Kris Vire

Shunting the band’s actual songs off to the postshow mini-concert feels inescapably odd, especially in a city as teeming with talented actor-musicians as Chicago.

All told, this is a compelling take on a notoriously difficult but rewarding script.

Francesca Zambello stages a wonderfully sturdy, traditionalist production—but with a brand-new wardrobe

Paramount’s first “pre-Broadway” musical is unfortunately a piping hot mess

Three people escape and assess a horrifying disaster in Steppenwolf production of Lucy Kirkwood’s play.

“Pinocchio” feels like it’s got the beginnings of some good ideas, but wasn’t quite ready for prime time.

Halley Feiffer’s bleak two-hander is one nasty father-daughter dance.

Walt McGough’s take on video-game culture has lots of clever touches, but the final boss is (so far) impossible to beat

The hunt is a thrill in Rita Kalnejais’s disorientingly inventive cross-species romance, an unexpected stunner at Steep

Unlike some renditions of the crowd-pleasing musical, this one displays deep empathy for the dancers.

“DJEMBE!” takes its name from the goblet-shaped percussion instrument with origins in West Africa.

Ike Holter’s Rightlynd Saga comes to a satisfying close in a final crossover event

As American Blues Theater solo show recaps a gay teen’s life, it focuses too much on his impact on the straight people.

The solo play about the fallen American activist gets a storefront staging at a remarkably fraught moment

Caryl Churchill’s Serlingesque bioethics drama raises a number of thorny questions in a sturdy Writers revival

The Steve Martin–Edie Brickell musical, with a bluegrass-tinged score and Southern literary allusions, is modestly winsome in its Chicago premiere

Playwright Sharyn Rothstein’s new work “Landladies,” was inspired by her reading of Matthew Desmond’s 2016 book “Evicted.”

The Gift brings John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer winner to Steppenwolf.

Jackalope mounts a persuasive production of Greg Keller’s unconvincing script

“Southern Comfort” manages to be commendable, invigorating, and insufficient all at once.

Playwright Isaac Gomez gives full-throated voice to the endangered women of Juárez

Rather than trusting his audience to keep up with unadulterated Shakespeare, Dowling interpolates bits of modernized spectacle.

Monty is an odd choice for Theo Ubique’s new hall

A clunky, self-congratulatory case for art’s place in the revolution.

Cancer, the stars and space for hope in an affecting journey to the final frontier.

For “Rightlynd,” writer Ike Holter pulls out all of the realistic stops, the better to express his disdain for the city’s entire political system.

The precision and ease with which Shane O’Regan swaps dialects and physicalities to embody a total of 24 characters is a sight to behold.

The devil doesn’t bother disguising himself in Jen Silverman’s exceedingly smart new comedy at Writers Theatre.

She’s more interesting as one of the first women on the British stage than as a royal mistress in the Chicago Shakespeare Theater production.

Shorn of context and with no real framing, it’s frustratingly unclear what playwright/performer Valentijn Dhaenens is using his “mouths” to say.

You don’t want to miss this refreshingly different take on the refugee question and a stimulating story of love finding a way.

Returning to his favorite setting, Idaho, playwright Samuel D. Hunter scrutinizes but never judges his subjects.

The company marks 25 years with a remount of its 1995 Eugène Ionesco production.

Tennessee Williams's play remains a work fueled entirely by passionate arguments and salacious secrets.

This surface-level bio is more interested in musical fan service than actual insights, but the music, and its star, are top of the line.

Feel free to walk on by this rote and regressive new musical with old sensibilities.

Nobody’s a hero in Brett Neveu’s assertively amusing modernization of Ibsen.

A game cast and solid production elevate this stunty satirical allegory.

In a year when ‘identity politics’ was a hot topic, much of 2017’s best theater grappled with questions of identity

Tropical troubadour Jimmy Buffett’s catalog gets a gaudy, shoddy jukebox treatment.

The intimate Redtwist Theatre mounts a revival of Thornton Wilder’s gimlet-eyed portrait of life and death in Grover’s Corners.

Raven Theatre stages the Chicago premiere of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s 2013 play about a young gay man looking for his place in an all-black prep school.

Ivo van Hove’s bold revival of Arthur Miller’s 1955 drama about tangled loyalties among Italian-American dockworkers makes a strong landing in Chicago.

A museum guard gives in to the urge to touch a famous painting, setting off an eons-spanning lesson in art appreciation in this time-hopping comic fantasy.

The toad may know but we’re left out of the loop in the inaugural show in the Yard.

If you missed the House’s absorbing plane-crash documentary play last year, it’s now reboarding.

Humor may not heal but it helps in Halley Feiffer’s acerbic cancer comedy.

Playwright Peter Morgan returns to the royal well for a dutiful but dull portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and her Prime Ministers.

With an optimistic eye and a healthy dose of Diana Ross, a new musical about a gay kid’s coming-of-age shows strong promise.

For Cirque du Soleil’s latest spectacle, the French-Canadian circus troupe looks south to Mexico for inspiration.

This dance-heavy Broadway adaptation of the much-loved movie musical can’t fill its big toe shoes.

Young synergist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins deconstructs 19th-century Irish writer Dion Boucicault’s race melodrama to thrilling effect.

Kokandy Productions stages the Chicago premiere of Michael John LaChiusa’s esoteric 2003 musical about a hesitant young woman in the big pond of NYC.

The musical spoof about down-and-out Elizabethan playwrights inventing musical theater in the shadow of Shakespeare arrives at the Oriental on tour.

A solo play about the rock critic Lester Bangs constructs a portrait of his outsize personality, but doesn't answer the question posed by its title.

What you think you know—about gender, family dynamics or Steppenwolf—is up for debate in Taylor Mac’s charming and challenging work.

The musical adaptation gets bogged down in tying up loose ends, but it's the music and the affair we'll remember.

Two families grit their teeth through a tense dinner party a year after one of them lost a teenage son to suicide.

Despite offstage turmoil and uncertainty, Chicago stages offered no shortage of performances relevant and revelatory

PigPen Theatre Co. returns to Writers with a new, grief-tinged musical ghost story.

Playwright Lucas Hnath takes us to church in a provocative consideration of religious life, individual and organizational.

The political is personal and pointed in Second City’s electrically current new revue.

Now on tour, the stage adaptation inventively takes us inside the mind of its unique protagonist.

Self-preservation is fundamental in Erika Sheffer’s workplace dramedy about getting ahead no matter what, or who, the cost.

About Face Theatre stages a reimagined production of Doug Wright’s play about an East German transgender woman who survived both the Nazi and Communist regimes.

A dead woodland creature shakes up a quartet of lovers in Emily Zemba’s new comedy.

Pegasus Theatre’s new adaptation of Charles Johnson’s allegorical adventure shoots right down the middle.

The groundbreaking, acutely perceptive musical is nicely retooled to tour—see it while you can.

Brett Schneider uses his illusions to emotional effect in an inventive hybrid piece.

Lyric Opera and Second City grab for the Ring and miss.

Nobody’s throwing away their shot in this top-shelf Chicago staging of the most talked-about new musical in years.

This noir-Greek musical mashup doesn't fully land punches on either side of its parody targets.

A pregnant woman disappears in a small Ohio town on Christmas Eve, and guides us through her life and death.

Idris Goodwin’s suburban fable of the early days of hip-hop is charming, if somewhat slight.

Here's the story: I think you’ll love this goofy, gory parody of ’70s sitcoms and Shakespeare.

We’ve found religion: Praise be to the divine cast of this devilish comedy’s Chicago premiere.

The talk goes in circles in Anthony Giardina’s slack political drama.

A stage adaptation drawn from early episodes of the classic TV comedy is a faithful but hollow imitation of its source material.

Age may be nothing but a number, but this by-the-numbers new musical needs more depth before it’s a gotta see.

The best of this year in Chicago theater was defined by great characters.

Bruce Norris's biting comedy asks if philandering men are just naughty by nature.

The sparkle is less apparent than usual in this David Ives adaptation of a French Restoration comedy.

A Noël Coward comedy revival doesn't hit bottom, but it doesn't fly too high either.

Abby Mueller handily fills two pairs of big shoes at once: her titular character’s and her Tony-winning sister’s.

You might think you've seen the Second City's 104th mainstage revue before, but give it the chance to revisit itself.

Two lost souls meet on a Maui beach and find an instant connection in Hansol Jung’s quirky world premiere.

Brett Neveu's dysfunctional-family play takes a darkly comedic place in that pantheon by quoting its predecessors.

TimeLine applies docudrama style to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Jordan Harrison pens a humane consideration of whether technology can substitute for humans.

A mixed Deaf/hearing treatment breathes new signs of life into the star-cross’d lovers’ tale.

Hubbard Street’s fall program provides a fascinating sample of Forsythe’s wide-ranging aesthetic.

A psychologist ministers to a range of adrift Connecticut residents in this new ensemble piece by Tony Award winner David Rabe.

Illness necessitates a reunion between estranged sisters in Scott McPherson's 1990 family drama.

If Watson’s second, who comes first? That’s the question of Madeleine George’s intensely brainy dramedy.

Black Ensemble impresario Jackie Taylor sets the romance of late film critic Roger Ebert and his wife, Chaz, to a pop soundtrack.

A new play from Hamish Linklater examines neighborly niceties and what remains unsaid.

Six dead teenagers reflect on their lives—but this delightful Canadian chamber musical is far funnier, and more moving, than it sounds.

The long-running, long-winded British musical about a different kind of parent trap gets Theo Ubique's close-up treatment.

From hyper-relevant local stories to thrilling musical revivals to a massive, multi-hour marathon of tragedy, these were the best Chicago plays of the year

Playwright Lisa D'Amour parties with the down and out in New Orleans in her raucous Steppenwolf drama.

The Hypocrites expand their Gilbert & Sullivan Rep

The Second City and Goodman Theatre join forces to poke fun at A Christmas Carol.

The Second City’s 103rd mainstage revue

For being the noble prince of Tyre, Pericles can’t seem to catch a break.

Sheila Callaghan's off-kilter tale is in sync with Jackalope's style.

The classic mystery gets a fine new staging at Northlight.

Playwright Stephen Karam is in rare form here, showing a remarkable ear for the way families converse. For all of the characters' woes, this is a warm, funny, sharply observed portrait of their abiding connections with one another.

Strawdog's stirring adaptation still lives up in a new remount.

Christopher Chen’s metatheatrical riff on Mao Zedong and the making of art is a tedious slog.

Drury Lane mounts a lush, bracing new revival.

The show's half-life is fading fast, but Heidi Kettenring dazzles as Anna.

Intriguing in places but impenetrable on the whole, Abbie Spallen’s drama leaves us stranded.

This small-scale revival of the 1997 musical is well worth the voyage.

JC Lee’s play explores adoption, education, and pushing back against being defined by your back story.

"Amazing" isn't the right adjective, not yet anyway, for this big new musical with Broadway intentions. "Ambitious" applies, certainly, but unfortunately "adequate" or "acceptable" would also work.

It's hard to imagine a more seamless marriage than the one between The Second City and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.

Desperate times bring out desperate measures in Laura Marks’s Great Recession story.

Porchlight's new staging has a number of savory ingredients, but there's something off in the recipe.

A deaf man struggles to be heard within his family in Nina Raine's affecting play.

From achingly felt dramas to uproarious pop-culture comedies, 2013 was a strong year for Chicago theater.

The Q Brothers set Dickens to a beat.

For those in search of a little holiday irreverence, the revamped vamps of We Three Lizas could be singing your new favorite carol.

A princess quests to bring the true love she never met back from the dead in Strange Tree's charming play-with-music.

Timothy Edward Kane returns to his searing performance of Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson's solo piece in a remount at Court Theatre.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's biting new drama, which smartly avoids the clichés of family-secrets plays, is blisteringly acted at Victory Gardens.

Paul Dillon returns to the driver's seat 21 years after the original production of Will Kern's Chicago tale.

A stirring bit of storytelling brings Charles Dickens's story to life in a fashion that lives up to its title.

Rising playwright Calamity West raises slippery questions of gender, power and violence in postwar academia.

Three Dublin men reflect on what might have been in Conor McPherson's interlocking monologues, exquisitely acted in Writers Theatre's production.

The sweet, small musical about kids who love to spell gets a letter perfect production at Griffin.

Larry Kramer's righteous AIDS agitprop proves all the more vital decades later.

Grounded by Marriott's physical limitations, the stage version of Disney's magical nanny proves less than practically perfect.

Tony Award–winner Karen Ziemba plays the musical matchmaker in a disappointingly tepid revival.

You could say it’s the MTV’s ‘The Real World’ of Harriet Tubman time-travel comedies.

Noah Haidle's affecting new play takes a fractured, poetic look at family and mortality.

Kelli Harrington impressively embodies Terrence McNally's cartoonish version of Maria Callas, but her students hardly register next to her.

Joel Reitsma captivates as an unstable English soldier in Simon Stephens's raw but rather inscrutable 2005 work.

Marco Ramirez’s play about heavy metal and the supernatural finds more warmth and truth than that combination would suggest.

The joyfully vulgar musical comedy reaches heavenly heights with a Chicago cast that improves on the original.

The much-hyped puppets impress, but they can’t carry slack storytelling.

We pick the year’s best productions.

David Ives’s update of Molière is a charming blend of old School and new.

The Plagiarists come not to praise the inept poet William Topaz McGonagall but to bury him.

Kate Fry and Mark L. Montgomery captivate in this Soviet cat-and-mouse piece, but John W. Lowell’s script leaves us wanting.

An embittered fashion designer is visited by three fabulously sequined spirits in Scott Bradley and Alan Schmuckler’s Seuss-like, delightfully queer new holiday piece.

Like the presents in the titular O.Henry short story, this slight musical holiday card is undoubtedly well-meant but somewhat lacking in utility.

Set in 1962 around a fictional Ohio horse-racing track, Carter W. Lewis’s small-town drama tries to live up to its title, presenting the American moment in microcosm.

With a rich, ideal cast, this musical of loss and renewal hits hard.

The Hypocrites mine Gilbert and Sullivan’s farcical operetta for every bit of fun.

Set in rural West Virginia in 1962, The Burnt Part Boys tells a refreshingly simple, bluegrass-tinged tale.

The Broadway musical adaptation of the Whoopi Goldberg vehicle arrives on tour.

Like its protagonist, Mallery Avidon’s new play speeds along promisingly before meeting an unfortunate ending.

The House’s take on the perennial tale is an engaging family-friendly treat.

Eisa Davis’s drama is frustrating but impeccably acted in Congo Square’s production.

The tensions along the U.S.-Mexico border are clearly worthy of reporting right now, but Matthew Paul Olmos’s grating new Tijuana-set work doesn’t fit the bill.

The Factory’s high-energy Chicago-theater-world farce, first seen in 2005, gets a welcome remount.

Jane Anderson asks the big questions in this wry rumination on letting go.

Peter Parnell’s bio-play about physicist Richard Feynman follows a familiar formula.

These dozen performances, presented in no particular order, stood out from the pack.

These dozen shows’ casts offered thrilling onstage teamwork.

We pick the year’s best productions.

Canadian playwright Timothy Findley’s flight of fancy has a strong bent toward presentism, particularly in its obsession with gender roles.

Irish wordsmith Enda Walsh fleshes out the suitors of Odysseus’ wife in all their absurdity.

Jonathan Berry’s intimate production retains the honesty and energy of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s electrified teen-angst tale.

Remy Bumppo recasts Marivaux’s 1723 commedia in 1960s Chicago, but that concept doesn’t really show up onstage.

Four impressive actor-musicians power this thoroughly charming rock-concert retelling of “The Little Match Girl.”

The Neo-Futurists’ blistering excavation of the Iroquois Theatre disaster is alternately wistful, sidesplitting and chill-inducing.

Music melts racial barriers like soft-serve in Joe DiPietro and David Bryan’s pop-rock paean to radio rebels.

Black Ensemble christens its new home with a remount of one of its most popular musical bios.

Immediate Theatre debuts with Adam Bock’s 2004 flight of fancy.

Anna Carini’s portrait of a group of lifelong friends in crisis is skillfully plotted but underplayed.

The parent becomes the child’s burden in Deirdre O’Connor’s affecting, sharply drawn family dramedy.

A goofy Off Broadway musical artifact encourages us to embrace our inner sex machines.

Spring breakers on holiday in Mexico strive for life’s meaning and more beer in Brett Neveu’s cheeky 2004 play.

New plays in development by Christina Anderson, Zayd Dohrn and Carly Mensch get the Steppenwolf treatment.

Jordan Harrison takes us back in time, sort of, in this engaging thought experiment of a play.

Liz Duffy Adams makes Restoration playwright Aphra Behn the star of her own Restoration-style farce.

Keith Bunin’s cautionary fable gets a DIY-style staging from The State Theatre.

Edward Albee's marital-strife drama no longer carries the shock value that scandalized 1962 audiences, but as Tracy Letts and Amy Morton prove in Steppenwolf's searing revival, it still has plenty of potential to upend expectations.

Director David Cromer casts fresh, revealing light on the Tennessee Williams classic.

David Schwimmer stages an earnest, well-meaning PSA posing as a play.

Mark Guarino's Western fantasy, set to Jon Langford's songs, is the House's most natural integration of storytelling and music since 2006’s Hatfield & McCoy—yet the storytelling doesn’t quite live up to the music.