For those hoping to catch up on their theatergoing during the holiday fortnight, Reader critics offer their recommendations on shows running into the new year. Check listings for addresses, phone numbers, schedules, and prices, including special New Year’s Eve packages.
British playwright Terry Johnson’s Hysteria, running at Steppenwolf Theatre under the direction of John Malkovich, examines Sigmund Freud’s troublesome legacy by making the psychoanalyst the harried hero of one of his own dreams–a bizarre hallucination in which Freud’s dying days are disrupted by, among others, the surrealist painter Salvador Dali and the disturbed daughter of one of Freud’s former patients. Part frantic farce and part suspense drama, Hysteria is somewhat flawed but impressively risky and ambitious, a good alternative to fluffy holiday fare for thoughtful viewers….Also at Steppenwolf is the much lighter studio production Her Name Was Danger, a Lookingglass Theatre Company rock ‘n’ roll spoof of Modesty Blaise, Emma Peel, and other spy-thriller heroines of the 1960s.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
–Mary Shen Barnidge
In honor of Noel Coward’s centenary, Writers’ Theatre Chicago is presenting Fallen Angels, his 1923 trifle about two wives with adulterous itches–the kind of inspired silliness that skilled actors can spin into gold. Michael Halberstam’s staging makes the most of the considerable comic talents of Annabel Armour, Linda Kimbrough, and Karen Janes Woditsch, who create screwball characters with very human, very funny appetites and failings.
ETA Creative Arts Foundation’s Get Ready bursts with good humor and glows with Joe Plummer’s doo-wop ballads as it pays tribute to the R & B veterans of the 50s and 60s. Plummer’s glorious guy-group songs would have been hits 30 years ago–and they charm today. Phillip Edward Van Lear directs with appropriate affection.
