These days, truth is elusive — and Timeline Theatre’s THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT plays with that idea. It’s the age of endless fact-checking resources on the internet, but also the age of misinformation spread across TikTok, Reddit, and other social media. Wherein lies the truth? And what is accurate? Sometimes, it’s hard to say. THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT meditates on that theme.

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The Chicago premiere of Selina Fillinger’s play runs through December 17, 2023

Selina Fillinger’s POTUS: OR, BEHIND EVERY GREAT DUMBASS ARE SEVEN WOMEN TRYING TO KEEP HIM ALIVE has farce-within-a-farce energy. Fillinger draws on the conventions of classic farce as a day in the White House for seven women working for the President (or otherwise connected to him) try to contain POTUS’s messes. In this way, it’s obvious that Fillinger wants to infuse POTUS with “f*ck the patriarchy” energy and assert that it’s the women behind powerful male political figures who are the ones really making things happen. While it’s a clever and intriguing concept, Fillinger’s play doesn’t go that deep. I don’t think POTUS offers deep political or social commentary, even though the play certainly underscores that competent women in positions of power are usually overlooked. 

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BEETLEJUICE THE MUSICAL is a strange and entertaining spectacle. I first watched Tim Burton’s 1988 classic Halloween film BEETLEJUICE a couple weeks ago in preparation for seeing this musical, and I was curious about how it would translate to a stage musical. Interestingly, I think composer/lyricist Eddie Perfect and book writers Scott Brown and Anthony King have made the narrative tauter than the film — and they’ve inserted plenty of musical theater in-jokes along the way. While the title character makes sporadic appearances in the movie, the musical gives us more Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. The musical centers the lonely, bizarre, and sexually deviant (markedly more so than in the movie) bio-exorcist, who sets his sights on the recently deceased Adam and Barbara Maitland. Overall, it’s a fun, wacky show that works better than I expected. BEETLEJUICE isn’t at all serious, but it’s a good time.

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Stephen Sondheim’s thrilling and bone-chilling 1990 musical about presidential assassins (and attempted assassins) runs through December 17, 2023

Although it debuted off-Broadway more than thirty years ago, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s ASSASSINS remains a thrilling, bone chilling, brilliant, and immensely taut musical. Drawing on the United States history of successful and would-be presidential assassins, ASSASSINS is an astounding exploration of disillusionment and infamy. The musical feels remarkably prescient in the era of TikTok influencers and an epidemic of mass shootings in America; ASSASSINS unnervingly pre-dates both of these phenomena and yet is a real immediate reflection of them. When the ensemble sings in “The Gun Song” that “all you have to do is move your little finger/ and you can change the world,” it’s absolutely terrifying in a 2023 context. Sondheim and Weidman present a cast of historical characters that feel disenfranchised and disillusioned by American ideals, and modern America certainly hasn’t been disabused of this notion. 

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