Chicago Spotlight: March 2006

More than 40 shows will open in Chicago this month, bookended by Lisa Loomer’s Accelerando produced by A New Leaf Theatre Company (March 1-April 8) and Alexandra Gersten’s My Thing of Love, produced by Infamous Commonwealth Theatre Company (March 31-April 7), and Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, presented by Signal Ensemble Theatre (March 31-April 29). What falls in between runs the gamut from Neil LaBute’s autobahn at Profiles Theatre (March 9-April 23) to The Glass Menagerie (Court Theatre, March 18-April 9) to The Oresteia (greasy joan & company, March 18-April 23) to Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance (Cadillac Palace, March 14-19).

The big event of the month is the Chicago premiere of David Mamet’s Romance at the Goodman Theatre (March 24), which is part of a six-week David Mamet Festival that also features stagings of A Life in the Theatre, The Revenge of the Space Pandas, numerous Mamet one-act plays, and various special events including an appearance by the playwright himself.

The history of Chicago will be on stage as Prop Theatre Group offers the world premiere of Hizzoner, a play about “Boss” Mayor Richard J. Daley (father of Chicago’s current mayor), written by and starring Neil Giuntoli (March 2). The history of the world follows the next night as Backstage Theatre Company presents Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Things grow even more cosmic on March 5 with Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches by The Hypocrites, an award-winning troupe. (They add Part II, Perestroika in rotating rep early in April.)

A number of familiar authors are on tap: Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart plays the New World Repertory Theatre (March 4); Alan Ayckbourn’s Communicating Doors will be staged by Inspirare Theatre Company in a hotel room (the play’s setting), beginning March 10; also on March 10, David Ives’s new adaptation of Georges Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear will receive its world premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre; Tim Miller brings his solo show 1001 Beds, based on his new book of the same title, to Bailiwick Repertory March 16; and Rebecca Gilman’s The Sweetest Swing in Baseball opens at the Eclipse on March 20. British playwright Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice is staged at Shattered Globe (March 26), while that same night, Clifford Odets’ rarely-seen Clash by Night opens at The Artistic Home, and T.S. Eliot’s just-as-rarely-seen The Cocktail Party is produced by the young and ambitious Caffeine Theatre. Italian leftist author Dario Fo’s Mistero Buffo is offered by Piccolo Theatre on March 27.

The Rubicon Theatre Project opens a new work, Brain Children (March 24); the Reverie Theatre Company offers a world premiere of Jane Austen’s Emma (March 25); the Congo Square Theatre Company has the world premiere of Stick Fly (March 26), by Lydia Diamond. It is the second world premiere of the month for Chicago-based Ms. Diamond, whose Voyeurs de Venus opens at Chicago Dramatists (March 17).
As for musicals, the first locally-produced staging of Urinetown debuts at the Mercury Theatre March 26 for an open-ended run.

With so many choices, it’s difficult to single out one show in particular that has all the earmarks of “special” about it; but there is such a show this month, and it’s perfect for families: Sita Ram, a world premiere adaptation of the Hindu classic The Ramayana, about the life of the prince/god Rama combines the forces of Lookingglass Theatre Company, the Chicago Children’s Choir and Natya Dance Ensemble. It should be a dazzling, swirling feast for the eyes and ears (March 18-April 2).