With Broadway tours in town mostly consisting of reprise engagements of age-old blockbusters — “The Lion King,” “The Book of Mormon,” “Phantom of the Opera” — and some of the suburban theaters repeating each other’s programming, the theater spotlight this fall shines on Chicago’s venerable nonprofit theaters.
As compared with the last few fiscally challenged years, we’re finally seeing more shows with larger casts, more complex storytelling and greater ambitions. Two Chicago theaters, Northlight Theatre and TimeLine, are looking forward to new buildings coming soon. That’s just as well, since two venerable performance venues, the Briar Street Theatre and Stage 773, have fallen to condo developments, and there’s little life at the Biograph Theatre despite its prime Lincoln Park location, and zero life at the Mercury Theater, another important theater in a prime spot on the Southport Corridor.
But enough with the real estate angst, let’s get to the top shows this fall.
Here, with the usual seasonal caveat that my reviews are yet to come, are 10 productions I’m especially looking forward to seeing. You’ll find horror shows, period dramas, contemporary plays and at least one musical about revolutionaries.
See you at the theater.
“Mr. Wolf” at Steppenwolf Theatre
Commissioned by the South Coast Repertory Theatre and first seen in 2014, Rajiv Joseph’s psychologically focused “Mr. Wolf” tells the story of parents who have been reunited with their 15-year-old daughter, Theresa, who was abducted 14 years previously and who has changed to the point of being hard to recognize. K. Todd Freeman directs a blue-chip Steppenwolf cast including Kate Arrington, Namir Smallwood, Tim Hopper and Caroline Neff.
“Big White Fog” at Court Theatre
Court Theatre begins its first season under new artistic director Avery Willis Hoffman with Theodore’s Ward’s “Big White Fog,” a 1938 play that often is seen as a prototype for “A Raisin in the Sun.” Set on Chicago’s South Side and initially funded by the Federal Theatre Project, the piece looks at three generations of the struggling Mason family, torn between some members’ desire to return to Africa and others with an unshakeable belief in the American dream. Theater critic Charles Collins of this newspaper wrote an admiring review of the play’s first production in 1938. Ron OJ Parson, who was not around then, directs this revival of an oft-forgotten portrait of Chicago in the 1920s penned by a writer widely known as the “dean of Black dramatists” in his day.
