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Let’s face it, only a few of us have relationships that call for a complete stranger installing a plaque at the site where we had our first kiss a la Barack and Michelle’s monument at 53rd and Dorchester, the former site of a Baskin-Robbins that they reportedly visited on their first date. But plenty of us can point directly to venues, restaurants, and perhaps even neighborhoods that are forever tainted in our minds by memories of love gone very wrong. Here are four Chicago spots that unfortunately resulted in heartbreak.

The Big Show
Musicians are creative, emotional creatures, and what better way to express their experience than delivering performances to the public infused with a spectrum of feelings: good, bad, and vengeful. The Replacements chose to give the audience the real deal on July 4, 1991, during their legendary “breakup” show in Grant Park during the Taste of Chicago. It was the last show of what was already announced as the Replacements’ final tour, in the last years of a band that hadn’t been getting along for a while. Shouting and arguing onstage during the last half of the show ended with the entire band handing over their instruments to roadies and walking off stage during the final number.

Swiping left in Lincoln Park Zoo
Lincoln Park Zoo’s last male lion resident, Sahar, unfortunately passed away last September, but he was a popular attraction during his stay in Chicago. Sahar was originally brought to Lincoln Park from the Bronx Zoo in 2012 to serve in part as a younger male companion to the zoo’s then 16-year-old lioness Myra. After Myra died in 2014, Sahar needed a friend and Lincoln Park Zoo brought two two-year-old female lions from Oregon, Zalika and Kamali, to attempt socialization. Sahar, whether still missing Myra or just being a stubborn male, wasn’t having it. As the Chicago Tribune reported in 2015, “The clever boy plopped down right in front of the doorway where the new cats . . . would ideally enter the outdoor exhibit and start engaging with him. But he is foiling the plan, blocking their potential path while enjoying the shade and happily flicking his tail.”

Walking through Wicker Park
Nelson Algren’s biographers know for sure that he lived at 1958 W. Evergreen for most of the 1950s, but we’re not sure exactly where he might have been when he received a letter from writer Simone de Beauvoir, putting an end to their deepening long-distance affair. It’s readable in Hell Hath No Fury, an anthology of women’s letters edited by Anna Holmes. Algren had grown weary of the distance between them and acted distant during de Beauvoir’s visit, which resulted in her painful decision to end the romance. She writes with heartbreaking honesty, “As for me, it is baffling to say so and I feel ashamed, but it is the only true truth: I just love as much as I did when I landed into your disappointed arms, that means with my whole self and all my dirty heart; I cannot do less.”

The Wiener’s Circle
Dawn doesn’t want me to tell you her real name, but I was present for this incident (roughly 20 years ago) and can concur: breaking up with someone sometimes takes a village. We’ll call Dawn’s ex-boyfriend Rahm. Rahm was a cad from the get-go, and insisted that Dawn pay for most of their outings as well as wear only outfits that he had chosen. For the record, Rahm was not a professional stylist. When Dawn finally found her self-esteem, she decided to break up with Rahm at the Wiener’s Circle, the infamous hot dog stand at Wrightwood and Clark. Dawn insisted upon doing this at 7 PM on a Friday so we could all get food afterward and miss the loudmouth crowd, but a small group of Chads overheard her telling Rahm that she was done. A debate over Dawn’s worthiness as a girlfriend was ignited, resulting in one of the employees of the restaurant coming out to the picnic benches and shouting at everyone, “She dumped your white ass; get the fuck out!” v

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Claude McKay Love recounts his life in two parts that many will be familiar with: before college and after college. At just five years old, Claude is abandoned by his mother and father who he’s been told have moved to Missouri from Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, leaving Claude to be taken care of by his grandmother and her longtime best friend, Paul. Before they leave, the young Black boy sees his parents’ friends disappear, setting the stage for a series of moments of abandonment.

Gabriel Bump’s Everywhere You Don’t Belong (Algonquin Books) follows Claude as he grows up on the south side of Chicago, then goes away to college in Missouri. A young Claude is somewhat satisfied living in South Shore, being filled with love by his grandmother and Paul. It’s not until a riot kills several people in his neighborhood that struggles of violence and abandonment mount, and he is compelled to go to college to get away from the city.

From the start there is a strong premise of moving away. Before his partner, Teeth, dies, Paul tries to convince him they should move to Florida; a family friend left South Shore after struggling to accept his wife had left him, also for Florida; and their two children ended up in another state without either of their parents. Not long after, Claude’s childhood teacher Ms. Bev goes missing, his childhood friend Bubbly moves to Oak Park, and his other friend Nugget enrolls in a middle school on the north side, both lifetimes away for any child living in a city as large as Chicago without the resources to travel.

As the book progresses, more friends move away and change becomes the ultimate constant for Claude. But the timing of events in the novel is murky. There’s so much reflection on the history of Chicago, like the 1968 Democratic National Convention, that it becomes easy to think the book takes place in the late 60s and early 70s. It’s not until drill rapper Chief Keef is mentioned that I realized that Claude was living in the 2010s when he was in high school. Obama is also mentioned here and there, but it’s unclear which political office he’s holding at the time.

In Claude’s South Shore, a fictional riot happens. No more are the days of the neighborhood being safer, with mostly Irish and Jewish residents. Black people moved to the area, white people moved away, and violence increased in the 1980s, leading to the South Shore Claude knows. Mixing real and fictional events can create a strong new world, and including local school closings hints at the struggles this community faces. Yet the story is still missing world-building to paint how Claude’s South Shore “magically” became a more violent environment; while it could be assumed that local businesses had gone out of business or were not being supported, stable jobs were not available, and the area was a food desert (amongst other real-world resource issues in South Shore), Claude is mostly seen catapulted between home, school, and sidewalks. It’s an oversight that could easily make readers who are unfamiliar with Chicago fall victim to the lazy trope about violence on the south side.

A more vivid picture could have made clear why Claude’s South Shore is so susceptible to violence and why residents are angered by police presence in the area. His neighborhood on Euclid Avenue soon goes into uproar after a police killing of an innocent boy who was feeding his neighbors’ pets while they were on vacation. The Redbelters, a neighborhood gang who seem to gain so many members that enrollment in local schools decreases, face the police while residents of the area either join the fight or try their best to leave the scene before tension mounts.

Claude is nearly caught in the uproar with a friend, Janice, and her aunt Annette. Ultimately, 26 people die in the riot, including Janice’s uncle. Janice’s aunt eventually leaves her, too. The foundation of the two teens’ confusing (and quite unhealthy) romantic-yet-unromantic relationship becomes the center of Claude’s life until the end of the book, when he is in college.

The bluntness of Claude and his childhood friends provides many literal laugh-out-loud moments, like when Bubbly says, “My parents think a police officer tied him to the tracks because Teeth wouldn’t fuck him.” Among the constant deaths and other losses, Bump ensures a laugh–even if it’s a guilty one–to soften the blows of Claude’s reality. The second part of his story is completely unrooted from precollege Claude. Whether it be a symptom of his growing up or intentional plotting, Claude’s relationship to the city and others, even himself, feels confusing and it becomes difficult to understand why he makes choices that seem to contradict what he said was of value to him as he grew up in South Shore, like safety and a sustainable future.

In adulthood, Claude learns that whether he’s in Chicago, or Columbia, Missouri, home is more about who you’re surrounded by than where you are. Though Janice only considers leaving Chicago after a run-in with the Redbelters, the urgency of having to leave Chicago to thrive, no matter who you’re leaving behind, remains. It’s unfortunate and understandable that Claude, like many other real-life south siders, finds it difficult to see a future in the city that raised them. If only Claude could see that as a Black American, he’ll be running forever if he continues to rely on others to tell him where he belongs. v

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Antarctica has hit a record high temperature. Sixty thousand known cases of the new coronavirus are causing global panic. Australia is still on fire. And the U.S. is gearing up for elections. The Times Are Racing, the title of the Joffrey Ballet’s winter mixed repertory program, captures a sense of the urgency we surely all feel. Yet few guiding principles–not even escapism–bring order to the presentation. The oldest pieces, Mono Lisa (2003) and The Sofa (1995) by Itzik Galili of Israel, account for two of the three Joffrey premieres–the third being the 2017 ballet by New York City Ballet resident choreographer Justin Peck that closes and titles this show. The other two works, British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s Commedia (2008) and Bliss! created on commission by Chicago’s Stephanie Martinez in 2019, offer a nod to modernism with Stravinsky scores. Though the company’s dancers looked in fine form, the program does not cohere into a discernible vision, nor is it truly a study in contrasts.

The evening opens with Commedia, an episodic, deconstructed vision of harlequins set to Stravinsky’s Pulcinella suite under the gaze of a painted set of masked faces. Center stage, a ballerina splats in second position onto the lap of her partner, her legs hooked behind him. It doesn’t have a prelude or a follow-through; it merely exists as an interjection. Commedia is like this–all disjointed steps and scenes that reference the imagery of commedia dell’arte without any of the purpose. Dancers wear incomplete assortments of masks, capes, and ruffs and occasionally execute a stylized gesture amid the technical display, but, in the absence of context, can drama or humor exist? One solution was presented opening night when Gayeon Jung and Edson Barbosa took the stage for the Gavotta con due variazioni. Bright with unpretentious verve, their evident delight in each other made a moment as simple as Barbosa’s head popping up behind Jung’s arm more charming to watch than the pinwheeling lifts that punctuate the work.

While Wheeldon’s work uses scenario as a framework for cerebral technical exploration, Galili’s contributions showcase explosive intensity. Mono Lisa starts with the lights lowered to the floor and a haze of fog. A pair of bare legs (Victoria Jaiani) comes into view. Enter a man (Stefan Goncalvez). A duet of aggressive strutting and fiendishly difficult partnering, sort of like William-Forsythe-meets-voguing, proceeds without a resolution beyond the fatigue of its performers.

The Sofa, which artistic director Ashley Wheater (recently knighted by the British Empire) describes in his program note as “a light look at romance in the modern world,” is easily the most disturbing piece in the program. Viewed as a rapid-fire series of pratfalls on a sofa that doubles as trampoline, it could be humorous and rather dazzling. And yet, The Sofa simply can’t be viewed in the abstract. A single duet repeats, once with a man and a woman (Temur Suluashvili and Anna Gerberich) and once with two men (Suluashvili and Fernando Duarte), the first time a cartoonish rendition of domestic violence, the second time defusing the tension of the first with the consent that presumably underlies a sadomasochistic relationship. She elbows him in the chest. He picks her up and throws her. She smacks his face and rides him sidesaddle. Etc.–all as Tom Waits croons, “Nobody, nobody will ever love you / The way I could love you / Because nobody is that strong.” The punchline of the piece, that the abusive man becomes the submissive partner in the second duet, is, despite Wheater’s program note, particularly problematic in a moment that exactly coincides with the end of Harvey Weinstein’s trial–or haven’t we learned anything about consent yet?

Communal masculinity forms the centerpiece of Bliss! where a shirtless set of machos dance in unison, classical steps interspersed with a shoulder roll here, a hip thrust there–a strangely idyllic picture that is interrupted by the intrusion of two women in rhinestone-encrusted figure skater costumes, who distract and fracture the group. With a presence that matches his command of technique, Barbosa gives a standout performance that carries him right into Peck’s work, seen for the first time with a company other than NYCB. Danced by a cast of 20 in sneakers and street clothes, The Times Are Racing is Jerome Robbins’s Glass Pieces with Twyla Tharp’s energy to the relentless pulse of Dan Deacon’s 2012 America album, with lots of patterned pacing, carefully coordinated breaks to the upright order of classicism, and some fabulous male duets. Barbosa’s electric charisma blazes, visualized by the glistening corona of sweat that radiates from his hair as he whips his head, as if youth really were eternal. v

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In the dicey business of bringing historic opera to contemporary audiences, Lyric Opera’s current production of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades is a winner. Three hours and 45 minutes long? Sung in Russian? No problem; deal me in. This exploration of obsession is compulsively watchable.

Said to have been composed in a 44-day frenzy, the opera is based on an Alexander Pushkin story about an obsessive gambler–a subject Pushkin knew firsthand. The opera (with a libretto by Modest Tchaikovsky, the composer’s brother), expanding on this theme, is about obsessive ideation that fixes on romance as well as gambling, before moving on to guilt.

The central character, Gherman (tenor Brandon Jovanovich), is hell-bent on possessing both Lisa (soprano Sondra Radvanovsky), a woman he’s fallen in love with at first sight, and a dangerous secret her grandmother happens to possess that will allow him to win at cards. Lisa’s a stretch for this impoverished outsider–she’s engaged to marry a prince (baritone Lucas Meachem). Against the odds, Gherman succeeds in winning her heart, but–and this is the crux of the story–driven as he is, he can’t stop there. He persists in his quest for her grandmother’s secret, leading to a devastating final loss.

This is psychodrama powered by the sweep and emotional acuity of Tchaikovsky’s Russian romantic score. The 20-year-old production, originally directed by Richard Jones, with sets and costumes by John Macfarlane (directed here by Benjamin Davis), moves the action up to the tense grey 1930s. It makes use of puppets, graveyard humor, and surreal shifts in perspective to weave an increasingly claustrophobic and ominous spell. Radvanovsky and Jovanovich powerfully, wrenchingly, give voice to their characters, and everyone in the huge cast–including the Lyric Opera Chorus and members of the Chicago Children’s Choir–plays up to their game.

Musically, it’s an embarrassment of riches, starting with the trio of men who launch the action: tenor Kyle van Schoonhoven and bass-baritone David Weigel as Gherman’s associates, and bass-baritone Samuel Youn–Alberich in Lyric’s Ring–in another neatly executed nasty turn as Gherman’s pernicious friend Count Tomsky. Then there’s a trio of mighty mezzo sopranos: Jill Grove as a governess; Elizabeth DeShong as Lisa’s friend Pauline; and spot-on veteran Jane Henschel making her Lyric debut as Lisa’s grandmother, the Countess, once known as the Venus of Moscow.

Also, of course, the Lyric Opera Orchestra. A more traditional Queen of Spades was the first opera Andrew Davis conducted as Lyric’s music director. As he heads into his final season in that job (he’ll depart in 2021), this production is an apropos bookend to his 20-year tenure. v

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The Des McAnuff-directed Summer: The Donna Summer Musical begins with a seasoned Donna Summer, or Diva Donna (Dan’yelle Williamson), recounting how in her early days, a colleague asked her what people will be doing years from then. She responded she didn’t know, but one thing’s for sure: they’d be dancing.

Though the “The Queen is Back” opening number was crowded with several dancers and somewhat blinding outfits on stage, what follows is a fascinating exploration of a life well lived. This touring musical (book by Colman Domingo, Robert Cary, and McAnuff, featuring hits created by Summer, Giorgio Moroder, Paul Jabara, and others) breezes through the stages of Summer’s life, from childhood as Duckling Donna (Olivia Elease Hardy) growing up in Boston to Disco Donna (Alex Hairston) who becomes the queen of 1970s disco, to Diva Donna, who wants to slow down and enjoy family life.

Throughout the production Diva Donna provides context to what’s happening in her life and in her head. Moments of joyous relief, angry thought, and everything else in between is expressed by older Donna, who now has the wisdom to understand the sometimes-reckless decisions of others and herself and breaks it all down for the audience.

From top to bottom, the production is all glitter, sparkle, afros, leather and animal print: a testament to the glamorous life of the legendary singer. (Paul Tazewell created the costumes, with wig design by Charles G. LaPointe.) Yet the glamour was not without difficulties.

In every stage of life, she has loved and lost, in one way or the other. As a child, she lost friends in church who said her voice sounded like a police siren. Donna of the disco era fired (and sued) her manager Neil Bogart (John Gardiner) when she learned he was misappropriating her money, and Diva Donna suffered an ultimate loss, laying her parents to rest. Yet still, the groovy performer persisted.

Messages of independence and equal pay loom large when Donna’s lawsuit against Casablanca Records comes up, accompanied by an energetic and profound performance of “She Works Hard for the Money” that’s enough to make every member of the audience as angry as the singer must have been upon learning that she hadn’t been receiving the fair fruits of her labor.

A standout moment from this number is when an unnamed lawyer (Brooke Lacy) reveals that Donna is in an exploitative contract and says, “This may be disingenuous coming from a middle-aged white guy like me.” Though played for laughs, it’s hard to miss the sheer amount of women playing people presumed to be men throughout the production. From top hats and suits to short wigs and canes, a subtle, yet forthright, statement is made about how in the high point of Donna’s career, gender lines were blurred within the disco (and often queer) community, as they are now.

Summer’s struggle with the antidepressant Marplan and suicidal thoughts are stepping-stones to her recovery from the pressures of a fast-paced career, showing how the disco queen dealt with her own depression and anxiety offstage.

The final scenes of the musical end before her demise; she and her daughters sing “Stamp your Feet” from 2008’s Crayons (her last studio album), when she discloses she has cancer. And “Friends Unknown” honors friends who died of HIV/AIDs years prior, offering possible hope of redemption for her rumored past hurtful remarks about a community who adored her. (Summer reportedly said “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” at a 1983 concert, though she denied ever calling AIDS “divine retribution.”) From there, up-tempo “Hot Stuff” and “Last Dance” close the production.

At the end of it all, Donna Summer proved herself to be more than just the “disco queen” of the 70s. But even if she’s only remembered for disco music, Summer reminds us that that’s A-OK, too. v

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Whether you want to feel the love or not this weekend, there’s plenty of recommended things to do.

Through 2/28: Bonny Nahmias’s first solo exhibition, “To Hold Space,” presents a project that she began in 2017. Stretching a tin can telephone over areas that are broken by geography, modernity, and politics, she has surpassed barriers and blockades. The project is accompanied by a book, The Orchestra Of Space Holders. Opening reception is Fri 2/14, 6-10 PM. Ground Level Platform, 2001 S. Halsted, groundlevelplatform.org, free.

2/14-2/16: Violet Surprise Theatre presents Lez Beaus, a festival of 10-minute plays celebrating lesbian love through the ages. The dozen pieces, selected by artistic directors Iris Sowlat and Allison Fradkin, include stories about romance in an all-girls baseball league of the past and a “girl gets boi” love story set in contemporary times. Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Martin, 2515 W. North, themartinchicago.com, $12.

Fri 2/14: Anti-Valentine’s Day is celebrating National Condom Week and has partnered with sexual health organizations to provide free condoms and sexual health education to teenagers. There will be music, dancing, crafts, pizza, cheese, games, and, of course, condoms. 6-9 PM, National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th, nationalmuseumofmexicanart.org, free.

Fri 2/14: Odd Pleasures: A Queer Valentine’s Day Event features a queer variety show hosted by Aunty Chan that includes live ASMR, drag, comedy, and short films. 6-9 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago, mcachicago.org, $10, $8 students.

Fri 2/14: Love is Stronger than the State: a Migrant Solidarity Benefit is a fundraiser for a family seeking asylum as well as a trans person who recently migrated to Chicago. Featuring food, drink, activities for children, nail art by Sharon, a Cupid Photo Booth, and a raffle with art by Rebel Betty and Audra Jacot. No one turned away for lack of funds. 7 PM-midnight, the #LetUsBreathe Collective, 1434 W. 51st, facebook.com/ChicagoIWOC, $5-$10 suggested donation.

Sat 2/15: The Marz Record Fair, organized by Marz Brewing and Mississippi Records, features vendors and DJs from International Anthem, Sonorama, Electric Jungle, Shady Rest Vintage & Vinyl, Black Pegasus, 606 Records, Delmark, Orindal Records, Tone Deaf Records, South Rhodes Records, Atlantic Posters, Maximum Pelt, DJ Leslie Deckard, and Mississippi Records. Noon-8 PM, Marz Community Brewing Taproom, 3630 S. Iron, marz.beer, free.

Sat 2/15: Author Angela Kenyatta shares her knowledge of journaling and writing during a workshop at the library for Black History Month. 2 PM, Sulzer Regional Library, 4455 N. Lincoln, chipublib.org, free.

Sat 2/15: The one-night-only show The Witch Project looks at witches and queer icons through spoken word, live music, and drag. 7:30 PM, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, thedentheatre.com, $15.

Sat 2/15: The Half-Court Classic 3v3 Invitational is a celebration of basketball culture with a three on three tournament and complimentary food and beverages, hosted by Kyle O’Quinn and organized by Lululemon Chicago and Mob Rep with Cool Kids, Femdot, Qari, DJ Evie the Cool, DJ Cash Era, DJ Selah Say. 8 PM-1 AM, 454 N. Armour, bit.ly/lululemon-and-mob-rep-present-the-half-court-classic-tickets, $20.

Sat 2/15: Super Tasty is an inclusive, sex-positive talk show that is poppin’ off for a special Valentine’s Day weekend edition. Performers include Clitora Leigh and Lavender Vyxn, and interviews with Dr. Pia Holec about sexpectations. There will be a sensual massage demo and a panel with sex coach Tazima Parris and therapists Matthew Amador and Peter Navarro. Stay for the AfterGlow where the stage opens up for a shopping experience from local vendors. 8 PM, Constellation 3111 N. Western, supertastyshow.com, $25.

Sun 2/16: The Fox Club has joined with GMan Tavern to sell handmade and vintage goods at the Winter Sucks Market. Drink specials and vendors will be present with a free admission. Noon-5 PM, GMan Tavern, 3740 N. Clark, gmantavern.com, free.

Sun 2/16: The two-person event “The landscape reels back” features, curator, arts organizer, and Chicago artist Alexis Brocchi, who looks at how to search for information through nontraditional methods, and Tracie Hayes, an artist and ecologist. 4-7 PM, Roman Susan, 1224 W. Loyola, romansusan.org, free.

Sun 2/16: Stand-up Marty DeRosa hosts the Second Annual Davefest, a fundraiser for the David Carl Guastella Scholarship Foundation featuring comedy from Blake Burkhart, Cameron Gillette, Nate Burrows, and more plus music by Natalie Grace Alford and Sammy Arechar. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, emptybottle.com, $10. vRead More

Quentin Tarantino’s movie Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood is in part a gauzy wish fulfillment fantasy that fictionalizes and rewrites the true-life brutal murder of actor Sharon Tate. The play graveyard shift at the Goodman Theatre takes a similar, if not more practical, path. The play knows that it’s impossible to practice necromancy and raise the spirit of the beloved from the grave but hopes that perhaps it is possible to drape flowers on her legacy. Like Hollywood, graveyard shift bestows the same gentleness and beauty that Tarantino lavished on Tate. It’s an act of grace that is rarely granted to the average Black woman.

On July 10, 2015, Sandra Bland moved from Chicago to Texas to begin a new job and was pulled over during a traffic stop by Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia. The routine interaction, which should have resulted in no more than a warning or a ticket, quickly spiraled out of control and Bland, who recorded the entire exchange, was pulled from her car, forced to the ground, and arrested. Three days later, Bland was found dead, hanging in her jail cell. Encinia was indicted for perjury for making false statements about her arrest and fired; the charges were dropped when he agreed to leave law enforcement permanently.

The senseless and tragic murder of Black people by law enforcement in America has become a national crisis that Bland was aware of before her death and was an activist against. Rubbing salt in the gaping wound of these tragedies is the predictable and unempathetic public reaction. Within hours of these violent acts, the common reaction of the general public is to search for reasons why an officer might have been justified in an outsized violent overreaction, whether that Black victim was back-talking, selling cigarettes on the street, or walking home after buying Skittles.

The fact is that there is no justification for murder, and good police officers regularly take even extremely violent people into custody without causing harm. Racism is clearly in play. Writer korde arrington tuttle understands that even while processing the grief of loss of life, it is doubly brutal to reduce the life of a murdered Black woman to a statistic. He builds the scaffolding upon which to elevate the rest of her humanity in graveyard shift. Last April the Goodman and Black Lives, Black Words staged The Interrogation of Sandra Bland by Mojisolo Adebayo, a theatrical recounting of the transcript of the Sandra Bland traffic stop featuring 100 Black women, as part of the I Am
. . . Fest. I was one of those 100 Black women. To engage with these works as a Black woman is to unflinchingly contemplate my own mortality.

Tuttle creates a fictional Black woman named Janelle who embodies the spirit of Bland, and we follow her through her job search and move from Chicago to Texas. Actor Aneisa J. Hicks plays Janelle with full vibrancy and joy, leavened with the moments of doubt and insecurity of being a young professional striving to establish a career in a troubled economy. Director Danya Taymor does an exceptional job keeping the scenes light and frothy in the beginning, wisely anticipating the challenge of staging a story whose ending we already know. Set designer Kristen Robinson has smartly arranged the stage as a marble cemetery slab, so even as we laugh at the many mirthful moments, it ominously never fully lets us forget that lynching looms in the future like a dark shadow.

Janelle is paired with Kane, her long-distance boyfriend in Texas, played by an incredibly sincere and heartbreaking Debo Balogun. We ride the heights and depths of their relationship, and Kane offers a flawed yet painful requiem of anguish after the inevitable. In a metaphorical mirror, the other side of the stage is the interior of a Texas state trooper’s office where we follow the day-to-day life of Brian, self-proclaimed fuckup and a proxy for Officer Encinia, played by Keith D. Gallagher. Gallagher brings a full and necessary humanity to a character that would be tempting to write off as a one-note villain. His affable “good ol’ boy” charm allows us to see that the face of evil is often one and the same with the faces of those that we love. A scene where Brian tells a cornered raccoon “I know you’re just trying to survive” foreshadows the tenderness often granted to animals that isn’t extended to cornered humans.

The play vacillates between traditional storytelling methods and lyrical, poetic stylings for occasionally on the nose, yet usually smart and impactful, effect. When Janelle and Kane playfully sing the lyrics “Say my name, when no one is around you, say baby I love you” it takes on a sickening double meaning when contrasted with Brian and Elise rocking out to rap music, singing the “N-word” with impunity, knowing that the PC police cannot mandate empathy in the graveyard of shadowy hearts. #SayHerName. v

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In 2017, First Floor Theater premiered Leah Nanako Winkler’s Two Mile Hollow–a send-up of what Winkler terms “white people by the water” plays, in which a wealthy clan gathers at a beach house to fight, reveal secrets, and reminisce. The catch for Winkler’s work was that the characters were all played by people of color, offering ironic counterpoint to white privilege’s ridiculous insularity.

Lydia Diamond’s Stick Fly, which had its world premiere in 2006 with Chicago’s Congo Square before eventually opening on Broadway in 2011, has some things in common with the world that Winkler parodied. But Diamond’s family is actually Black and wealthy, with long roots in Martha’s Vineyard and Romare Bearden paintings on the wall. Diamond, who grew up the daughter of an academic, has written about the collisions of class and race within and without Black families and communities in several works. In Stick Fly, now revived at Writers Theatre under Ron OJ Parson’s direction, the outlines of the traditional “well-made play” serve her well in anatomizing the subtle but hurtful hypocrisies and internalized self-loathing that keep the characters from fully connecting.

The title comes from the work that Taylor (Jennifer Latimore), an entomologist from an economically lower class, does with examining insects; they have to be secured to a stick in order to document their wing movements. But things rapidly become unglued over the course of a few days, as Taylor’s fiance Kent (Eric Gerard) faces the disdain his neurosurgeon father Joe (David Alan Anderson) has for his nascent career as a novelist, compared to the chip-off-the-old-block attitude Dad has toward his eldest, plastic surgeon Flip (DiMonte Henning), who brings Kimber (Kayla Raelle Holder), an old-school WASP, to meet the family. Meantime Cheryl (Ayanna Bria Bakari), daughter of the family maid, learns the truth about her parentage.

Diamond’s writing works against the grain of the potentially soapy plotlines, and each character gets at least one moment to burst through social constraints to reveal what they’re really thinking. (Latimore’s Taylor more than the rest.) Old history (familial and otherwise) collides with present-day realities, and by the end of Diamond’s wise and funny play (well acted across the board here), everyone’s wings have been clipped by reality. v

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Adapted by Marilyn Abrams and Bruce Jordan from the original play Scherenschnitt, (scissors cut), by German playwright Paul Portner, Shear Madness is not so much a fully realized work of comic theater as a kind of silly party game writ large. The premise is reminiscent of interactive murder mysteries: setting–a beauty salon; characters–a brace of stereotypes (gay hair dresser, ditsy beautician, bulldog homicide detective); McGuffin–the murder of an upstairs neighbor. But the real mystery is why we should care about the death of a character we never meet. This is theater for people who don’t know much about theater, and comedy for audiences drunk enough to laugh at anything. (The snack bar serves alcohol that you can take into the auditorium.)

The current Mercury Theater Chicago revival, directed by Warner Crocker, is by design tipsy and “fun.” Actors break character all the time, ad lib ad nauseum, or fake cracking up (like the late Harvey Korman used to do way too often on The Carol Burnett Show). And then about halfway through it all the fourth wall is ripped down, and the audience is invited to “participate” in the “solving” of the “murder.” I suppose this kind of thing must have seemed daring in 1963, when Portner’s original play opened. But today the premise is too tired to even be called retro. There is nothing novel about Crocker’s point-and-click direction.

Still, the casting is great. In the leads, Ed Kross and Brittany D. Parker get lots of chances to show off their comic chops. But the flashes of comic brilliance they and the rest of the cast display from time to time make one wish they were in a real play. v

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Before Ta-Nehisi Coates laid out “The Case for Reparations” in the Atlantic in 2014, Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 classic A Raisin in the Sun clearly showed the effects of racism on Black Americans seeking better living conditions–a problem we’ve yet to fully address. The Younger family–so cramped for space in their roach-infested apartment that son Travis has to sleep on the living room couch–hopes to buy a better piece of the American pie, thanks to a life insurance payout from their late husband and father. But what that pie looks like varies wildly, and Invictus Theatre Company’s current revival of Raisin, directed by Aaron Reese Boseman, honors those conflicting dreams with conviction and heart.

Matriarch Lena (Cheryl Frazier) wants to buy a house, even if that means moving to an unfriendly white neighborhood. Her son, Walter Lee (Michael Lewis), wants to stop being a driver for white people and take the wheel of his own destiny by buying into a liquor store. His little sister, Beneatha (Ashley Joy), wants to be a doctor and is torn between a bourgeois beau, George (Keith Surney), who is interested in her as arm candy, and a Nigerian student, Joseph (Jo Schaffer), who offers a broader vista for her life. Meantime, Ruth (Nyajai Ellison), Walter’s wife, is facing an unexpected pregnancy and anguish about her husband’s growing anger about his deferred dreams.

Hansberry crammed a lot of life into that small flat (the story is based in part on her own family’s legal challenge to racist restrictive housing covenants), and Boseman’s production goes for broke with heartfelt zest, spilling over the edge of Kevin Rolfs’s appropriately tiny dingy set. On opening night, there were some moments where the actors didn’t feel completely connected to each other, but it’s clear that they know these characters’ hurts and hopes to the bone, and I suspect the ensemble will grow even stronger over the run. v

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