The American Suburb, proliferating just after World War II, was invented to combine the best of rural and urban lifestyles. Decreasing numbers of available servants and increasing numbers of privately-owned automobiles both played a part in disrupting these optimistic goals, but the ancient bonds connecting the Dionysian play festivals of antiquity with our diverse Community Arts Leagues today have remained unbroken. Centuries later, in remote corners of our nation, artists and spectators still unite in crafting entertainment unencumbered by the necessity of packing suitcases, loading trucks and breaking camp every night.
Early Metra-line theater companies like Des Plaines's Big Noise Theater and Crystal Lake's Williams Street Repertory are presently preparing their spring seasons, while expressway-linked hotel facilities forge on at steady pace and a few pioneers in outlying counties carefully nurture unforeseen "let's put on a show" moments born of shelter-in-place script readings.
Baked! The Musical, Theo Ubique in Evanston (running through October 8). Birthday Candles, Northlight Theatre at the North Shore Center for the Arts in Skokie (running to October 8). Rip Cord, Oil Lamp Theatre in Glenview (running through October 8). Gypsy, Marriott Theater in Lincolnshire (running through October 15). Eurydice, Writers Theater in Glencoe (running through October 22). The Mousetrap, Citadel Theater in Lake Forest (running through October 15) The Devil and Daniel Webster, Overshadowed Theatrical Productions in Medinah (running through October 7) The Addams Family, Metropolis Performing Arts Center in Arlington Heights (running through October 8). Little Shop of Horrors, Paramount Theater in Aurora (running through October 15). Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny Cash, Drury Lane Theater in Oak Brook (running through October 22). Shooting Star, Elsinore, A Theater Ensemble, in Elgin (September 29-October 15). The American Dream, Subtext Studio Theater in Oak Park (October 5-29) What the Constitution Means to Me, Copley Theater in Aurora (October 4-November 12). Brigadoon, Musical Theater Works at the North Shore Center for the Arts in Skokie (October 19-November 12). Collected Stories, Village Theatre Guild in Glen Ellyn (October 20-November 11) A Little Night Music, Brightside Theater, in Naperville (October 20-November 5). The Revolutionists, Janus Theater Co. in Elgin (October 26-November 5).
If you gaze across Howard street from the entrance this spacious cabaret-style room, you'll see Chicago, but no matter whether you're facing north or south, you're likely to have fun at this original musical about a high school fundraising bake sale featuring Asian moon-cakes enhanced with—um, exotic herbal substances.
Theaters abutting conference centers boast ready-made audiences for ruminative plays like this Chicago premiere by Noah Haidle, starring the ageless Kate Fry, which tracks the "ordinary" life of an Our Town girl.
This company's first stages were in its patrons' living rooms, but after converting parking lots into drive-in playhouses during the Long Shutdown, it now boasts a full-service theater and lounge (with lobby refreshments) for David Lindsay-Abaire's comedy about a pair of feisty women forced to share a room at a senior living center.
You can share in-the-round seats with this luxury resort's guests and sing along with the familiar score belted forth by tough-love mothers and daughters—but don't forget to also make early holiday reservations for Beautiful: the Carole King Musical opening in November.
Whether the young bride forced to choose between marriage to a musician or going home to daddy made her own decision is something the Greek myths never revealed, but Sarah Ruhl's play speculates on what really happened that fatal wedding day. (Patrons can also revel pre-show in the autumnal splendor of this tree-swathed village.)
You can still travel to London and see the version that opened in 1952, or you can enjoy Agatha Christie's most famous locked-room murder mystery in a production imprisoning the nervous group of stranded vacationers in Ian Merritt's hi-tech video-projected snowscape.
Who doesn't love a story about a clever mortal outwitting the Devil—especially when the hero whose eloquent oratory saves the day in Stephen Vincent Benet's classic American drama is a real-life statesman chronicled in our nation's early history?
The vaudeville-style playhouse (actually built in 2000) located two blocks from a Metra station puts us in the mood for Halloween with this musical romp based on the eccentric family created by Charles Addams and subsequently adapted to a popular television series.
This musical romcom may have sprouted from a B-movie horror flick about a botanical carnivore, but Aurora's retrofitted 1930s-vintage movie palace generates enough glamor to transcend its macabre premise.
Snobs can sneer at "Tired Businessman" shows, but after a long day of meetings in the adjacent Hilton and shopping at the mall, who wouldn't want to unwind to a biographical revue of the man-in-black's greatest hits?
Before the movie version comes out later this year, get an early and intimate preview of Steven Dietz's play about a divorced couple unexpectedly stranded in an airport, performed by a trio of comrades who emerged from the plague years armed with planks, passion and newfound creative vigor.
No, it's not the Edward Albee play sharing the title, but the world premiere of Juan Ramirez, Jr's dialogue between a Guatemalan refugee and her smuggler debating the price of freedom while hiding on the border.
Just across the street from the opulent Paramount, this cozy "second stage" provides the setting for Heidi Schreck's autobiographical tale of a teenage debater gradually coming to doubt her defense of our national manifesto.
Before the term "Parallel Universe" was ever coined, Alan Jay Lerner and David Loewe wrote a Scottish-themed fairytale musical of two young bachelors who stumble upon a mythical kingdom that will change their lives forever.
After Oak Brook's First Folio Theatre lost its Tudor-revival playhouse, their neighboring thespians took up the torch, shouldering the duties of providing DuPage County with theater, beginning with Donald Margulies's fable of fledgling authors and unwary mentors.
Founded in 2011 and located in Meilley-Swallow Hall in the downtown historic district of the town lauded for its wholesome family-friendly atmosphere, this Kane County company presents Stephen Sondheim's waltz-heavy romance at a house party in fin-de-siecle Sweden.
Chicago audiences may recall these artists from their appearances at the Athenaeum before the troupe migrated to the wide-open spaces in 1999 to pursue their aesthetic, this time with Lauren Gunderson's gallery of female agitators, staged in the manner of the Globe Theatre's "Read Not Dead" series.
