Marquee - Chicago

10/03/08

Cheap Thrills

Theatre of the Absurdly Affordable
Save the belt-tightening for that extra martini or the premium cable subscription: When it doesn’t cost a dime, culture can stay in the budget. The nationwide program Free Night of Theater hits Chicago in October, and not a moment too soon. How it works: Anyone can reserve free tickets to one of more than 45 selected plays. The only stipulations are that you...

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09/26/08

Hedda the Class

Gabler, Interrupted
Into the Woods meets Groundhog Day in The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, a campy twist on the story of Henrik Ibsen’s doomed heroine from playwright Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q). When Hedda decides to take things into her own...

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09/19/08

Our Kind of Town

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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09/12/08

A Man Walks into a Noir

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...

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09/05/08

People’s Choice

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?...

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08/29/08

Great Balls of Vinyl

Red Alert
Squashing a gigantic inflatable ball into tight spaces sounds a little like one of those Olympic events that didn’t score much NBC airtime (half-lightweight judo gets no respect). But artist Kurt Perschke’s RedBall Project—a public art installation in which a 15-foot vinyl ball makes its way across the city, stopping at...

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08/22/08

Sealed with a Kiss

Puppet Government
Puppets have always helped out with difficult lessons: Bert and Ernie taught the importance of tooth brushing; Kermit served as poster boy for the power of positive thinking. Now it’s time to take the...

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08/15/08

Fox News

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...

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08/08/08

Mod Hot Weekend

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...