CHICAGO DRAMATISTS THEATER Most Saturdays at 2:00, playwrights, |
DOLLAR STORE At the Hideout on the first Friday of every month. An |
TO MUCH LIGHT MAKES THE BABY GOES BLIND The Neo-Futurists perform 30 plays in 60 minutes in this "futurist evening in the grand Italian tradition." The fare changes weekly in this long-running production; between 2 and 12 new scripts are performed each week depending on the roll of a die. This is funny, wise, nakedly honest, sometimes unsettling, and invariably entertaining theater. (JV) Open run: Fri-Sat 11:30 PM (doors open 11 PM), Sun 7 PM (doors open 6:30 PM), Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland (second floor), 773-275-5255, $7 plus the roll of a die ($8-$13). |
WAIT WAIT . . . DON'T TELL ME! Chicago Public Radio's satirical twist on the classic quiz show is taped before a live audience. Host Peter Sagal and crew mine news stories for quiz questions, with different panelists from the worlds of literature and entertainment and audience members participating each week. Politics supply the jokes du jour, but what happens off microphone is often funnier. (RH) Open run: Thu 7:30 PM, Chase auditorium, Chase Plaza, 10 S. Dearborn, 312-893-2956, $20. |
THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN OF JENNY CHOW The protagonist of Rolin Jones's 2004 melo-comedy is a 22-year-old robotics whiz with OCD so severe she can't step out the front door of her adoptive parents' California home, which puts a crimp in her plan to find her birth mother in China. Jones's script reflects the goofy/profound aesthetic that's become a signature of graduate playwriting programs. But he makes good use of that aesthetic here, and so does Cecilie Keenan's entertainingly jangly Collaboraction production. (TA) Previews 4/12-4/15: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM. Opens Mon 4/16, 8 PM. Through 5/6: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, WestTown Studio Theater, Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, 777 N. Green, 312-733-6000, $22-$30 |
IS CHICAGO So many off-off-Loop companies have tackled David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago over the years since its 1974 debut it would take something really special to make it worth seeing again--something like pairing it with a compelling new play exploring similar themes, as in this double bill from Theatre Seven. Set in the same north-side neighborhoods as Mamet's one-act, Marisa Wegrzyn's Diversey Harbor is a series of skillfully crafted interlocking monologues that unfold the fears of abandonment and loss in each of the characters. The compassion in this modest but affecting gem contrasts with Mamet's flinty view of urban romance, offering a vision of the city as a place of both casual cruelty and unexpected tenderness. Through 4/14: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Rogue Theater Company, 5123 N. Clark, 563-505-7645, $20. |
BENOIT DUTEURTRE French writer Benoit Duteurtre's satiric novel The Little Girl and the Cigarette (Melville House) opens with a conundrum: condemned man Désiré Johnson's last request is to smoke a cigarette, yet the prison is smoke free. The resulting legal quandary and Johnson's serene, adamant stance create a media frenzy; the execution is postponed until the Supreme Court can rule. Seeing an opportunity for a public relations coup, the General Tobacco Company (located on President Bush Avenue) takes up Johnson's cause. Meanwhile the unnamed, fortysomething protagonist--a competent but unambitious mayoral aide--sneaks a cigarette in a bathroom stall of his smoke-free municipal building. When a five-year-old girl accidentally opens the door and busts him--"You know, you're not supposed to smoke here! Because of the children's health!"--he's summarily charged with child molestation. While the convict's televised act of lighting up creates a wave of public sympathy that leads to a pardon, the furtive puffing leads to a grisly end. Both funny and unsettling, this is the first of Duteurtre's ten novels to be translated into English. Thu 4/12, 7 PM, Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln, 773-293-2665. |