Theater News

Chicago Spotlight: April 2006

April’s Fools

Rebecca Spence and Patrice Egleston in Twelfth Night
(Photo © Michael Brosilow)
Rebecca Spence and Patrice Egleston in Twelfth Night
(Photo © Michael Brosilow)

Get ready to laugh this month, and that’s no April Fool’s joke. For example, the hilarious Tony Award-winning musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has moved into Downtown’s newest theater, the Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place, for an open-ended run.

The 9th Annual Chicago Improv Fest the Athenaeum Theatre (and a few offsite locations) offers performances by 750 artists and 100 improvisational and sketch comedy groups from five countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Norway (April 24-30). And there’s more fooling to be had in the Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the Pheasant Run Spa and Resort (April 2-May 27)

Lynn Nottage’s comedy/drama Fabulation at Next Theatre Company (April 10-May 7) concerns a once-powerful African-American woman who falls from grace. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s classic musical, The Threepenny Opera comes to the National Pastime Theatre (April 13-23) in a new translation with new musical arrangements. Red Moon Theatre offers a musical tribute to fantasy and chocolates — including tastings — with the world premiere of its puppet-and-mask spectacle The Golden Truffle (April 18-June 18). The national tour of Monty Python’s Spamalot returns to the Cadillac Palace Theatre (April 19-June 4). Curious Theatre Branch and Prop Theatre Group offer a centenary tribute to Samuel Beckett with his existential comedy Waiting for Godot (April 28-May 28). And for something a bit different, consider Jubilee! (April 28-May 7), the 75th annual WAA-MU show at Northwestern University.

Of course, we wouldn’t want to leave you with the impression that April is only music, laughs, chocolate, and existential comedy. No, the month needs a soupcon of Greek Tragedy — and gets it courtesy of Bohemian Theatre Ensemble’s production of Sophocles’ Electra at the Heartland Studio (April 9-May 14). Meanwhile Live Wire Theatre presents A Night of Innocent Games, based on Strindberg’s Miss Julie, performed at the Side Studio (April 7-May 6), and The Hypocrites offer both Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Perestroika, Part II in repertory with the already-running Angels in America: Part I, Millennium Approaches, at Bailiwick Arts Center (April 9-May 7).

Lastly, Strawdog Theatre Company serves up Sam Shepard’s rock-themed life-and-death struggle, Tooth of Crime, at their North Side second-floor playhouse (April 9-May 27). Later in the month, Prop Theatre scores a coup with Tim Robbins’ Embedded, the lanky actor/writer’s scathing, satirical look at the policies behind the Iraq War (April 23), and there’s An Affair of Honor the world premiere of two one-act plays commissioned by Babes with Blades, the all-female stage combat troupe, and inspired by Emile Bayard’s 19th-century print of female duelists. (April 7-May 14).