The Artistic Home’s U.S. premiere of this 2024 revival by Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, “The Sugar Wife” is intellectually engaging but rather unemotional given its subject lines: marital infidelity, slavery, sexploitation, hypocrisy. Perhaps that goes with its Quaker storyline, a denomination known for an ascetic simplicity and rigorous moral discernment before engaging in action.

Set in 1850, the 2006 script by Elizabeth Kuti revolves around the internal moral struggles of Hannah Tewkley (Annie Hogan), who has married the wealthy Samuel Tewkley (Todd Wojcik), a merchant whose fortune is in sugar and tea. The sugar trade, in Hannah’s view, is contaminated by its reliance on slave labor for production. So in their marriage pact, Hannah has required that Samuel source sugar cane only from “ethical” sources not involving slavery.

Hannah is a morally upstanding Quaker, who now has the wherewithal to fund charities, visit the poor and offer assistance for their betterment, tutoring in reading, for example. But the poor starving Irish (the famine was at its height) really just want food and money. This sentiment is embodied by Martha Ryan (Kristin Collins is the liveliest performer on stage).

From left: Ashayla Calvin, Kristin Collins and Annie Hogan

Ill and wrapped in a blanket on her cot, Ryan rises to challenge Hannah for something more useful than moral improvement, like cash. This scene presents the conflict inherent in dispensing one’s own vision of benefit to parties seeking something more essential to their lives. Ryan gives Collins the insolence and quick Irish wit of which we wish there were more on stage.

The plot, what there is of it, thickens with the arrival of Alfred Darby (John LaFlamboy), a British philanthropist, accompanying Sarah Worth (Ashayla Calvin), a former slave who is on a speaking tour relating the evils of the slave trade. But we learn along the way Alfred has been disinherited from his family’s wealth, and now relies on Sarah’s speaking fees. Alfred takes public credit for buying Sarah’s freedom, but she has entered a different kind of enslavement as the breadwinner for the duo, who reside with the Tewkley’s during this speaking stint.

In a notably precise dive into Quaker matters, Alfred challenges Hannah about the small fortune she spent remodeling the mansion she inhabits with Samuel. She has stripped out all the moulding and embellishments, including a gilded mirror, in the interest in creating a more spare interior, in keeping with her Quaker values. But such an action can be frowned upon in Quaker circles, looking more like virtue signalling since that money might have been used for a social good.

Samuel meanwhile confesses to Alfred, man to man, that he has been untrue, and that, occasionally, he must buy sugar cane from slaveholders to keep his mills operating. He keeps these matters quiet from Hannah. Eventually this and more dirty laundry surfaces among the players, each of them, including Sarah, with something untoward to confess. Despite skillful direction and scenic design by Kevin Hagan, and truly great costumes by Rachel Lambert, it's a slow grind through what is essentially a melodrama, to get to the bottom of it all. At which point we see the light, but with very little heat.

“The Sugar Wife” is recommended, if only because The Artistic Home deserves support for its ordinarily better script selection. “The Sugar Wife” runs through May 3, 2026 at Chicago’s Theater Wit.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

Since its original 2020 Off-Broadway debut was postponed until 2024 by the Covid-19 Pandemic, Itamar Moses’ “The Ally” has likely ripened in its effectiveness. Not because the play has changed, but because the world has.

A 2025 Pulitzer finalist, now in its Midwest premier at Theater Wit, it revolves around the ambivalence of Jewish college writing professor Asaf (Jordan Lane Shappell in a sterling performance) as his Black student Baron (DeVaughn Asante Loman) asks him to sign-on to a manifesto decrying the killing of his cousin by campus police.

Initially sympathetic to this cause, Asaf becomes reluctant to sign on, even though he agrees with its indictment of systemic injustice against people of color. His sticking points? A section ties in charges against Israel for operating an apartheid state vis a vis Gaza, condemning what it describes as policies of genocide against Palestinian people—even more timely topics today given current political discourse and a war in Iran.

Through a fast-paced dialog, the playwright puts on stage detailed explications of points of view that are known to trigger family battles during holiday dinners, or have become verboten altogether in the interests of peaceful coexistence. There seems nowhere safe to listen to opposing positions.

But not so on the stage in “The Ally.” Expertly directed by Jeremy Weschler, who has led a stellar cast to precision delivery with impeccable timing, this production is remarkable simply on the basis of how well rehearsed the performers seem to be in a complicated, granular script.

In publicizing the play, Weschler says, "Before October 7th, I — like a lot of American Jews on the left — held two ideas at once: that Israel was a haven and that the occupation was wrong. Itamar Moses saw, honestly before I did, that those two ideas were becoming impossible to hold simultaneously. But there are always two ways to answer the question ‘What do I believe?': what do I think, and what do I feel? Where we land on that spectrum is a constant negotiation between ourselves and the world around us. What ‘The Ally’ asks — what it really demands — is that we face that negotiation honestly. Can we be good people when our hearts and our heads aren't aligned?”

In the main setting, a library meeting room, impassioned, invested characters put forth their positions. Most have direct experience of that about which they speak. This is both enthralling and compelling, emotionally engaging at the peak moments, as we hear them passionately expounded their positions. Each felt equally compelling, even though they are often diametrically opposed.

Moses is a skillful playwright. He has wrapped the political discourse in a romantic drama, the relationship between Asaf and his wife Gwen (K Chinthana Sotakoun), a faculty member who is of Asian descent. The play opens with a skillful rendering of a couple tentatively probing and challenging each other in a very realistic way.

That scene changes from the living room to campus. Having heard from Baron, and as Asaf tussles with signing the manifesto, the playwright ups the stakes. Palestinian student Farid, (Arman Ghaeini) and his “ally” (a recurring theme) Jewish student Rachel (Mira Kessler), ask Asaf to support the appearance of a noted speaker who questions Israel’s actions in Gaza. Asaf agrees to be their student group sponsor authorizing the speaker.

When Reuven (Evan Ozer) a Jewish PhD student, discovers this, he barges in on Asaf to lay out all the reasons this speaker should not be allowed to address the student body. While Israel may seem brutal at home, he contends, one must think of it in context: Israel is surrounded by middle eastern states that oppose its very existence. Any presentation that might undermine Israel’s welfare should be banned.

Moses’s script is designed to give each of the characters a long moment in the spotlight. For relief he reverts to scenes between Asaf and Gwen. Each of the characters is articulate and brilliant. When Reuven makes his case for Israel, for example, he also recounts accurately the arguments of its opposition as he dispels them.

Most intriguing, and emotionally compelling, is Farid. In his first few appearances he is reticent, retreating, polite. But when the playwright offers him his featured monolog, Farid expresses the suffering of Palestinians, and then, moves to a vehement display of their anger. Arman Ghaeini runs away with this scene, engendering from me empathy and even catharsis. When have I heard this expressed? Never before.

Likewise for Baron, who is generally rather laconic. As the debates on stage progress over the connections between the Israel-Palestinian conflict and racial injustice in the U.S., Baron has his moment for a passionate peroration, and Loman's delivery is powerful.

Throughout, Asaf remains the buffeted everyman, conscious of the warring sympathies within himself, and unable to resolve them. The play has some weaknesses as a drama—an old flame now community activist Nikea (Sharyon Culberson) appears, igniting jealousy in Gwen. But as an expression of the struggle we experience societally, through the vehicle of the conflicted Asaf—that weakness doesn’t hamper the impact and value of “The Ally.”

It is worth noting “The Ally” was written before the Hamas strike against Israel in October 2023. That event killed 1,200 and saw 251 taken hostage. In its subsequent defense, Israel has retaliated and sought to destroy Hamas, killing 73,000 Palestinians and isolating Gaza. Also noteworthy: this Chicago production is only the second staging of the work. Perhaps its incendiary subject makes producers skittish.

But “The Ally” has a heightened immediacy today, and should be seen. Highly recommended, “The Ally” runs through May 2, 2026 at Theater Wit in Chicago.

Extended through May 17th!

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

Trapdoor Theatre’s “The Cuttlefish” ought to be confounding, but somehow this 1920’s surrealist play from Poland is clear as a bell. Though ostensibly about the philosophical struggle between art and politics, the audience easily recognized echoes of the present-day overall fix in which society finds itself.

Before any dialog, even before house lights go down, “The Cuttlefish, or the Hyrcanian Worldview” (its full title) opens somewhat bewilderingly on a stage with four characters: a masked, gold-clad Statue of Alice D’Or (Keith Surney), whose postures beside a short classic stone column suggest a Greek sculpture. Further backstage is a high ranking church cleric in mitre and liturgical robes, gesturing spiritually—Pope Julius II (Emily Lotspeich), patron of Raphael and Michelangelo. Stage left, a figure in a suit slouches and periodically collapses against a wall, the artist Pavel Rockhoffer (Nicole Wiesner). And a woman wanders, hands outspread—the Mother (Venice Averyheart) of Rockhoffer, who settles into a seat and manages percussion.

What is going on? The audience puzzles through these characters, trying to make sense of the silent tableau, and the lights go down and dialog begins. Rockhoffer has become pessimistic about his creative works, which we learn have been condemned by a government council. “My art is a lie, a carefully planned hoax,” says Rockhoffer.

“Even prisoners serving a life sentence still want to live,” the Statue offers. Along the way Julius remarks, “A man without a worthy adversary is like God without Satan,” and leaving, offers “I wish you a short and unexpected death.” With very little naturalism or conventional exposition, these snippets reveal the conflict that is to be resolved by the end of “The Cuttlefish.”

But it is with the arrival of King Hyrcan IV (David Lovejoy) when the story comes alive. A villainous despot, he smooth-talks Rockhoffer, coaxing him to abandon his dedication to absolute artistic ideals, and come on over to pragmatic freedom of Hyrcania, the land he rules.

Lovejoy is an energetic force on stage, and brings the play to life. “I am a superman, or ‘an uber mensch’” King Hyrcan declares, convincingly. He offers to unchain the artist from historic patronage of entities like Julius, and to have full freedom.
“What do you believe in?” queries Rockhoffer.

“In myself,” King Hyrcan shoots back, and as inexorably as the manosphere today sucks in its lost, wandering adherents, Rockhoffer, after a bit of resistance, falls under his spell. He obeys when Hyrcan tells him to jettison his fiance Ella (Gus Thomas), as unfitting for the new Hyrcanian order. King Hyrcan works his wiles on a weakened Julius, who admits to doubt and crumbles too.

As the action unfolds and the plot thickens, it becomes clearer that the times prophesied by “The Cuttlefish,” which unfolded in the rise of fascist Germany, offer parallels to today —when cultural centers are being expropriated and renamed, arts funding cancelled, and freedom of expression curtailed.

The magic of Trap Door is its penchant for mining an obscure work of 1920s playwright Stanislaw Witkiewicz (translated by Daniel Gerould) to find a work that is regarded as a precursor to later absurdist and expressionist stage works in the 1930s. Under the direction of Nicole Wiesner, what might have been an inscrutable drama instead is intuitively understandable. As we laugh with relief at the line, “One can only hope” (the Mother’s interjection about the end of such terrible times), we may be reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s advice: “The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”

“The Cuttlefish, or the Hyrcanian Worldview” runs through April 25 at Chicago’s Trap Door Theatre and comes recommended.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

In “Two Sisters and a Piano” written by Nilo Cruz and directed by Lisa Portes,  we soon learn these two women have been trapped for years under house arrest in an aging manor in Cuba. One is a writer, the other a musician —and that’s her baby grand piano on stage. Maria, the writer (Andrea San Miguel in a darkly rich performance), awaits news of her husband who escaped to freedom in Sweden five years before, yet his letters never arrive. The musician, Sofia (Neysha Mendoza Castro is a delight) is a free spirit, chafing under the constraints of always being at home.

It is 1991. The sisters home is a decaying Spanish Colonial manor house, with colonnades and columns. A spiral staircase leads to the bedrooms above, and the Caribbean Ocean beyond is visible through the windows (Brian Sidney Bembridge is Scenic Designer.) 

The Russian policies of perestroika and increased market openness that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, causes Russia to withdraw from its Cuban client state. Though this sounds timely given current events, playwright Nilo Cruz (who won a Pulitzer for “Anna in the Tropics”) uses the circumstances only as backdrop for something deeper. The political shift dispenses a sense of tumult and change. 

A military officer, Lieutenant Portuondo (Adam Poss), arrives on the scene carrying satchels of correspondence from Maria’s husband from his safe harbor in Sweden. Portuondo appears sinister at first, and we gather that he thinks the letters may be masking plans for Maria’s escape. But we soon learn that is not his game, as he taunts Maria, then whittles away at her strong resistance, exposing her vulnerabilities by reading selections from the pile of sometimes ardent letters. 

Her sister Sofia plays that piano at times, mostly reluctantly, but her soul is suffering as she feels cut-off from humanity. Even their radio dies, silencing their only source of news. We learn that neighbors loyal to the government monitor their activities, and no one visits. 

Eventually a permissible opportunity allows a piano tuner to be summoned: Victor Emmanuel (Arash Fakhrabadi), an open-hearted and warm fellow whom Sofia charms into returning to visit her again. 

Thus we have two parallel relationships which the playwright explores, but to my mind, not effectively. At times we have to do too much work to gather the motivations of the characters. The playwright may think them self-evident. We can see that Lieutenant Portuondo has fallen in love—perhaps because he has read so many of the letters from Maria’s husband? We get rather melodramatic expressions of aspirational longing. 

“There is something about you and your sister that’s different,” says Lieutenant Portuondo. “You’re pure.” And yet he keeps these pure beings under arrest. There is much talking about, reminiscing, but not enough action. In one such conversation, Lieutenant Portuondo says “I think people die there from looking at the cows.” To which Sofia replies, “Moo!” Which earns a laugh, but to me it also sounded like an actress trying to save a play. 

In fact the most engaging moments are those comic antics that Neysha Mendoza Castro’s Sofia drums up, along with her accomplice Fakhrabadi’s Victor Emmanuel. Nilo Cruz is a skillful playright, the sert-up is intriguing, and the turning points and rising action and resolution show up. But the most interesting parts are the relief provided by the scenes with Victor the piano tuner and Sofia, who finally cracks under the oppressive weight of her seclusion. That piano is not played enough to warrant its billing in the title. And the repetitive arrivals of Lieutenant Portuondo and the continuous voice of alarm in Maria’s complaints offer drama more on the order of soap opera—going not very far, ultimately. 

Somewhat recommended, if only for the excellence of the overall production, “Two Sisters and a Piano” runs at Writers Theatre through March 29 in Glencoe, IL.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

With spot-on performances across a large cast, William Inge’s 1949 script for “Come Back, Little Sheba” is receiving a definitive production at American Blues Theater’s intimate Studio Theater. Those of us of a certain age had this work buried deep into our cultural formation by the searing film version starring Shirley Booth, who won the 1952 Oscar and a Tony for her earlier Broadway performance as Lola. 

This was my first time to see the stage version, and director Elyse Dolan goes back to Inge’s original script, which fits beautifully into this captivating 90 minute show (no intermission). The set by Shayna Patel closely tracks Inge’s intentions, right down to the telephone at the base of the stairs. Lighting by Brendan Marble and Sound Design by Thomas Dixon couple especially well in high throttle jazz interludes signaling scene changes or turning points in the plot. And those costumes (Lily Walls) were just what the playwright envisioned, right out of the end of the 1940s.

Cisco Lopez as the Milkman with Gwendolyn Whiteside as Lola.

Contemporary audiences may see ‘Come Back, Little Sheba” as a showcase of the reduced role of women in post-WWII society, their lives centered on homemaking and “keeping their man happy.” But it is something more, too - a portrait of two diametrically opposite personalities - Lola (Gwendolyn Whiteside is remarkable) and her husband Doc (Philip Earl Johnson is a portrait of seething restraint) - locked together in an unbalanced relationship. Inge subtly laces in the clues to their unhappiness. Doc’s ambition to complete medical school was cut short when he felt compelled to marry Lola at 18 after getting her pregnant. Her pregnancy didn’t come to term, and he quit his medical studies. Instead of a doctor he became a chiropractor, and took to the bottle.

Lola, who was a high school beauty queen, has given up caring about her looks under the withering abuse she suffered during his drinking days. But he joined AA, and has eleven months sober - but lives with an internalized rigidity while presenting a caring face to the world around him. Underneath it all, he is filled with resentment.

On the couch, Ethan Surpan as Turk and Maya Lou Hlava as Marie.

A shift has entered this couple's fragile homelife with the arrival of the sprightly Marie (Maya Lou Hlava is perfect in the role). This comely coed is boarding with them, studying art at the university. She has a hot jock boyfriend, Turk (Ethan Surpan is a study in self-assured youthful machismo). Marie also has another boyfriend back home, Bruce (Justin Banks), a well-paid young businessman on his way up.

Inge sends the clues through the behavior of Johnson’s Doc that he is crushing on Marie, and quite jealous of Turk. Eventually his sober resolve crumbles under his longstanding unresolved resentment - that he is not an MD, this new jealousy, and that he is stuck with Lola, who smothers him with attention and coaches him somewhat intrusively on his AA practices. It is also an early serious treatment of the AA 12-step recovery program, founded ion the 1930s. Doc's involvement in it is core the the plot and character motivation. 

Lola, for her part, expresses her longing for better days gone by with a fixation on her runaway pup Sheba. Though Sheba went missing quite a while back, Lola still dreams of her return, and periodically calls for her puppy from the porch. An eternal optimist, she is ultimately the likeable center of the action. Marie and Turk love her. To show Lola through others’ eyes, Inge gives us two other characters, Elmo the Postman (William Anthony Sebastian Rose) and Milkman (Cisco Lopez). Whiteside’s Lola is so lonely she tries almost too hard to engage them, but nevertheless, her open heart compels their empathy and she wins them over. Everyone seems to love Lola except the next door neighbor Mrs. Coffman (Joslyn Jones), who derides Lola over her unkempt house.

In the last third of the play, mayhem breaks loose, and you will be stunned, shocked and glued to your seat by the culmination of this stunning drama. As Tolstoy put it, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And “Come Back, Little Sheba” shows how true this is. Highly recommended. 

“Come Back, Little Sheba” runs through March 22 at American Blues Theater in Chicago.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com.

“Hamnet,” a stage play adapted by Lolita Chakrabati (known for Life of PI and Red Velvet), and directed by Erica Whyman is in its U.S. debut at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. This production originated and performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company for its U.S. tour, has generated a lot of excitement, heightened further by the many Oscar nominations for a film by the same title, though it is a very different adaptation of the same book.

Both were drawn from Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling novel “Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague” speculating on the life of William Shakespeare and his wife and family. The story line delves into the family life of the couple, the first act devoted to William and Agne’s birth families and their love affair and eventual marriage.

The second half revolves around their children, and traces Shakespeare’s ascendancy into the upper echelons of English theater. He draws the attention of the queen, is celebrated on the stage in London for his prolific stage works and his published poetry.

We meet actors Burbage and Kempe. Bert Seymour and Nigel Barrett, who play other roles too, are excellent as the real historic actors who were the definitive contemporary interpreters of Shakespeare’s scripts on stage. (Chicagoans who saw “The Book of Will"  had a thorough introduction in that rendering of the development of the First Folio in the years following Shakespeare’s death.)

At “Hamnet” on Navy Pier, though, there are a few problems with the production that detract from the interesting story. Like “Shakespeare in Love,” which generated a fictional hypothesis about a love affair that inspired the Bard to pen “Romeo and Juliet,” in “Hamnet” it is the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, that is posited to have fed the emotional plane of “Hamlet.” And that is an intriguing theory, drawn from the book.

Saffron Dey as Judith and Ajani Cabey as Hamnet

“Hamnet” dutifully recounts the marriage of Agnes (she is generally known to us as Anne but historically she was Agnes) and William, she 26 and pregnant, and he just 18. The first child Susanna (Ave Hinds-Jones) was born a few months later, and a few years hence twins—Judith (Saffron Day) and Hamnet (Ajani Cabey)— sprang forth. Historically Hamnet died in 1596; four years later “Hamlet” hits the stage.

The book and play adjust this time frame, to have Shakespeare at work on the debut of “Hamlet” as his son contracts an illness and dies. That’s reasonable creative license, especially in the interest of drama. (Harper's Magazine offers an excellent contrast of the history as it's adapted for "Hamnet.") And the performances are quite excellent. Agnes (Kemi-Bo Jacobs) gives us an intense performance of a character devised to explain her genius husband’s attraction, and perhaps his inspiration by her. William (Rory Alexander is excellent throughout), though the script forces an unlikely maturity at just 18 as he coaches and counsels Agnes toward their marital fate.

What was jarring was the fact that all the actors wear microphones, with a uniformity of volume set by the mixing board, presumably, that is unnatural, especially for Shakespeare. The unfortunate effect was an echo chamber, in Chicago Shakespeare's handsome The Yard which simulates the interior of the original Globe. Also two screens at either side of the stage provided subtitles, which are quickly explained by the diversity of English dialects used by the actors. Some would be unintelligible to American ears without them—but I found myself reading, at the expense of watching the action center stage. Perhaps supratitles as used in opera would have been better.

And it’s probably necessary to comment on the incidental and transitional music, composed by Oğuz Kaplangi. Some pieces were quite lovely, evocations of the late 16th century. But fast-paced scene change music, sometimes with a Latin beat, was overbearing, and the percussion especially excessive. Was it compensating for the slow pace of what was on stage?

And for a play about Shakespeare, why did we hear so little from the subject's original work? The excellence of “Shakespeare in Love” was the celebration and display of many slices from his actual writing that advanced the case for its explanation of the origins of “Romeo & Juliet.” In this Royal Shakespeare company’s “Hamnet,” we’re given just a tiny bit at the end, as Agnes witnesses the play for the first time, a scene meant to tie up and resolve all the loose ends. They loved this in London’s West End, but in Chicago it's just not enough. See if you agree. “Hamnet” runs through March 8 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

If you can imagine “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf” being played for laughs, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s in store at Steppenwolf Theatre's production of “The Dance of Death.” Written in Swedish by August Strindberg in 1900, the remarkably comical show is loaded with laughs in Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s 2012 version presented here. Directed by Yasen Peyankov with truly wonderful scenic design by Collette Pollard, it is thoroughly enjoyable 125 years after its debut.

The action is set at a military installation on a Nordic island. We learn the island is a short ferry ride away from Copenhagen, but its exact location isn’t named. Here the military officer and his wife live alienated from their military colleagues, their servants, even from their children, subsumed as they are in a 25-year marital war between each other. 

Jeff Perry and Cliff Chamberlain

Steppenwolf’s production opens powerfully in a silent tableau: the soaring interior of a massive, tapering round granite tower more than three stories tall. With rows of arched windows across the second and third levels, the military fortification widens as it descends to a great drawing room on the main floor that runs the full width of the stage.

A late middle-aged officer in military garb sits stage left—the Captain (Jeff Perry). Gradually our attention is drawn to the figure of a woman, Alice (Kathryn Erbe) hair swirling up in piles Edwardian style, wearing a high-collared long sleeved dress, her full skirt grazing the floor. She stands contemplatively in silhouette against the lingering evening light, framed by a gothic French doorway.

This scene, so reminiscent of an Ingmar Bergman film, grounds us in the Nordic setting, but as soon as the characters Captain and Alice open their mouths, we encounter the casual American English that Irish playwright Conor McPherson has chosen for his scintillating version of Strindberg’s battle of the sexes.

Jeff Perry and Kathryn Erbe

Perry in particular shows his comedic chops, and Perry and Erbe together display that special stage mastery we associate with Steppenwolf. It was so fresh and funny that I set about reading Strindberg’s 1900 original. There I found that McPherson tracks it very closely. But oh how he sharpens the humor, heightens the dramatic line, and injects the venomous choreography that marks this couple’s intimacy. Dark it is, yes, but light also, and just plain funny. 

In the run up to their silver wedding anniversary, Alice and Captain express openly the regret they have over being shackled to each other. They charge each other with having dashed their dreams. Add to that another combustible—a difference in age and vitality. The Captain’s health is clearly unstable, while the younger Alice pants for emancipation by any means. Soon enough a third character arrives—the much younger Kurt (Cliff Chamberlain)—with whom both have a history.

Not having seen this pair for 15 years, Kurt arrives on assignment to the island on which this tower is situated. So we get to see in real time how Alice and the Captain each work their wiles on Kurt to lure him to their respective sides in the marital discord. In the course of this, Alice and the Captain are both revealed to be manipulative, unapologetic liars. At first the Captain seems to bond with Kurt, though its really more of an effort to manipulate him for allegiance. Soon enough Alice is ahead in the battle for Kurt’s affections. This is not really a love triangle, but much more an unstable atom ready to explode.

Alice claims to long for the Captain’s death—or a divorce or other legal means—to set herself free. With Kurt soon under her spell, Alice initiates communications with the Captain’s superiors that could see the Captain relieved of his command, and perhaps incarcerated. As that moment of truth arrives, the infatuation with Kurt withers, and we find the Captain and Alice really are in love, and love to hate each other. It’s at least part of what has made this marriage work!

Without question, McPherson improves on Strindberg, not only making the play accessible to audiences over a century later, but turning it into something immensely more entertaining. Humor is a fragile thing, and comedy is all in the timing of the delivery—the pauses, the quick breaks, the fast retort. McPherson has deftly heightened the impact of the core of Strindberg’s work, finding the key to the characters and dynamics much of which honestly I could not see in the original.

Early in a run, the director is still getting a bit of that timing nailed down, so by the time you see it it will be even funnier. But as it was, there are many, many moments that are over the top funny. Perry and Erbe are masterful in their deliveries, kind of shock and awe hilarious at moments. Chamberlain gives a full-throated energy to his performance as his character Kurt is driven to distraction when he finds himself sucked into the toxicity of the relationship.

“The Dance of Death” runs through March 22, 2026 at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, and comes highly recommended.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

“

“Salome” is an opera with an amazing backstory, and comes to us at the Lyric Opera with a content advisory (“adult themes, brief nudity, and disturbing imagery”), especially novel considering this work was first mounted in 1905. No wonder, given the beheading and necrophilic kiss that are at the center of the action.

A remount of a "Salome" production developed by Sir David McVicar directed at the Lyric by Julia Burbach, its underlying story is drawn from the New Testament recounts by Mark and Matthew of the beheading of John the Baptist (Johanaan in the German libretto)—the prophet who prepped the public for the arrival of Jesus. This telling was expanded upon by playwright Oscar Wilde for his French stagework, “Salome.” Wilde drew on Baudelaire, Roman historian Josephus, and significantly his imagination, to create dramatic tension.

The Lyric production, relatively short at one hour and forty minutes (no intermission), sets its Roman Judea characters in pre-war fascist Italy. (Guillermo del Toro used that as a backdrop for his version of “Pinnochio”). It’s a good parallel world of greed and entitlement of a debauched Roman aristocracy.

The sets were quite wonderful, centered in a lower stone vault down a sweeping staircase from the banquet hall above. The fascist neoclassic design rests comfortably on stonework evoking Roman foundations, a telling blend of a Roman-era storyline and its placement in pre-WWII Italy.

Throughout, we have a birdseye view of the goings on at the banquet above, while the main action takes place in this lower level, where Jochanaan (baritone Nicholas Brownlee) is held prisoner in a cistern, and which Salome (soprano Jennifer Holloway) chooses as an escape from the untoward overtures of her stepfather Herod (tenor Alex Boyer in the opening performance). He does really creepy things, like ask her to nibble fruit so he can bite where her lips and teeth have touched. Ugh.

In the lower plaza Salome is intrigued by Jochanaan, who rants inside the cistern. A little turned on, Salome asks to meet him. But he refuses her advances, and Salome is offended by his critique against her mother, who he declares to be in an incestuous marriage to Herod. Wilde gives us this as Salome’s motivation for Jochanaan's eventual beheading.

The opera by Richard Strauss compresses Wilde’s play in a German libretto by Hedwig Lachman: a Page (Catherine Martin) lusts after a military officer, Narraboth (tenor Ryan Capozzo). He in turn lusts after Salome, as does Salome’s stepfather Herod.

Herod has promised to behead Jochanaan, Salome’s requested payment for performing “The Dance of the Seven Veils,” a seductive “striptease” incorporated by Wilde in his play. Herod is repulsed by Salome’s demands, but makes good on his promise after the encouragement of Salome’s mother and Herod’s wife Herodias (mezzo-sopranoTanja Ariane Baumgartner). Jochanaan’s bloody head is delivered on a platter to Salome, where she extracts that kiss he’d refused while alive.

A subplot, and a significant portion of the opera, revolves around arguments among Jewish religious leaders (Jews 1 - 5 in the opera) over Jochanaan, who they believe may be the prophet Elias resurrected. Two Nazereen’s disagree, and proclaim they have seen the arrival of the Messiah, who Jochanaan is foretelling.

Surprising for me was the rather lengthy religious discourse among the Jews about the prophet Elias, since it had no bearing on the action of the mostly melodramatic story. Even more surprising is the modernity of the music by Richard Strauss, who is widely known today for “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” the striking tone poem associated with “2001: A Space Odyssey.” He’s also known for Der Rosenkavalier, a conventionally melodic comic opera.

For “Salome” Strauss ventures into what is now regarded as a first foray into a dissonant, modernist score. More like Schonberg than Mozart. That also makes “Salome” especially musically noteworthy. But as a listener, this opera was not my cup of tea. The storyline takes a lot of drilling down to appreciate, and the music is warm but not melodic. Still, Lyric gives us a fine production even if it was something I could not fully enjoy.

"Salome" runs through February 14, 2026 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

With the mesmerizing hold of a Moth Hour radio story and the visual creativity of the (late, lamented) Redmoon Theatre show, Trap Door Theatre’s production of “A Devil Comes To Town,” is so incredibly good that I urge you to stop reading this review and just get a ticket.

Here’s why.

First: there is the source material., adapted and directed by Jeremy Ohringer from a novel by Italian author Paolo Maurensig from his elegantly crafted 2018 page-turner (from the English translation by Anne Milano Appel). This gripping yarn and its magnetic charm is distilled creatively into Ohringer’s script - maintaining the dramatic tension of the original book, concentrating it into a 60-minute elixir of a story that moves with compelling interest to its satisfying resolution. The promotional thumbnail captures its well: “In a town obsessed with writing, the arrival of a mysterious devilish publisher sets off a sinister chain of events, as literary ambition turns feral.”

Second: The tiny Trap Door Theatre becomes, through ingenious stagecraft, a magical window to one delightful scene after another - sometimes worlds away. Simple practical effects with lighting, puppetry, scale models, and even a shadow lantern delight in their simplicity, pulling our attention despite our surfeit of exposure to perfect CGI recreations in film and gargantuan stage machinery on Broadway. Credit Ohringer in his direction, Karen Wallace for lighting design, Saskia Bakker for puppet design, Finnegan Chu for costumes, and Oskar Westbridge on sound design and as stage manager.

The play, like Maurensig’s novella, is set in Switzerland, opening at a conference in Kusnacht for professional psychologists at which a parish priest, Father Cornelius, delivers a paper on the prevalence of human manifestations of Satan. Afterward he returns to his home village of Dichtersruhe, population 1,000, where indications of an inordinate interest begin to appear among many townsfolk - the butcher, the baker, children, shopkeepers, a senescent cleric - all begin writing manuscripts for publication by major book publishers.

A subplot on a rise of rabid foxes adds zest to the storyline, and a shadowy past for Father Cornelius adds intrigue. The fixation by the townsfolk with being published mirrors in so many ways the passion for TikTok influencer status, while the presentation of the publishing storyline reminds us of the cunning self-publishing hucksters that abound.

In the stage adaptation of the book, Ohringer gives us five actors playing Father Cornelius, with Shail Modi in a stunning performance as the principle one. Ohringer has inventively choreographed the performances of these Father Cornelius characters, at times having them march and prance in lockstep together. The four other Father Cornelius figures (Dina Berkeley, Juliet Kang Huncke, Lydia Moss, and Y’vonne Rose Smith) serve as a kind of chorus that doubles as the author’s omniscient voice and general exposition. These four at various points take on other roles as well, Y’vonne Rose Smith particularly notable as the devilish publisher, Dr. Fuchs, and Lydia Moss as the decrepit cleric Father Christoforo. Dinah Berkeley is a manic delight in several roles.

Indescribably good, really, “A Devil Comes To Town” comes highly recommended and has already had its run extended, playing through December 6 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W Cortland St in Chicago. Don’t miss it.