Theater & Performance

High Raunch The accomplished vulgarity of 500 Clown's latest, 500 Clown and the Elephant Deal, at Steppenwolf
By Tony Adler

Off the Island In Boleros For the Disenchanted, now at the Goodman, José Rivera asks: can love survive the loss of enchantment?
By Albert Williams

Critic's Choice It Came from the Neo-Futurarium VIII: Legend of the Neo-Futurarium The Neo-Futurists are keeping the B-movie faith alive with this affectionately goofy festival of six terrible scripts, presented in a series of one-night-only staged readings. Thursdays through 7/30 at the Neo-Futuarium.

Recommended Fucking Parasites Swedish playwright Ninna Tersman movingly depicts this predicament from the point of view of two teenagers—we never learn their nations of origin, but the girl's accent is Eastern European and the boy appears Middle Eastern—marooned in an unnamed country's immigration processing center while their parents undergo endless questioning. Through 7/18 at Lincoln Square Theatre.

Pill Hill Comedy and tragedy mix as six African-American buddies--current or former steelworkers who aspire to live in Chicago's affluent Pill Hill enclave--meet periodically between 1973 and 1983 to play cards and shoot the bull. Through 8/9 at ETA Creative Arts Foundation.

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