsody Theatre will host a variety of music and cabaret acts in its 200-seat theatre. To kick of their inaugural season, Carisa Hendrix dazzles as magician and all-around delight, Lucy Darling in an evening of magic, comedy, and a large number of martinis.

Tommy on Top

Tommy on Top – PrideArts

I don’t like giving bad reviews. I know how much work and energy go into a show and how vulnerable it makes the people who put in that work. I always try to respect that. I flatter myself that I am not in the class of reviewer who enjoys writing pans to make themselves feel smarter than everyone else who may have liked something. I always try to meet a show where it is and judge it not just for how I viewed it, but also through the lens of its intended audience. Even if something isn’t for me, it’s often for someone, and to me, a well written review looks for that. This is the long way of saying I can usually find something to hang my hat on to recommend a show to someone for some reason. Unfortunately, I cannot do that for PrideArts’ latest production, the Chicago premier of Tommy on Top, a farce by British playwright Chris Woodley. The story centers on hunky, young, and closeted actor Tommy Miller, on the cusp of winning an Oscar, having to deal with the possibility of being outed and the impact that will have on his career.

Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations – Broadway in Chicago

Following successful runs on Broadway, both before and after the shutdown, Ain’t Too Proud has come to the Cadillac Palace for a two week engagement. The show tells the story of the Temptations, from their formation in 1950s Detroit through their rise to fame in the 60s and 70s, all through the lens of the incredible music they made.

The Winter of Our Discontent

Richard III – Promethean Theatre Ensemble

Promethean Theatre Ensemble is back with its first show since the shut down and is staging Shakespeare’s classic Richard III, the tale of the scheming duke who plots to seize the throne from his brothers then his young nephews by any means necessary.

Unearthing the Past

Digging Up Dessa – Theatre Above the Law

Dessa is a budding paleontologist. Following a school trip to the natural history museum, is outraged to learn that a wall of photos to the fathers of paleontology is missing one of its founding mothers, Mary Anning, who made several major discoveries, but is more remembered for being the inspiration for the rhyme “She Sells Seashells by the Seashore.” She shares a special connection to her because she is the one female paleontologist in a book she received from her father, who recently passed away. The play unfolds watching Dessa deal with both her loss and the struggle with how the world will see her and other women.

Attend the Tale

Sweeney Todd – North Riverside Players

In what is becoming a familiar, but happy, refrain in my reviews, another show cut short in 2020 by the pandemic is finally getting its time on the stage. This time, North Riverside Players prove both resilient and ambitious in mounting Stephen Sondheim’s classic Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. A London barber, falsely convicted and imprisoned in Australia has returned in secret to find his family and revenge himself on the corrupt judge who sent him there. Returning to his home, he finds his neighbor, Mrs. Lovett running a failing pie shop. Together they will find a novel, if nauseating, solution to both their problems.