Anna Deavere Smith's "Let Me Down Easy' (1st review)

Stayin' alive

The multi-talented actor/playwright/journalist Anna Deavere Smith understands how to find obscure dramatic subjects, how to listen to them, and how to perform their stories onstage. The result in this case is an extraordinary meditation on health care, equal parts emotion and intellect, notwithstanding some flaws in her method.

Dan Rottenberg

Mar 24, 2011 · Articles · 6 minute read

Lantern Theater's "Midsummer Night's Dream' (1st review)

Everybody into the forest

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's take on love mistaken for infatuation and vice versa, is as endlessly inane and amusing as any episode of "Seinfeld.”

Jackie Schifalacqua

Mar 22, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

Tracy Letts's "Superior Donuts' at the Arden (3rd review)

Uplift vs. apathy in the Windy City

Not by happenstance has Tracy Letts placed this story in Chicago's gritty Uptown section. It would be hard to place such a tale in any setting other than the Windy City.

Jackie Schifalacqua

Mar 19, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

Sarah Ruhl's "In the Next Room' at the Wilma (3rd review)

Orgasms without love

Sarah Ruhl's new play links the dawn of the electric age with that of the sexual revolution. It's an intriguing idea, and Ruhl makes her points wittily, although they're undermined by a gay subtext and a very campy ending.

Robert Zaller

Mar 15, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read

Tracy Letts's "Superior Donuts' at the Arden (2nd review)

Nurtured by community

The Arden's new production of Superior Donuts differs vastly from the Broadway presentation I saw in December 2009. The Arden's more intimate house enables greater subtlety, endowing Tracy Letts's parable of urban community with a stronger dramatic arc.

Steve Cohen

Mar 12, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read

Sarah Ruhl's "In the Next Room' at the Wilma (2nd review)

Those precious bodily fluids

In the Next Room is Sarah Ruhl's amusingly nostalgic look at a repressed society seemingly liberated by Thomas Edison's newfangled electrical power-driven gadgets. And the Wilma Theater's production is surely a beautiful affair. But is it faithful to the playwright's vision?

Jackie Schifalacqua

Mar 12, 2011 · Articles · 4 minute read

Sarah Ruhl's "In the Next Room' at the Wilma (1st review)

All they need is love

Sarah Ruhl's exploration of late Victorian sexuality is engaging and provocative on several fronts, and it benefits from a subtle and creative production by the Wilma. But Ruhl's intellectual curiosity is undermined by an intellectual crime: judging a past culture by modern standards.

Dan Rottenberg

Mar 10, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read

Tracy Letts's "Superior Donuts' at the Arden (1st review)

What a difference a counterman makes

Making perfect donuts day after day might be an achievement, but it doesn't quite add up to a life for Arthur, the proprietor of the Superior Donuts store in Uptown Chicago. But one day he hires an enthusiastic neighborhood kid, who manages to strip the glaze off everything.

Marshall A. Ledger

Mar 08, 2011 · Articles · 3 minute read

Boris Vian's "Empire Builders' at Walnut Studio 5 (2nd review)

Death of the middle class

Boris Vian's absurdist classic, The Empire Builders, received a timely revival by the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium. Its protagonists, the Duponts, are being dispensed with— much like today's middle and working classes.

Robert Zaller

Mar 01, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read

Rinne Groff's "Compulsion' in New York

The last victim of the Holocaust

Rinne Groff's haunting play springs from her long fascination with the writer Meyer Levin, whose own obsession with Anne Frank provides a compelling coda to the Holocaust.

Carol Rocamora

Mar 01, 2011 · Articles · 5 minute read