Gabler, Interrupted
Even if you’ve seen it butchered by a high-school cast—especially if you’ve seen it butchered by a high-school cast—don’t miss The Hypocrites’ take on the Thornton Wilder classic Our Town. The troupe remounts its too-short, sold-out staging, an imaginatively revisionist twist on what must be...
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Poor old Hamlet may not have been the picture of stability, but then again, neither was crime-fiction writer Dashiell Hammett’s hardboiled hero Sam Spade. Put them together, and you’ve got one tongue-twister of a nod toward the dark and the stormy: Dashiell Hamlet, a new play cowritten by the 84-year-old stage and screen vet...]]>
Thirty years ago, Jim Jones urged the residents of his “utopian” settlement in Jonestown, Guyana, to drink poison-spiked punch. In the three decades since, the event has lingered uncomfortably in the public memory: How did such a thing happen? Why?...]]>
Red Alert
Puppet Government
Grounded in Fiction
The Chicago Air & Water Show dominates the skies this weekend, but there's plenty to see at street level—for starters, a couple of theatre adaptations by local lit stars. Elizabeth Berg—she of New York Times best-seller list fame, who has been touted by everyone from Oprah to the American Library Association—has adapted her...
Splash HitThe dog days of August are so miserable, even local theatre is looking for a way to cool off. Fake Lake, a site-specific play from the The Neo-Futurists, uses the Welles Park Swimming Pool (2333 W. Sunnyside; 773-275-5255) as a stand-in for Utah’s Lake Powell, the backdrop for this coming-of-age...]]>
Catch of the Day
There are other summer rituals besides Lollapalooza to check out this weekend—mercifully, many of the air-conditioned sort. For starters, Friday marks the beginning of the Fillet of Solo Festival, Live Bait Theater’s annual roundup of one-man and one-woman performances...
People’s Choice