September WishList II

Be A Good Little Widow

Collaboraction

Set in the heartland of suburbia, young wife Melody has never been to a funeral until her husband dies in a plane crash. Expected to instantly assume proper widowhood, Melody is left to wonder, what's the right way to grieve? Fortunately, her mother-in-law is a professional. Widow, that is. Under her guidance, Melody must try her best to be a good little widow. Be a Good Little Widow is a surprisingly funny and moving portrait of loss and longing.

Runs Sept. 8-Oct. 23

The Pitmen Painters

Timeline Theatre Company

Heralded in London and on Broadway, this new play by the Tony Award-winning writer of Billy Elliot is based on a triumphant true story. A group of miners in Northern England taking an art appreciation class start experimenting with painting and soon build an astonishing body of work that makes them the unlikeliest of art world sensations. An arresting and hilarious salute to the power of individual expression and the collective spirit, The Pitmen Painters is a deeply moving and timely look at art, class and politics.

Runs until Dec. 4



Waiting for Lefty

Victory Gardens Theatre

Waiting for Lefty, inspired by the New York taxi strike of 1934 and first staged by the Group Theater in 1935, features powerful vignettes that offer a timeless treatise on societal inequities. “We’ve been kicked around so long we’re black and blue from head to toes,” opines a Depression-era American working stiff in Odets’ masterpiece.

Runs until Oct. 2

RED

The Goodman Theatre

Full-blooded and visceral, the Tony Award-winning Red takes you into the mind of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, for whom paintings are "pulsating" life forces and art is intended to stop the heart. RED chronicles the tormented painter's two-year struggle to complete a lucrative set of murals for Manhattan's exclusive Four Seasons restaurant, and his fraught relationship with a seemingly naïve young assistant, who must choose between appeasing his mentor—and changing the course of art history. Set amid the swiftly changing cultural tide of the early 1960s, Red is a startling snapshot of a brilliant artist at the height of his fame, a play hailed as "intense and exciting" by the The New York Times.

Runs Sept. 17-Oct. 23

The Great Fire

Lookingglass Theatre Company

It has been one of the hottest, driest autumns on record, and now a strong wind blows from the Southwest. At 9:40 pm, the Chicago Fire Department gets their first report of a small blaze on the city’s southwest side. Soon there is no stopping the Great Chicago Fire until it finally runs out of things to burn. In one night, the very rich, the very poor, and everyone in between are transformed forever. Spectacular, spiritual, highly physical and exquisitely emotional, the Chicago Sun-Times praised The Great Fire as “highly original, hugely entertaining” and remarked that “no one who sees this show will be able to look at Chicago in the same way again.”

Runs Sept. 21 - Nov. 20