Under the taut direction of David Schwimmer, Kevin Douglas’s new comedy PLANTATION! succeeds in making audiences both laugh out loud and cringe. In PLANTATION!, Douglas explores one wealthy white woman’s attempt to make reparations for the benefits her family reaped from slavery. Douglas does so by posing the question: Does making amends actually work? And for whom does making amends actually benefit? The twist in PLANTATION!, however, is that these serious questions are explored almost entirely through the lens of broad, dramatic, zinger-filled satire. The all-female cast succeeds in landing each and every joke in this production, which brings the broadly comic nature of Douglas’s writing to the forefront.

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Andrew Lloyd Webber diehards rejoice: LOVE NEVER DIES, the sequel to that opulent music theater classic THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, has arrived in Chicago. Every single element of this production is overblown and visually stimulating. Webber’s score is big, dramatic, and lush. And while the score has the kind of beauty and magnificence expected from Webber, book writer Ben Elton’s storyline is crammed full of superfluous plotlines and Glenn Slater’s lyrics are mostly full of musical theater clichés. That said, I was highly entertained throughout the entire evening. This is escapist musical theater fun at its finest.

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Eric John Meyer’s world premiere play THE ANTELOPE PARTY opens on a meeting in an apartment setting notable for its vast and bright collection of MY LITTLE PONY memorabilia (kudos to set designer Joe Schermoly and properties designer Jesse Gaffney for this delightful visual). In this moment, we meet the members of the Rust Belt Brony Meet Up group. The bronies (sometimes referred to as Pegasisters when they’re female-identifying) are adult fans of the children’s show MY LITTLE PONY. The members of the Rust Belt group, in particular, identify with the show’s messages of magic and friendship and find solace among their brony counterparts.

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Tracy Letts’s world premiere THE MINUTES, now making its debut at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, unfolds in an unsuspecting manner. Both because the play has a smart structure that shifts over the course of the 100-minute runtime and also because the content left me contemplative for days after seeing it. Here Letts uses the framework of a small town’s council meeting as a microcosm of a larger discussion on the current political climate (though this play is not overtly about Trump’s presidency) and the desire to cling to certain ideologies in the name of order and group preservation, though those long-held beliefs may not be true. To borrow from Stephen Colbert, Letts has written a play that compellingly examines the appeal of “truthiness” in this contentious political environment.

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If you like your musicals dark—tragically, unceasingly dark—with a complicated score that’s well sung, BoHO Theatre’s MARIE CHRISTINE is just the production to see as the fall days grow ever shorter. Under Lili-Anne Brown’s keen direction with spirited choreography from Breon Arzell (who is becoming an ever more deft choreographer), Michael John LaChiusa’s show charts one wronged woman’s journey as she goes to dire lengths to seek revenge when her lover abandons her. Based on the Greek tragedy MEDEA, the titular Marie Christine is a privileged New Orleans woman with a gift of voodoo. She falls in love with the ship captain Dante, who later abandons her when he decides to pursue a political career and can no longer be seen with a woman of mixed race. Thus, though MARIE CHRISTINE takes place in the 1880s, the show’s contemplation of one woman’s desire to gain power in a society and to set herself on equal footing with a lover that will not fully accept her has great resonance with the present.

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Christopher Wheeldon’s visually stunning production of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS has come dancing into Broadway In Chicago’s Oriental Theatre. Wheeldon’s complex and extensive choreography is the most striking and entertaining element of this new musical, based upon the classic Gene Kelly film and with a new book by Craig Lucas that weaves together George and Ira Gershwin’s lush song catalog. AN AMERICAN IN PARIS enjoyed a successful Broadway run in 2015, and this touring company can certainly keep up with Wheeldon’s moves as well as the original ensemble.

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“This music is magical. My writing is stilted.” So proclaims Erik Jensen as famed rock critic Lester Bangs in HOW TO BE A ROCK CRITIC, now playing as part of Steppenwolf’s Lookout Series. This thought has likely crossed the mind of all art critics out there (certainly it has crossed mine), and it embodies the spirit of this 80-minute solo play as it charts Bangs’s career. Jensen and co-playwright Jessica Blank (the pair are also married) give us a portrait of Bangs—who died of a drug overdose at age 33—that demonstrates the passion, creativity, and self-destructive nature that defined him. This solo play provides an overview of Bangs’s trajectory and allows audiences to learn about the rock music he loved, aided by David Robbins’s sound design.

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Following a successful 2015 run, that great white whale MOBY DICK has returned to Lookingglass in a highly physical, inventive, and visually compelling production that’s fully in keeping with the company’s aesthetic. David Catlin’s adaptation of Herman Meville’s sprawling novel surrounds audiences in the universe of those whalers on board the Pequod in search of that elusive creature. With Courtney O’Neill’s artful and hand-crafted set design, the stage and audience reside in a whale “skeleton,” which cleverly also becomes the structure of the ship. As is common with Lookingglass productions, MOBY DICK also makes use of some talented, athletic performers who take on stunning acrobatic feats (choreography by The Actors Gymnasium’s Sylvia Hernandez-DiStasi).  But like any voyage, Catlin’s script has a number of slower, narration-heavy moments that lack much action. MOBY DICK vacillates between moments of captivating artistry combined with heightened physicality and lengthy stretches of pure narration.

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The world premiere of Karen Zacarías’s NATIVE GARDENS at Victory Gardens Theater provides ample humor and wit—even if the playwright’s neighborly metaphor sometimes feels too on the nose.

The play introduces us to two couples living next door to one another in a wealthy D.C. suburb: Tania (Paloma Nozicka) and Pablo Del Valle (Gabriel Ruiz), a young Latino couple new to the neighborhood, and Virginia (Janet Ulrich Brooks) and Frank Butley (Patrick Clear), a well-off white couple who are long-time residents with a meticulously maintained backyard. When Tania and Pablo suggest replacing a decrepit chain link fence between the two yards with a new wood one, all seems well. But when a survey of the land reveals Virginia and Frank may be taking up more land than they’re legally entitled, a dispute ensues-and the conversation widens to issues much larger than just the maintenance of backyard gardens.

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LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, now in a regional premiere production at Chicago Theatre Workshop, heartily captures the quirky personality of the 2006 Academy Award winning film upon which it’s based. Writing team William Finn and James Lapine (known for their previous collaborations on FALSETTOS and A NEW BRAIN) have keenly musicalized some of the film’s most oddball moments. In that great tradition of musical theater, Finn has cleverly located all the song buttons in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, and all the numbers fall neatly in service of the narrative. Under Maggie Portman’s direction (she also choreographed), this production moves along at a brisk and hilarious pace. Nick Sula provides musical direction that makes nice use of few musicians.

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