The Chicago engagement of this theatrical adventure through the Wizarding World — the national tour debut — runs through February 1, 2025

HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD is three hours of nostalgia-fueled, utterly captivating theater…with heaps of stage magic. The Chicago engagement marks the national tour debut of the eighth installment in J.K. Rowling’s HARRY POTTER series. For the tour, director John Tiffany cut down the material from the show’s original two-part, five-hour theatrical epic (with story devised by Tiffany and Rowling and script written by Jack Thorne). This shortened tour version still offers ample time to deliver CURSED CHILD’S storyline, and most importantly, bring to life many of the series’ iconic characters and magic spells. 

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The season-opening production at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre runs through October 20

Goodman Theatre’s season-opening production of INHERIT THE WIND centers on a fictionalized version of the 1925 “Scopes Monkey” trial — at its heart, a debate on creationism vs. evolutionism. Though playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee make it clear they’re on the side of evolution, it’s still a treat to watch this production’s Matthew Harrison Brady (Alexander Gemignani) and Henry Drummond (Harry Lennix) go head-to-head in a verbal spar. I think it’s a risk to stage a classic play, like this piece from 1955, and claim it points to the current moment. But in the case of Artistic Associate Henry Godinez’s production, that holds up fairly well for INHERIT THE WIND. It’s not really a stretch to stage a classic that advocates for the ability to have original thoughts and challenge ideas in 2024. 

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Michael Frayn’s farce-within-a-farce runs through November 3, 2024

Michael Frayn’s NOISES OFF is a genuinely funny homage to classic British farce, replete with more doors and sardines than seems humanly possible. Former Steppenwolf Artistic Director Anna D. Shapiro has returned to direct this increasingly chaotic 1982 farce-within-a-farce. NOISES OFF follows a fictional company of actors and crew members staging another farce called NOTHING ON. Over the course of two hours and 40 minutes (with two intermissions) it includes three Act Ones — showing us various, ever messier moments in the production journey. The first Act One finds the company in a hurried dress rehearsal, the second backstage about a month or so into the show’s tour, and the third near the tour’s end as everything descends into madness.

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The Chicago area premiere of Dave Molloy’s Best Musical Tony-nominated show runs through November 3

Writers Theatre’s production of NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 is inventive, glamorous, and tightly executed — no small feat for Dave Molloy’s complex and unique musical. Director Katie Spelman’s 13-member ensemble is likewise chock full of powerhouse performers. Particularly when it comes to the vocals, this cast is reaching — and finding — their way to the stars. 

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