Author: Kevin Curran
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Teatro ZinZanni – Cambria Hotel
Teatro ZinZanni premiered in summer of 2019 at the Cambria Hotel on Randolph Street in Chicago’s Loop Theatre District. My fellow reviewer Colin Douglas saw the premiere and gave it a rave review. Having shut down during the pandemic, the show is back with some old and new cast members and I am happy to add my enthusiastic recommendation to the chorus. I can safely say that the show is unlike anything else you’re likely to see, and in Chicago theater, that’s saying something.
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Bwahaha!
Henchpeople – Theatre Above the Law
Everyone knows about the super villain. Their face on every television screen in the city, or maybe projected from a blimp, threatening the city with destruction unless their demands are met. But what about the little people? The ones who make the death ray so deadly? The ones who antagonize the sharks in the pool under the trap door? And this spandex body suit with floor-length cape won’t clean itself… Theatre Above the Law returns to live, in-person theatre with a show that explores the stories of those unsung anti-heroes: the henchpeople.
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Best Friends Forever
W.o.W – Theatre Above the Law
W.o.W. is the story of a pair of best friends at three different points in their lives: young teenagers getting ready for a party, young adults facing their first grown up decisions, and adults dealing with their consequences. The common thread is that each point the play finds them, they are all hiding out in a bathroom. The setting makes a certain about of sense. It is both obviously very private, but a place anyone who has gossiped with a friend at the mirror knows, a place where you can be open and vulnerable, too.
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Infinite Possibilities
Constellations — Theater Above the Law
Constellations, a play by British playwright Nick Payne that first premiered in 2012, is about two people in a relationship. Or not. The play cycles through dozens of glimpses into the life of the couple, some overlapping, some contradictory. The same moment, such as the first time they meet or the last fight they have, is portrayed multiple times subtly shifting the tone or even the outcome.
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Thank You for Being a (Socially Distanced) Friend
The Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes, Vol. 4 – LOCKDOWN! – Hell in a Handbag
David Cerda’s long-running loving but acid parody of The Golden Girls is back, and like us, the ladies are in lockdown. Set in 1992, the specific disease and the means everyone is using to communicate from quarantine are different (and hand-waved away with classic sitcom ease), but the effects are much the same, and the girls are cracking under the pressure and beginning to take it out on each other.
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Something You Don’t Know
Here Lies Henry – Interrobang Theatre
Henry enters an empty stage alone and addresses the audience. His task to tell the audience something they don’t know. Over the course of the night, he’ll tell you a lot of things, about life and love and loss. Some of them might even be true.
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It’s All Fun and Games
Adaptation – Theatre Above the Law
Theatre Above the Law is opening its fourth season with a revival of Elaine May’s Adaptation, a play that sets the choices and compromises we all have to make over the course of our lives as a brightly colored, chaotic game show.
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6th Annual Chicago Musical Theatre Festival
Chicago Musical Theatre Festival – Underscore Theatre
The Chicago Musical Theatre Festival returns to Underscore Theatre for the sixth year with a slate of eight shows, with stories ranging from time travel to Moby Dick.
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The Only Certainty in Life
Death Tax – Red Twist Theatre
Maxine is the resident of a nursing home and her health is declining. She believes that her daughter, in order to avoid a looming increase on the estate tax, is paying her nurse to speed up the process, so she offers her a deal: a cut of her substantial estate if she lives to the new year. The nurse, Tina, an immigrant and single mother facing her own family problems, reluctantly accepts. This sets off a chain reaction, the end result of which none of them can predict.
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Don Giovanni Returns to the Lyric
Don Giovanni – Lyric Opera of Chicago
The classic opera, last performed at the Lyric in their 2014/15 season, returns to Chicago this fall.
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