Items filtered by date: November 2007

Many decades ago, my mother enrolled me in ballet classes, hoping the classical training would somehow turn her rotund preteen into a graceful swan. On my way to those tortuous lessons on Davis Street in Evanston, I passed another door marked “Gus Giordano Studio.” The typeface was cooler than the ballet studio’s script and so were the jazzy strains of music that drifted downward. If only I’d climbed Giordano’s narrow stairway instead, I might have lasted longer on the dance floor.

Fortunately, plenty of other students chose Gus Giordano’s door. His infusion of jazz into contemporary dance has endured and manifested under the leadership of his daughter Nan and other creative contributors. Now in its 63^rd season, Giordano Dance Chicago presented its Ignite the Soul program at North Shore Center for the Performing Arts last weekend with the vibe that emanated from its original studio.

Sing, Sing, Sing, set to Louis Prima’s penetrating drumbeat, gave us three dancers and six white-gloved jazz hands having the time of their lives. After that joyful salvo came the lengthier and more reflective Gershwin in B.  Choreographed by Al Blackstone to a mélange of Gershwin classics, the 2024-piece features Erina Ueda who pulls us into the abstracted narrative by reaching for a red fedora that slides away before she can grasp it. Joined by the expressive and sleek ensemble in Branimira Ivanova’s glorious black and white costumes, the dancer strives for that fedora of success. Along the way, she finds love, partnering with Eduardo Zambrana and then moving on as she reaches for the next fedora.  

From Gershwin’s signature American jazz idiom, the program shifted to an Afro-Cuban sensibility. Liz Imperio’s La Belleza de Cuba set the entire Giordano company in motion, coupling and uncoupling with such intensity, the dancers seemed electrified by the mere presence of their partners. Almost like a palate cleaner, Interlinked by company member Simon Schuh did indeed interlink bodies with rapid-fire precision that suggested gymnasts as much as dancers.

Erina Ueda returned for different challenge in 333. Choreographed by Nan Giordano and Cesar G. Salinas to the music of Otis Redding, the solo piece further showcased Ueda’s emotional and technical range.

The final work of the evening, Red & Black, was created by Dancing with the Stars choreographer Ray Leeper for the company in 2024. With music selections from Eartha Kitt, Michael Bublé and others, the work has men stalking women and women stalking men, everyone seductive in their red and black attire. Lifting bar chairs, grouping and regrouping, forming alluring tableaux, they project an almost predatory energy. At one point, the women remove their jewelry and a single shoe, leveling themselves with great control as they continue their interactions with the men.

With its nightlife setting and the dancers’ charged, sophisticated moves, Red & Black brings another nighttime revelry, The Wild Party, to mind. Leeper’s extended party, however, doesn’t disintegrate into darkness; it simply keeps unfolding. Where exactly Red & Black arrives at the end is unclear and perhaps doesn’t need to be. The journey for this recent offering – so many years and countless stairs climbed by gifted dancers since I felt the Giordano magic on Davis Street – is destination enough.

For more information on Giordano Dance Chicago, go to https://www.giordanodance.org/

It’s always risky to take a familiar story and translate it from one medium to another, in this instance from film to stage. Will the adaptation do justice to the story? Will our favorite characters be recognizable to us? Will we walk away happily satisfied with the end result?

I can honestly say for devoted fans of Disney’s Pixar film Finding Nemo, both young and old, that in the Theatre for Young Audience’s musical adaptation now on stage at the Marriot Theatre in Lincolnshire, the answer to all those questions is a resounding YES!

Under the masterful direction of Amber Mak, who also choreographed the show, the underwater world of the coral reef, home to Marlin and his son Nemo, comes to life through the ingenious use of puppetry, colorful costumes and props, along with the skillful use of lighting.

For the uninitiated, Finding Nemo relates the story of an overly cautious and very serious Clown Fish, Marlin, who has promised after a barracuda attack wiped out his entire family save one, that nothing will ever happen to his only remaining son, Nemo. Nemo, who longs for adventures of his own, swims off the coral reef and is caught and taken to far-away Sydney. What follows is Marlin’s epic journey to find his son, where he is joined by a memory-challenged Blue Tang, Dory, whose unfailing optimism and faith in Marlin, propel the two onward.

From the opening to the close, the young audience was enchanted by the cavalcade of sea creatures that paraded across the stage – seahorses, sting rays, octopuses, as well as a wide variety of fish. Our favorites are there as well – the jellies, creatively portrayed using clear umbrellas, the chill sea turtles, Bruce, the somewhat reformed “fish are not food” shark and his friends, and of course, Dory.

Because the production is geared for a younger audience with a run time of about an hour, the storyline is somewhat truncated. Instead of finding himself in an aquarium at a dentist’s office, Nemo is taken to the Syndey Aquarium, where he meets Gill and the other Tank Gang, joining their efforts to escape and return to the sea. And Marlin and his plucky companion Dory quickly move from one encounter to another.

The addition of an energetic and up-tempo musical score written by the award-winning songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez of Frozen fame, keeps the storyline moving. Nigel, the Australian brown pelican, also relays critical information to the ocean denizens and Nemo about Marlin and Dory’s adventures, as well as encourages audience participation at times. “If you think Marlin will save Nemo, clap your fins now,” he intones, to an enthusiastic response.

The team of Scenic Designer Milo Bue, Costume Designer Theresa Ham, and Lighting Designer Brian Elston work together to create the colors and beauty of the underwater world. Large panels of lights on all the walls surround the audience in an everchanging display of seascapes. Lighting is used to create the undulating movement of water, and at time, bursts of bubbles gently fall to the delight of the audience.

But it is the wonderful puppets, thanks to Puppet Designer Jesse Mooney-Bullock, that are the true stars of the show. From the giant Sea Turtle, the laid-back Crush, played by three persons, to the scary barracuda that attacks the reef, to the delightful school of fish that point Marlin and Dory in the right direction, each puppet is uniquely designed and operated.

The talented cast bring the personalities of each character through with masterful puppetry and choreography. Avelyn Lena Choi shines as Nemo, and Devin De Santis portrays “Marlin” with just the right amount of caution and bravery. As in the movie, it is Dory, played expertly by Leah Morrow, who steals the show. Her mantra of “Just keep swimming” and continued mangling of Nemo’s name (Mosquito, Cheeto, Mango, to mention a few) keep the young crowd laughing and amused.

The talented ensemble also includes Andres DeLeon, Genevieve Jane, Charlie Long, Adelina Marinello, Tommy Rivera-Vega, Maya Rowe, Lorenzo Rush Jr., and Meena Sood, who play a variety of roles throughout the show.

As an added bonus, as it does with all its children’s theatre performances, the cast of the show remain afterwards for a brief question-and-answer session with the audience. For older children in the audience, it’s a wonderful opportunity to glimpse behind the scene and see how the stage magic happens.

With the holiday season nearly upon us, Marriott’s Finding Nemo is a perfect choice for family-friendly entertainment appropriate for all ages. I enjoyed the show as much as my nine-year-old granddaughter, who walked away thoroughly satisfied, remarking, “My favorite part was that there was a happy ending.”

Disney’s Finding Nemo Theatre for Young Audiences version is running through Jan. 4, 2026, at the Marriott Theatre, located at 10 Marriott Drive in Lincolnshire. Performances take place on most Wednesdays through Sundays at 10 am with select 12:30 pm performances. Visit www.marriotttheatre.com or call 847.634.0200 for the exact schedule, as show times and dates may vary.

Let me start by saying: this play is not for anyone unfamiliar with feminine rage. While I’m all for experiential desensitization, diving straight into a show all about female “hysteria,” periods, witches, and penis-biting might be a bit much for your first swim.

You don’t need to be a woman to enjoy it, but there’s a particular subset of audience members who might find themselves squirming in their seats. And that’s fine. Not all art needs to be for everyone. That said, for anyone personally acquainted with (or at least comfortable around) Millennial and Gen-Z “femme fury”, Director Kayla Menz’s production of The Sporting Life is a riot that will have you laughing from beginning to end.

The six-person cast is stellar:

Ziare Paul-Emile – as Dot, the main character and high school girl – shines as she causes the entire play to unfold. Starting off as the sweet, behind-her-peers type, Paul-Emile continues to add on new layers to Dot, masterfully and constantly shifting her conviction. Each shift feels performative in the best way: showing the audience both her growing façade and the fragile, adolescent truth beneath it.

Tyara Whitted – as Dot’s best friend, Mikayla – is one of the funniest actors I’ve seen on stage. Whiteed’s delivery of every line was impeccable, hilarious, and perfectly conveyed her character’s too-eager-to-grow-up nature. Mikayla later finds herself in an abusive relationship, which Whitted handles the material with rare nuance, conveying both the pain and the impossible contradictions of still loving someone who hurts you.

Elizabeth Macdougald – as Sherry, the witch – is an absolute force of nature. Spunky, raunchy, and wickedly funny, Macdougald is the (by technicality) antagonist that you can’t help but love. Although arguably being the source of the play’s chaos, she also grounds it with a mix of blunt and maternal tenderness throughout.

Bryan Breau – as Dot’s dad – is the quintessential bewildered girl dad. Fumbling through his best attempts to understand his daughter, his earnestness carries the father-daughter relationship at the heart of the play.

Last but certainly not least, Ian Mason and Bill Daniel round out the cast, playing every. other. character. Collectively playing at least 8 distinct characters, the duo’s range was incredible. Both Mason’s and Daniel’s physical comedy abilities are like none other, from larger-than-life reactions to painfully believable combat and stunt choreography.

From a production standpoint, I have to give enormous credit to the team’s handling of blood. In case you’ve never worked with it, stage blood is notoriously difficult: just when you think you’ve solved one logistical challenge, five more appear. I have nothing but admiration for the technical crew’s ambition and precision. Most plays save blood for the final moments, so cleanup only happens once, but The Sporting Life opens with a full-on blood spray within the first five minutes. And it just keeps coming.

That commitment is both hilarious and impressive. Not only does it demand careful coordination from the crew, but it also requires the cast to maintain a constant, almost subconscious awareness of every inch of the stage. The blood remains throughout the show, forcing the actors to adapt in real time: lying down carefully to avoid accidental gore in quieter scenes, or using existing puddles to amplify the chaos in violent ones. It’s a masterclass in controlled mess – a game of theatrical chess played with absolute effortlessness.

As the world premiere of Playwright Marjorie Muller’s newest script, there’s definitely room for iteration. The play was advertised as running 1 hour and 40 minutes, but it clocked closer to two hours with no intermission – and I felt it. The ending, in particular, seemed to have an ending tacked onto an ending, creating the sense of a partial conclusion before launching into another. This extended the runtime and diluted some of the sharp focus and wit that made the first two-thirds so strong. Structurally, the piece could benefit from rethinking that final stretch, whether by adding an intermission to give the audience a breather or by condensing and reworking the conclusion into a single, more cohesive ending. Either route would help preserve momentum and leave the show on the high note it earns during the majority of the play.

That said, for a modern, edgy comedy, the writing overall is excellent. One of my biggest pet peeves is when playwrights overdo emotional or “hysterical” female characters, veering into mockery instead of authenticity. Speaking as a former 15-year-old girl: yes, it’s funny to look back and realize how seriously we took small things – but at the time, those things really did feel like the end of the world. The Sporting Life captures that perspective without condescension. It’s a fine line between humor and misogyny, and this play walks it with grace, empathy, and a sharp sense of humor.

The Sporting Life is running at Factory Theater through November 22nd. Tickets are available at: 

https://thefactorytheater.com/portfolio/the-sporting-life/

https://thefactorytheater1.thundertix.com/events/245024. 

Lou (Cher Álvarez) and James (Patrick Heusinger) are in their bedroom. They are so focused on each other that they don’t notice the flashing light in the bedroom down the hall. The catch? Lou and James are the only ones in the house. So that leaves the question – who is controlling the flashing lights?

Many of us are familiar with this moment in a horror film. The first scare is crucial and sets us up for what we are about to experience. We may not know exactly what is happening, but we do know that this simple game with the lights suggests that all is not quite normal in this house. Lou and James are not alone, and whether or not we are ready, we are soon going to learn what is keeping them company.

However, this is not a film. This is a horror play, and while the moment provides a similar purpose, you might find that the experience is quite different. Gasps could be heard across the house at this particular performance. Looking around, folks were pointing to fellow audience members – making sure that they too took in the flashing lights. Whispers could be heard, and suddenly, it felt like we were part of the performance. As the scares grew over the course of the piece, reactions only intensified. Audience members shouted, screamed, and even at times tried to warn the characters of what they were clearly missing. Director Felix Barrett and his design team skillfully create what might feel like an immersive experience. As the tension on stage grew, I personally could feel the same happening to the audience surrounding me. To put it simply – we were hooked, and there was no escape until we finally got our answers.

Writing by Levi Holloway, Paranormal Activity follows married couple James and Lou who move from Chicago to London to escape their dark past. We slowly learn that their previous home was haunted, and they assumed that a full ocean could make that go away. However, they soon discover that it’s not always a place that is haunted. Sometimes it’s people, and whether or not they are ready, it’s time to confront their past before it’s too late.

That which truly pushes the experience over the top is the work of Illusions Designer Chris Fisher – along with the collaboration of Associate Illusions Designer Daniel Weissglass and Illusions Consultant Skylar Fox. The stage magic is often hard to grasp with how authentic it feels, and you may find yourself wondering if you even believe what is in front of you – much like the characters on stage.

We witness the couple at the center slowly unravel – particularly James. As with so many horror stories, he begins as a non-believer. As the ghostly interactions become harsher and harder to avoid, we see him question everything he ever knew. Both Álvarez and Heusinger perform quite a feat. As we witness their marriage completely fall apart at the mercy of the hauntings, you might find yourself feeling sorry for the genuine relationship they so clearly set up at the beginning.

With haunting stage magic and a story that takes no prisoners, Paranormal Activity is not just a play – this is an event. Fans of the horror genre will not be disappointed. This is an experience that keeps you guessing from the moment the curtain rises to the last glimmer of light at its conclusion.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Run Time: 2 hours, with intermission

Paranormal Activity runs through November 2 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater – 800 E. Grand Avenue.

TimeLine Theatre opens its 29th season with the world premiere of Hundreds and Hundreds of Stars, a deeply personal and politically charged play written by and starring Sandra Delgado. Under the careful direction of Kimberly Senior, the production folds an intimate family drama into the broader context of immigration under the Obama administration — a time when the tension between belonging and legality became a defining national paradox.

Delgado plays Clara, a woman whose life reads like a quintessential American story: educated in U.S. schools, an unemployed professional, a mother, an ex-wife paying alimony, and the devoted caretaker of her aging, recently widowed father. Yet, she carries one crucial distinction — Clara was born in Mexico. In the eyes of the government, despite her decades of living and contributing to the United States, she exists in a fragile legal limbo. It is this tension — between a lived sense of home and the precarity of status — that fuels Delgado’s heartfelt and sometimes haunting narrative.

The story unfolds in 2015, the final years of the Obama administration, when the nation’s immigration policy embodied contradictions. While Obama extended compassion through programs like DACA, his administration also deported more immigrants than any before it. It’s within that fraught atmosphere that Clara’s life unravels. As she plans an overseas trip, a bureaucratic hiccup exposes a youthful misstep from her past, threatening her livelihood, family, and even her right to remain in the country she calls home. What follows is both a bureaucratic nightmare and a spiritual reckoning, as Clara gazes skyward — toward “hundreds and hundreds of stars” — seeking guidance, belonging, and deliverance.

Senior’s direction is restrained and elegant, allowing Delgado’s writing to shimmer through the emotional and political layers of the story. The ensemble’s performances are uniformly grounded and generous. Ramón Camin gives Papi, Clara’s father, a stoic dignity — a man bound by nostalgia yet dependent on his daughter to navigate his new reality. Joshua David Thomas brings humor and restless charm to Ruben, Clara’s cousin, who juggles nursing school and low-level marijuana dealing with a kind of defiant optimism. Charlotte Arias’s Stella, Clara’s tween daughter with dreams of Paris, radiates a mix of giddy excitement at learning a new language and the tender angst of adolescence, embodying a generation eager to explore the world yet uncertain of their place within it. Charin Alvarez, playing every other woman in Clara’s orbit — from her attorney to her mother — threads the production together with wit, wisdom, and warmth.

Visually, the production achieves a graceful fluidity. Regina Garcia’s open set transforms seamlessly into apartments, offices, and memory spaces with minimal rearrangement, while Christine Binder’s lighting washes scenes in mood and emotion — from sterile bureaucratic glare to dreamlike luminescence. Willow James’s sound design and music further enrich the experience, grounding the play’s political urgency in emotional resonance.

Hundreds and Hundreds of Stars succeed because it is not a lecture on immigration policy, but a human portrait drawn from it. Delgado reminds us that behind every policy statistic — behind every deportation — lies a web of families, debts, dreams, and love stories. Clara’s story is one of endurance and faith, a meditation on identity and the invisible lines that divide “citizen” from “other.” In blending the personal and the political, TimeLine Theatre has once again illuminated how history lives — and aches — within the human heart.

Highly Recommended

When: Through November 9th

Where: Lookingglass Theatre, 163 E. Pearson Street

Running time: 90 minutes

Tickets: $40 - $95

(773)-287-8463

www.Timelinetheatre.com

Goodman Theatre launches its 2025/26 season at the Owen with Revolution(s), a world premiere musical that thunders with urgency and defiance. Written by Zayd Ayers Dohrn—2016 Horton Foote New American Play Prize winner and son of Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground—the play carries the weight of history and the pulse of rebellion. With music by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave fame and direction by Steve H. Broadnax III, Revolution(s) explodes onto the stage as both a call to arms and a meditation on generational resistance.

Dohrn’s daring script weaves two timelines into one charged narrative. In 1989, African-American veteran Leon (Al’Jaleel McGhee) and his quick-thinking, idealistic wife Emma (Jackie Burns) find themselves fugitives, forced to flee with their newborn twin sons. Their flight captures the uneasy tension of a generation torn between paranoia and hope—a time when the dream of revolution still felt urgent and within reach. Fast forward to 2016, and those twins, now adults, grapple with the legacy their parents left behind. Hampton (Aaron James McKenzie), scarred by his service in Afghanistan, abandons his post and returns to Chicago’s South Side and to Lucia (Alysia Velez), his undocumented girlfriend who anchors him to a fragile sense of home. His brother Ernie (Jakiem Hart), once a prodigy on the guitar, has withdrawn from both his talent and the world—until Hampton’s unraveling forces him to confront the very past he’s been avoiding.

Broadnax directs with a ferocity that mirrors the play’s title, blending moments of tenderness and chaos with cinematic precision. He builds scenes that combust with tension and intimate ache, often within the same breath. The design work—gritty projections, steel scaffolding, and stark, rhythmic lighting—evokes both the bunker of a warehouse and the battlefield. There’s an immediacy here: revolution is not a metaphor, but a lived inheritance.

(L-R) Jakeim Hart and Aaron James McKenzie in Revolution(s).

Then there’s the music—pure Morello. The score, straight from the Rage Against the Machine playbook, fuses electric rebellion with spiritual yearning. Songs like “Battle Sirens,” “Hold the Line,” and “Whatever It Takes” roar as anthems of resistance, while “Rise to Power” and “Promenade” reveal unexpected warmth and vulnerability. The songs don’t so much advance the narrative as expand it, offering philosophical texture instead of plot propulsion. In Revolution(s), music is both protest and prayer—an act of survival.

What happens when the spirit of rebellion is passed down like trauma? What does it mean to inherit both resistance and loss? Revolution(s) suggests that revolution isn’t merely an act—it’s a legacy, coded into the body like memory or pain. Leon and Emma’s defiance becomes both a beacon and a burden for their sons, who carry the scars of a fight they didn’t choose but can’t escape. For Hampton, rebellion manifests as a restless need to confront authority—even when the war he’s fighting is within himself. For Ernie, it’s the refusal to participate, a quieter but no less radical protest against expectation. The play’s most haunting insight is that revolution reshapes generations; its victories inspire, but its wounds linger.

Dohrn’s writing captures this duality with compassion and fury, showing that to inherit rebellion is to inherit a question—how do you keep fighting without becoming consumed by the fire your parents lit?

Revolution(s) is a work of conviction—raw, restless, and unapologetically alive. It asks hard questions about legacy, freedom, and what we’re willing to sacrifice for change. In a cultural moment of complacency by our elected representatives, Revolution(s) doesn’t just remind us of what rebellion sounds like—it dares us to remember why it matters.

Highly Recommended

When: Through Nov. 16th
Where: Goodman Theater (170 N. Dearborn)
Tickets: $34-$104
Info: goodmantheatre.org

*This review is also shared on https://www.theatreinchicago.com/!  

“What happens if we never loosen our grip?”

Director Mikael Burke ends his director’s note with the question above. He muses on the responsibilities of parents, and how all we want is to keep our children safe. We hold them close to keep them from harm, but ultimately, what does that do? Does it keep them safe? Or if we hold them too close, does the choice send them in the opposite direction – running towards any sense of freedom that they can find?

However, you might find that Burke’s question sheds light on a little more than just the role of parents in the play. What happens if we never loosen our grip on our children, but also our fears? Our insecurities? Our unhappiness, or even the dreams we once held so close? You might find that Burke’s question leads to another – If we never loosen our grip, how are we ever meant to grow and find something bigger?

Written by Terry Guest, Oak takes place in the south where we meet three young black people – Pickle (Jazzy Rush), Suga (Stephanie Mattos), and Big Man (Donovan Session). There is a town-wide curfew of 7pm during snatching season – the time of year where no child is safe. Every parent tightens their hold a bit more – including Peaches (Brianna Buckley), a single mother who just wants to know that her kids will be home when she gets back from her late-night job. Is it a mysterious Creek Monster that is to blame? Or is there something even darker afoot? All we know is that children are going missing, and no one really knows where to turn.

Helmed by Burke, the creative team brings this play to haunting life with what can only be described as superb talent. Scenic Designer Sydney Lynne completely transforms the stage – with a swamp filled with dead trees that immediately plants the audience in this southern gothic mystery. Lighting Designer Eric Watkins certainly does not hold back – taking full advantage of darkness and shadows that heighten the spooky feel. Especially when combined with Original Music and Sound Designer Ethan Korvne’s work, you might find it tough not to completely let yourself fall into the ghost story unfolding before you. There were quite a few screams at this particular performance, and I know I personally felt the tension rising in my own body as the characters dug deeper in the mysteries surrounding them.

Now, what is it that is so frightening? The scenery certainly does the work to invite the audience into the story. The ensemble as a whole is quite strong – particularly Rush and Session. The brother/sister relationship they build on stage is incredibly relatable. No one quite gets under your skin like a sibling, but at the same time, no one quite has your back like one either. As we see the two struggle to be honest with each other about how much they might need each other, you might find yourself leaning in – wishing you could help spell it out for them – especially if you yourself are an older sibling. Seeing the stakes and what this family has to lose certainly adds to the fear.

However, more than any of that, Guest writes a story that is unfortunately quite relevant. We see the disappearances of children happen daily. We also see that there are differences in how these disappearances are explored based on who is taken and where they happen to reside. Perhaps Guest’s story is so terrifying because this happens to be the truth in which we live, and we have yet to find a solution.

Oak is the perfect play for a Chicago that is slowly moving into the fall season. As we inch closer to Halloween, maybe we all need a spooky little wakeup call?

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Oak runs through November 9 at Raven Theatre. For tickets and information, see the Raven Theatre website.

*This review is also shared on https://www.theatreinchicago.com/!  

A famous Chicagoan once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Life does move fast, and opportunities and experiences are the simplest way to pause time. For me there’s no better place in all of Chicago where time stops, even for a short while, than the Lyric Opera. There’s something magical about the venue, from the moment you enter the theatre to marvel at the grandness of the entrance hall until the time the lights blink to usher you to your plush red chairs in the audience to view an operatic masterpiece. It’s when you leave the theatre, wandering into the chilly Chicago night air, that you realize that the opera allowed you to stop time, and not just for the lengthy three plus hour run times the operas tend to be, but truly stop time. Because the magic of the opera allows us to stop, look, and reflect that we watched an opera that has been performed for thousands of years. Plays and operas based on plays and works that reach to the earliest stages of life on earth and that we as a modern audience are still moved by today, can still connect to on an emotional level. Time stops at the opera and for a brief run time, you can view the same operatic magic as the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2025/26 Season kicks off with a searing tale of vengeance and betrayal: Cherubini’s Medea, on stage October 11–26, 2025.

Hell hath no fury like a sorceress scorned. Euripides's ancient tragedy comes to blazing life in this riveting opera, a late 18th-century masterpiece with music and themes that continue to resonate across the millennia. This centuries-old tale burns with unrelenting emotional fire, and in Cherubini’s hands, it demands to be retold. Audiences witness the tragedy of Medea, a powerful sorceress betrayed by her lover, Giasone, who abandons her and their two children to marry another woman, Glauce, the daughter of the king Creonte. Given just 24 hours to accept her fate, Medea instead bends it to her will, with her accomplice, Neris, at her side, delivering vengeance that shakes the very foundations of the kingdom. A favorite of Beethoven himself, who considered Cherubini to be the greatest living composer of his time, Medea channels the raw power of Greek tragedy and sets it to unforgettable music, leaving audiences breathless as love curdles into rage, and a mother’s heartbreak becomes her most devastating weapon.

With a cast of operatic Olympians, visionary direction, and music that blazes with wrath and beauty, Medea sets the tone for a season defined by bold storytelling and emotional intensity. Medea marks the return of three Chicago-born international stars to the Lyric stage, superstar soprano Sondra Radvanovsky in an Olympic-level performance of the title role, acclaimed tenor Matthew Polenzani, and the rising star mezzo-soprano Zoie Reams. Coupled with the Lyric Opera Orchestra conducted by “Chicago’s Maestro-Around-Town” Lyric Music Director Enrique Mazzola, Cherubini’s score delivers operatic fire and fury as never before. Lyric presents Medea for the first time in its seven-decade history in a production directed by Sir David McVicar, who returns with a sweeping vision of beauty and decay that commands attention from first note to final breath. This spellbinding production transforms myth into music and passion into fire and creates an unforgettable night at the opera that proves hell hath no fury like a sorceress scorned.

Is there anything more profound or timeless as a woman’s rage? Particularly a woman scorned? It’s quite easy to dive into debates about the merits of female rage, how we can examine ancient texts with an often more critical or kinder lens as we reflect on the story that unfolds on the stage. But more striking is the lasting power of the emotions captured in Medea, rage, vengeance, and spite. The emotions depicted and beautifully portrayed in 2025 are the same emotions that were originally captured when the play was first written in 431 BC, the same emotions depicted as an opera for the first time in 1797 France. It’s the power of the humanities, the way that prose and storytelling capture the human experience of a woman scorned and the lengths she would go to seek her revenge. The same shock and outrage audiences felt on October 11^th, 2025, are the same feelings audience members experienced in 1797, and in 431 BC. That’s the magic of opera. Other theatric mediums offer testaments and homage to classic tales but operas have an altogether unique quality about that. The blend of storytelling and musicality captivates you, enchants you, and transcends you through time and space with drama tales that still resonate today.

There are only five remaining opportunities to see Medea at the Lyrics Opera in Chicago (20 N Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL 60606): October 14, 17, and 20, at 7 p.m., and matinee performances on October 23 and 26 at 2 p.m. The performance is sung in Italian with easy-to-follow English titles projected above the stage and runs for 2 hours and 45 minutes, including one intermission. Life does move pretty fast, I’d wager those n 431 BC and 1797 thought the same thing. So be sure to stop and look around every once in a while and see this incredible opera before it passes you by. For more information and tickets, visit lyricopera.org/medea or call 312.827.5600.

More than a haunted house and not quite a play, the House of the Exquisite Corpse series lives somewhere between immersive theater and a live-action episode of Black Mirror.

For the fifth year in a row, Rough House Theater Co. is haunting Steppenwolf's Merle Reskin Garage Theatre with House of the Exquisite Corpse V: BLOOD & PUPPETS. This production-experience hybrid is unsettling, uncanny, and unlike anything else running in Chicago this Halloween season.

The show consists of six puppet performances, each roughly five minutes long, staged in dark, enclosed rooms. Positioned more as voyeurs than viewers, the audience observes each performance through peepholes cut in the room’s walls and listens through headphones. It’s an experience like no other, immersing you in a world entirely, even as you watch it from the outside.

LETTING -Creators Nina D'Angier & Madigan Burke Puppetteer Amandatron 5000.

Although you may be tempted, as I was, to take this year’s blood-and-puppets theme literally, expecting guts and gore, co-directors Felix Mayes and Corey Smith encouraged artists to explore “blood” more metaphorically. The results are striking. Across the six rooms, blood takes many forms: as a symbol of life, decay, lineage, legacy, intimacy, and rupture. Each room also offers a radically different world. One might transport you to the cluttered lab of a deranged scientist, another to a barren, surveilled interior, another to an eerily windswept desert.

The artistry on display is staggering, extending far beyond set design. Each vignette – created by a different team of artists – interprets the theme in personal and provocative ways, resulting in a thrilling range of styles and techniques. The puppetry alone shifts dramatically from room to room, moving from delicate shadow work to oversized, wearable creatures and full-body figures that act like natural extensions of the performer’s body. Some rooms tell tight, plot-driven stories; others are impressionistic and mood-driven, favoring feeling over narrative. Across the board, the performances are intriguing and deeply theatrical – you might come for the scares, but you’ll stay for the craft.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the collective effort of the full production team. The co-directors have built more than a series of puppet shows: they’ve created a platform for experimentation. Puppetry, an art form that’s far too often dismissed and infantilized, takes center stage in House of the Exquisite Corpse, revealing its full expressive range. A space where this kind of work is possible is rare, and Rough House has built one where artists can be unapologetically weird, bold, and free – a testament to what independent theater can be when creators are trusted to follow their wildest ideas.

Whether you're a horror fan, a regular theatergoer, or just looking for something truly unique to do this spooky season, House of the Exquisite Corpse delivers. It may not make you scream, but it will definitely make you squirm.

House of the Exquisite Corpse V: BLOOD & PUPPETS is haunting The Merle at Steppenwolf Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays through November 1. Tickets are available at https://roughhousetheater.com/house-of-the-exquisite-corpse

Before you go, please note that the experience requires walking and standing for extended periods, as well as the use of over-ear headphones. Rough House is committed to accessibility and has made detailed information and request forms available at https://roughhousetheater.com/accessibility.

*This review is also shared on https://www.theatreinchicago.com/!  

Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman remains one of the most incisive allegories in American drama—a modern tale in which seduction, power, and racial history collide in the confined space of a subway car. Trap Door Theatre’s production, directed with precision and calculated risk by Keith Surney, resurrects the play’s mythic and political undercurrents, deepening its resonance as both ritual and warning.

Baraka titled his 1964 play after the legend of the Flying Dutchman, the ghost ship doomed to sail the seas forever, unable to find port. In Baraka’s interpretation, a subway car becomes that ship—an eternal vessel circling the underworld of American consciousness. The passengers are ghosts of history; the cycle of desire and destruction never ends. Surney underscores the play’s endless cycle of seduction and destruction by dividing Lula among three actresses—Carolyn Benjamin (white dress), Genevieve Corkery (red dress), and Ali Foley (blue dress)—each embodying a different facet of America’s recurring racial performance. Together, they form a chorus of seduction and menace, representing the shifting faces of white America—erotic, violent, and self-possessed. Their presence before the play begins, prowling the stage like sirens holding apples, transforms the theatre into a space of temptation and foreboding.

Surney himself plays Clay, the young Black intellectual aboard this spectral train unaware of his fate. His Clay is both composed and vulnerable—buttoned suit, tie, but no shirt—an image that literalizes the illusion of assimilation stripped of safety. Lula, one at a time, approaches him with the ferocity of predators, their sexuality exaggerated to the edge of discomfort. Surney embraces that discomfort deliberately, making it clear that the erotic tension in Baraka’s play is not merely physical—it is historical, rooted in the dangerous seductions of American liberalism and white desire.

The production’s design reinforces the tension between abstraction and reality. Viscaya Wilson’s bare stage of metal poles offers a skeletal suggestion of a subway car, though it lacks the oppressive grit that defines the New York underground. For a native New Yorker, the environment may not fully convince, yet its sparseness allows the actors’ physical and emotional choreography to dominate the space. Gary Damico’s lighting cuts through the minimalism - isolating bodies in sharp contrast.  The uncredited sound design fills in what the set omits. The deep metallic rumbles immerse the audience in a world both real and hallucinatory, the jazz soundscape itself becoming the heartbeat of Baraka’s infernal train.

At moments, Surney allows erotic interplay to linger past its breaking point, delaying the eruption of Clay’s righteous fury. Yet when that fury finally arrives, the scene ignites with the same volatility that scandalized audiences in 1964. The words still wound; the violence still feels inevitable.

One critic described Baraka’s original Dutchman as “an explosion of hatred,” a reflection of a truth white America could barely confront. Trap Door Theatre’s version does not soften that explosion—it contextualizes it. Baraka’s play is a parable of historical repetition. The subway, like the ghost ship, circles endlessly, carrying the same sins and the same souls. In this staging, Dutchman becomes a ritual exorcism—a reminder that America’s voyage through its own darkness is far from over.

Baraka would soon transform from LeRoi Jones, the bohemian poet of downtown New York, into Amiri Baraka, the militant architect of the Black Arts Movement. Dutchman marks that turning point—a theatrical bridge between personal identity and collective consciousness. Surney’s production captures this moment of awakening, reminding us that Baraka’s rage was never chaos but clarity: a demand that America look into its mirror and recognize the ghost at its shoulder. Trap Door Theatre’s Dutchman sails that ghost ship again, not to escape the curse, but to make us hear, once more, the hum of its unending voyage beneath our feet.

That clarity also defines Keith Surney’s directorial debut, a bold and fearless entry that takes genuine risks—some raw, some revelatory— announcing a director unafraid to challenge both text and audience. If Dutchman is a voyage into the heart of America’s contradictions, Surney steers it with both daring and intellect. I’ll be looking to see more of him in the future.

Highly Recommended

When: Through October 25

Where: Trapdoor Theatre, 1655 W Cortland St, Chicago

Running time: 50 minutes

Tickets: $22

773-384-0494

https://www.trapdoortheatre.com