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80 Foots per Minute

A little literary playfulness goes a long way for vocalist-musicians Emmy Bean, T-Roy Martin, and Chris Schoen, who, in their rapid-fire program of folksy musical arrangements, take on roles ranging from the pathetic oysters in Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" to Carl Sandburg reading his poem "Loam." Some songs indulge kitsch—like one that sets to music a Thomas Campion poem in which a single word ("love") has been replaced each time it appears by another ("Batman"). And though I'm generally inclined to dismiss offhand anything based on writings of the great poet Craigslist, "Past Saturday Night, Northerly Island," which adapts a missed connection into rondo form, struck me as weirdly hypnotic and catchy. The afternoon's shining ditty was "Riled Geese," inspired by Mary Oliver's poem of the same name, in which Bean does an absolutely bewitching scat-singing impression of a goose (a style susceptible to the very amusing coinage "goose scat"). —Jena Cutie

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Big Love

This young couple walked by me as I headed up the street after seeing Charles Mee's Big Love at Strawdog Theatre. They were probably in their late teens, early 20s. The boy put the girl in a headlock and kissed the part in her hair. She laughed, but in a fakey, uncertain way, like she hadn't quite decided whether she should be pissed or pleased. Still, when he let go, she stuck with him. And there you have it: the paradoxical, not to say creepy, glory of love. A headlock and a kiss. Big Love draws wisdom from that paradox. An oddball yet deadly serious update on Aeschylus's The Suppliants, it tells the tale of 50 (yes, 50) Greek sisters whose father has promised them in marriage to their 50 male cousins. Rather than go through with the wedding, the sisters commandeer a yacht and head for Italy, where—still in their bridal gowns—they ask asylum of wealthy Piero. Soon enough, the 50 cousins show up at Piero's estate as well. What follows is a comic, tragic, utterly terrific battle that makes The Taming of the Shrew look like the kid's stuff it essentially is. Matt Hawkins's staging is also terrific. The precisely choreographed cast of 30 (yes, 30) play for keeps—especially those in featured roles, such as the fierce Michaela Petro, the convincingly dangerous Shane Kenyon, the girly-girlish Sarah Goeden, and Stacy Stoltz and John Ferrick as gender warriors who find themselves caught behind enemy lines. Paul Fagen and Cheryl Roy float through in delightful character roles, and Mike Mroch's apparently simple set discloses its value as the show goes along. All in all, this Big Love is a marvel of big ensemble work in a tiny space. —Tony Adler $28

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Next Fall

Adam loves Luke. Luke loves Adam. Luke also loves Jesus. Adam worries about which of them Luke loves more. Luke worries about Adam's immortal soul. Next Fall, making its Chicago premiere at AstonRep, looks back on their sometimes prickly five-year relationship. At times, like when the subjects of prayer, sin, and the Rapture come up, it risks becoming a play of ideas, with more speechifying than conversation. Fortunately, Geoffrey Nauffts's script leaves room for ambiguity and gives the characters personalities as well as points of view. The cast give them life and humor—particularly Ryan Hamlin and Mark Jacob Chaitin, who play Adam and Luke, and Lona Livingston and Jim Morley, who play Luke's parents. The result is charming, funny, and, ultimately, moving. —Aimee Levitt $15-20

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The Brig

Kenneth H. Brown's meticulous depiction of a day in a Marine prison camp caused a sensation when it premiered at New York's Living Theater in 1963. The guards' unrelenting, systematic dehumanization of their fellow Marine prisoners is appalling, especially since the abuse seems intended to instill loyalty to the Corps. And Brown's near-total eschewal of plot—the maltreatment goes on until it simply stops—removes any comforting fictive filter between audience and action. Wisely, director Jennifer Markowitz does nothing to make her Mary-Arrchie production enjoyable. Her actors endure an hour of exhausting physical drills while we watch from various uncomfortable locations. As movement theater, it's grotesquely beautiful; as a glimpse into the darkest recesses of male psychology, it's sickening. —Justin Hayford $25

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Roadkill

This immersive, site-specific drama, directed by Cora Bissett and written by Stef Smith (it debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in 2010), is staged on a bus and in a nondescript Bucktown apartment that soon starts to feel like a lower circle of hell. We arrive there with Mary, a teenage Nigerian girl, and her countrywoman Martha, who has promised Mary a prosperous life in America. Before long, the girl has been relieved of her passport, raped, held against her will, and forced into a prostitution ring run by a merciless Russian. The apartment's bland seediness and close quarters reinforce the feeling of entrapment and moral squalor, and bring us into almost unbearable proximity to Mercy Ojelade's heartrending Mary and Adura Onashile's tormented Martha. —Zac Thompson $45

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Dada Gert

Annie Arnoult Beserra, head of Striding Lion Performance Group, fell in love with Valeska Gert in 2005, when, as a grad school student, she saw recently released archival footage of Gert's dance solos. "She was so raw and riddled and vibrant," Beserra says. "There was such life in her embodiment of horrors." Born in 1892 in Berlin, dancer-writer-composer-singer-actress. Gert was blacklisted by the early 1930s, for the crime of being a Jew making avant-garde art. That was far from the end of her colorful career, but Beserra chose the Weimar era as the setting of her new, promenade-style, hour-long Dada Gert. Captivated by Gert's "100 percent blend of dance and theater," Beserra created a piece that isn't always easy to watch—the seven performers make faces, scream, and strike grotesque poses. But Dada Gert vividly portrays both the artist and the forces that worked against her. Projections of archival photos and videos set the scene, as does the music, featuring Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, and Gert herself. Repeated movements—a bounding Charleston, or hips thrust forward with hands splayed near the crotch—knit the piece together. Thirty-five years after this self-declared witch died, Beserra brings her vibrantly to life. —Laura Molzahn $10-$20

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Core of the Pudel

It's no mean feat to distill the Faust legend into a jointly created, mostly wordless (words in English, at least) movement-theater piece that clocks in at just an hour. Yet in Trap Door Theatre's compassionate Core of the Pudel, director Thom Pasculli does no mean job. Creating a wounded, splintered Faust played by six performers—an Everyman and Everywoman—he suggests that we damn ourselves every day with small decisions driven by arrogance and a wish for transcendence. As the Devil, the charismatic Pasculli convincingly seduces Faust; Cortney McKenna, subtle yet affecting, is persuasive as Faust's victim. For me, all the tortured faces and acrobatic movement, more symbolic than dramatic, wore thin. But delicious homemade touches—puppetry, an onstage violinist, simple but evocative props, the performers' musical contributions—won me over. –Laura Molzahn $20-$25

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Creditors

David Greig's 2010 adaptation renders August Strindberg's drama as a sharp ideological and sexual power play. Strindberg's interest in Darwinian theories of survival manifests itself in the battle between a hypersexual writer, Tekla, and her former teacher and husband, Gustav, who's returned to destroy Tekla and her new lover, the ailing artist for whom she betrayed him. Beyond Strindberg's critique of marriage and other nonsustaining frameworks, this naturalistic drama explores notions of artistic salvation and the fluidity of the self. Mark L. Montgomery is hypnotic as Gustav, a man possessed by forces beyond his full comprehension. Under Sandy Shinner's direction, Remy Bumppo delivers a captivating 90-minute production of the Swede's still-gripping psychological drama. —Suzanne Scanlon $27.50-$47.50

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South Pacific

The book for this Rodgers & Hammerstein classic demonstrates how liberal good intentions can jeopardize a nice time. It takes not one but two fine love stories and turns them into earnest, silly lessons in racial tolerance. Stationed on a Pacific island during World War II, U.S. Navy nurse Nellie Forbush falls for dashing Frenchman Emile only to have second thoughts when she finds out he fathered two children by his now-deceased Polynesian lover. Any reasonable person might assume she's pissed that Emile wooed her without telling her about the kids. But no: she's a bigot who can't stand the fact that he had relations with a nonwhite woman. The other romance, between a Marine lieutenant and a Tonkinese girl, invokes similar foolishness. Still, the great score renders all objections moot, and David Bell's staging represents it nicely. Elizabeth Lanza's Nellie is delightful, and though Stephen Buntrock isn't much of a Frenchman as Emile, he's got great pipes. Bethany Thomas, meanwhile, jeopardizes the nice time in her own way, giving a starkly powerful performance as the calculating Bloody Mary. —Tony Adler $40-$48

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So I Killed a Few People

"Go for the heart, just don't eat it," says Archie Nunn, recalling a friend's counsel—pretty sage advice for someone with nothing in the world but an orange jumpsuit, a tape recorder, a date with the electric chair, and a solo show on death row. A legendary killer, Nunn has one last wish: to heap abuse on the Disney corporation, which he blames for his problems, and tell of his twin obsessions with serial television and serial murder. Annoyance vet Mark Sutton plays Nunn with southern charm and a working knowledge of Facebook and Twitter—the script, by David Summers and Gary Rudoren, has been updated since the play's 1997 premiere. Nunn's hatred of the media, coupled with his insistence on being seen and heard, gives the audience plenty to chew on in its dual roles of voyeur and priest. —Hannah Gold $8-$12

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Lascivious Something

Sheila Callaghan's intricately woven drama doesn't waste any time. The first act—set in 1980, when an American woman arrives at the Aegean villa of a former lover and his current wife—unleashes so many startling revelations that a theatergoer might spend intermission wondering if there are any surprises left. There are. Callaghan's conceit is to race ahead through a scene's possible outcomes, and then reset the action without comment. At times this annoys, telling us things that ought to be implied. But mostly it works, lifting the veil on a cruel, beautiful set of relationships that could come straight out of Aeschylus. Ronan Marra directs a powerful four-person cast for Signal Ensemble Theatre. —Keith Griffith $15-$20

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Sex, aka Wiener and Boobs

Written by three alums of the memorably bizarre TV sketch show The State, this antic 1998 farce gets its first Chicago staging from Chemically Imbalanced Comedy. Equal parts sharp self-awareness and broad buffoonery, it feels like something that could have been written yesterday—at least under Angie McMahon's whip-smart direction. The story, such as it is, concerns a Teaneck, New Jersey, sheriff's battle to rid his town of the evil Tad Theaterman, who controls a local empire of hookers and gigolos and is known for what he calls his "asshole ways." But the show's real strength is its unrelenting train of gags, and McMahon mainlines them with a wide bore. It's a powerful combination of intentionally dumb material and eagle-eyed comedic execution. —Keith Griffith $15

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Head of Passes

With his trilogy "The Brother/Sister Plays," Tarell Alvin McCraney announced himself as a talented young writer wielding a big vision. He also staked out a territory. The Plays—which Steppenwolf Theatre Company staged, beautifully, in 2010—are set in the Louisiana bayou country, among black folk who live on land easily mistaken for water, and who survive at the pleasure of hurricanes. Perhaps more important, they map out a spiritual homeland—gritty, even sordid, yet mythic in its resonances. Ex-cons and pregnant teenagers bear the names of Yoruba deities.

McCraney's new Head of Passes locates itself along similar geographic and metaphysical coordinates. The title refers to the marshlands surrounding the spot at the southernmost edge of Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. The community of the play is modest, mostly black, and as deeply rooted as it can be given the spongy terrain and periodically apocalyptic weather. As he did with "The Brother/Sister Plays," McCraney denotes the time period, suggestively, as the "distant present." Continue reading >> $20-$78

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Orange Flower Water

Craig Wright's play of domestic dysfunction contains one of the most excruciating onstage depictions of marital sex I've seen. Kathy (Cyd Blakewell) seduces Brad (Keith Neagle), the husband about to leave her for another woman. The raw intensity of the scene, which takes place on the singular set piece—a queen-size bed—manages to evoke both the ephemerality of love and the selfishness of pleasure. Director James Yost's staging reveals the hostility and aggression that underlie desire; Kathy doesn't want to keep Brad, she wants to degrade—or is it destroy?—him. Either way, Blakewell's emotional journey is one of the show's high points. Yost keeps all actors onstage throughout, heightening the feeling of ambient suffocation imparted by married coupling. Wright's script doesn't have much new to say about marriage, and the ending, with its moves toward closure, feels particularly cloying. Still, this expert BareBones and Interrobang coproduction appeals far beyond its climax. —Suzanne Scanlon $25

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The Silent Language

Adapted from a Serbian folktale, Miodrag Stanisavljevic's whimsical 1981 one-act feels like an amalgam of dozens of other fairy stories. A poor but worthy young man, Poor Gasho, saves a magical snake and is given a reward: the ability to speak the silent language of animals and plants. He sets out to save a beautiful princess from an evil elf, using his gift to overcome various obstacles along the way. In bringing this story to the stage, director Jacqueline Stone amps up the charm, packing her production with beguiling touches: fascinating masks (Kirk Anderson) and thrift shop costumes (Branimira Ivanova), not to mention an ensemble that plays well together and knows how to convey both the darkness and light of this rich tale. —Jack Helbig $15-$25