RECOMMENDED Where: Goodman Theatre, Owen Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St. When: through April 28 Tickets: $15-$49 Phone: 312-443-3800 GoodmanTheatre.org/LotteryDay By ANNE SPISELMAN Theater critic Some plays that are part of cycles stand on their own. That’s certainly the case with the works in August Wilson’s 20th Century Cycle, set mostly in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. Chicago […]
RECOMMENDED Where: American Blues Theater at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont Ave. When: through April 27 Tickets: $19-$39 Phone: 773-654-3103 By ANNE SPISELMAN Theater critic The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey” is an anomaly. Although the one act play is about a horrific hate crime, we’re left feeling full of hope for humanity. It’s also […]
SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED Where: Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie When: through April 20 Tickets: $30-$88 Phone: 847-673-6300 By ANNE SPISELMAN Theater Critic In the program notes for Northlight Theatre’s world premiere of “Landladies,” Sharyn Rothstein’s play about a slum landlord and her new tenant, the playwright says she […]
RECOMMENDED Where: BoHo Theatre at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. When: through May 5 Tickets: $35 Phone: 773-975-8150 By ANNE SPISELMAN Theater Critic When “Bright Star” premiered on Broadway in 2016, most of the critics viewed the folksy musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell as an anomaly for the Great White […]
RECOMMENDED Where: Goodman Theatre Albert Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St. When: through April 14 Tickets: $20-$80 Phone: 312-443-3800 By ANNE SPISELMAN Theater Critic Lynn Nottage did extensive research for “Sweat,” her 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner about steel workers in impoverished Reading, Pa., and it really shows. That’s not entirely a good thing. The play, which […]
RECOMMENDED Where: Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. When: through April 14 Tickets: $50-$74 Phone: 773-753-4472 By ANNE SPISELMAN Theater Critic When Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf” opened at New York’s Booth Theater in 1976, it became only the second play by an African American woman (after […]
SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED Where: Lookingglass Theatre Company, Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan Ave. When: through April 7 Tickets: $40-$75 Phone: 312-337-0665 By ANNE SPISELMAN Theater Critic Before the world premiere of Kareen Bandealy’s “Act(s) of God” got underway, I was trying to figure out from Brian Sidney Bembridge’s set exactly when it takes place. […]
RECOMMENDED Where: The Pub at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Navy Pier When: through March 31 Tickets: $45-$52 Phone: 312-595-5600 By ANNE SPISELMAN Theater Critic What do you do when you’re not sure?” It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to write a play that consists entirely of two working-class men in late middle age shooting the […]
RECOMMENDED Where: The Gift Theatre at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted St. When: through March 31 Tickets: $45-$55; seniors $25, students $15 Phone: 312-335-1650 By ANNE SPISELMAN Theater Critic What do you do when you’re not sure?” That’s the opening salvo of the sermon given by Father Brendan Flynn at the beginning of “Doubt: […]
RECOMMENDED Where: James M. Nederlander Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St. When: through March 24 Tickets: $27-$98 Phone: 800-775-2000 By ANNE SPISELMAN Theater Critic You’ve got to hand it to any show set in the Bronx in the 1960s that has a song about “Nicky Machiavelli.” And that’s not the only thing that recommends “A Bronx […]