THEATER

Opening

RDefying fate

Aztec Human Sacrifice is enlightening and entertaining.

Step into the Aztec Empire during the 16th century, on the eve of a new millennium.

City Lit’s world-premiere musical Aztec Human Sacrifice (written by Kingsley Day and Philip LaZebnik) tells the tale of The Chosen One (Freddy Mauricio), destined for sacrifice to ensure the sun’s rise. Defying fate, he flees with Princess (Marcela Ossa Gómez), provoking a high-stakes chase as the High Priest (Luis Del Valle), Emperor (Miguel De León), and his army pursue the ill-fated couple before the world ends.

This 90-minute fictional play offers a dark twist on a Disney animated adventure film, weaving together romance, twists, witty banter, and drama. Our young protagonist questions his societal norms, embarking on a self-discovery journey, brought to life by an energetic 13-member cast with infectious enthusiasm.

Director Jay Españo’s commitment to authenticity is commendable. Españo collaborated with Xochitl-Quetzal Aztec, a dance company in Little Village dedicated to preserving Mexico’s ancient culture, and consulted Virginia Miller, a professor of Pre-Columbian art at the University of Illinois Chicago, for costumes and set design. Costume designer Andrés Mota, a graduate of Mexico City’s National Institute of Fine Arts, already had a foundation in Aztec culture from his time in school but delved even deeper into Aztec clothing and accessories by watching documentaries.

Over a taut 90 minutes, Fakhrid-Deen unpeels the layers in these characters, making them far more than just representations of anguish and loss. Teamer in particular excels in moving between jocularity and sorrow, a man blown by the wind but hoping to find roots in a home and heart somewhere. —KERRY REID DANDELIONS Through 6/4: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, mpaact.org, $34-$42

RDon’t stop believing

Ernest Shackleton Loves Me is a goofy paean to foolish optimism.

Imagine if Harper, the Valium-addicted Mormon wife in Angels in America who imagines herself in Antarctica, actually met famous explorer Ernest Shackleton through some ri in the time-space continuum. Only this time, instead of being a neglected housewife, she’s an aspiring avant-garde composer looking for a big break.

As far as wild premises go, Joe DiPietro’s Ernest Shackleton Loves Me (music by Brendan Milburn, lyrics by Val Vigoda, with additional music by Ryan O’Connell), which is now in its Chicago premiere at Porchlight Music Theatre under Michael Unger’s direction, checks all the boxes. But though the internal logic breaks down from time to time in this 90-minute show, as a paean to “foolish optimists,” it mostly rings true.

Kat (Elisa Carlson) struggles to create new experimental music loops while her infant son sleeps next door. Her slacker boyfriend is on the road with a Journey cover band and hasn’t paid a dime toward the heating bill. Cold and unable to sleep for 36 hours? Who could relate to that? Enter Shackleton (Andrew Mueller) from the back of her refrigerator, bearing a banjo and a message of never giving up.

roles, and one lucky person even gets their own tarot reading.

CHOKRANE AZTEC HUMAN

The team’s passion shines through, resulting in an enlightening and entertaining experience. As City Lit’s 42nd season concludes, Aztec Human Sacrifice stands as a fitting finale, made all the more sentimental with artistic director and producer Terry McCabe’s nearing retirement. —BOUTAYNA

SACRIFICE Through 6/18: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 6/5 and 6/12 7:30 PM; City Lit Theater, 1020 W. Bryn Mawr, 773-293-3682, citylit.org, $34 ($29 seniors, $12 students and military)

RBronzeville blues

Dandelions blossoms at MPAACT.

A Bronzeville six-flat frames the sometimes melodramatic but compelling story in Tina Fakhrid-Deen’s Dandelions, now in a world premiere at MPAACT under the direction of Lauren Wells-Mann. Opening with a litany of the greats associated with the neighborhood (Sam Cooke, Ida B. Wells), the show soon moves into the lives of everyday people caught up in loss, addiction, and recriminations, all exacerbated by the forces of gentrification.

Mamie Davis (Carolyn Nelson) is the aging owner of the building, struggling to keep up with exploding property taxes. Her son King (André Teamer) lives in the basement and subsists on odd jobs, but his past history with drugs and stealing from his mom means he’s not welcome past her threshold (shades of Bubbles in The Wire). The couple across the hall from Mamie, Bill and Skokie Lane (J. Xavier and Dañelle Taylor, respectively) seem on the surface to represent the rising class, but they, like Mamie and King, have suffered a great tragedy in the past that puts up walls between them. Meantime, Bean (Brittany Davis), a friend of King’s still struggling with her own addiction, serves as a reminder of how hard it is to get clean and how easy it is for people to throw you away if you aren’t.

So OK, it’s kind of hokey, but damned if Carlson and Mueller don’t make it all work. The former in particular has a stupendous set of pipes. Add in Smooch Medina’s terrific projection designs (incorporating Frank Hurley’s real photos and films from the Shackleton archives), and you’ve got an o eat but oddly moving blend of history and hope. If Shackleton and his men could survive hell on earth, maybe an exhausted artist and mom can hold on another day.

—KERRY REID ERNEST SHACKLETON

LOVES ME Through 6/1: Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3:30 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; also Tue 5/30 7:30 PM and Wed-Thu 5/31 and 6/1 1:30 PM; open captions Sat 5/27 2:30 PM; Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 773-777-9884, porchlightmusictheatre. org, $48-$77

RThe Gender Play’s the thing

Two Wills—Wilhelm and Shakespeare— take center stage in About Face’s latest.

All of the world is a stage, and Will Wilhelm knows it. Their new production (cocreated and directed by Erin Murray), Gender Play, or what you Will, is the perfect platform for them to explore their gender journey while also expressing their more dramatic side via monologuing with a side of dissertation. In this charming one-enby show, Wilhelm invites us into their red, velvet-covered salon to explore their lived gender experience through the lens of a séance/tarot reading/soliloquy mash-up on the timelessness of genderqueering, as evidenced by the words of William Shakespeare himself.

During this witty soul search, Wilhelm happily brings the audience into the fold, remarking with an air knock on an air door, “Have you noticed a fourth wall yet?” Audience members are solicited early on, given cameo

One of the most fascinating aspects of Wilhelm’s performance is the singsong rhythm that emerges as they toggle back and forth from the Elizabethan English of their namesake to modern English, selecting epic scenes from various plays by the bard, including Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But Wilhelm themselves cheekily notes that their genderplay is not just for Shakespeare aficionados who might think they know all there is to know about the works of the bard, quoting Shakespeare himself —“A fool thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” Instead, Wilhelm digs deep into the experience of being othered as a trans person and draws parallels between the othered folks that Shakespeare made sure to represent (from gender-bending to working-class people to people of foreign descent). They also delicately note that their reflection on Shakespeare necessarily involves their own reflections on themselves, echoing Shakespeare’s “The purpose of playing . . . is to hold, as ‘twere, a mirror up to nature”—the magic essence of all art. —KIMZYN CAMPBELL GENDER PLAY, OR WHAT YOU WILL Through 6/3: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; industry night Mon 5/22 8 PM, no show Sat 5/27 3 PM; Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, 773-697-3830, aboutfacetheatre.com, pay what you can ($5-$35)

RAcademic fireworks

Hatefuck’s romance explodes Muslim stereotypes.

You don’t have to be a sucker for love-hate romances among the literati to fall in love with Rehana Lew Mirza’s Hatefuck but it helps. Then again, Lew Mirza’s play, now in its local premiere with First Floor Theater under Arti Ishak’s clever direction, provides a lens not usually implemented in tales of professional and personal shenanigans in the academic and publishing world. (Think Lucky Hank or The Chair as recent entries in the genre.) That lens is the way in which Muslims are stereotyped and demonized in popular culture. And that gives

Hatefuck higher stakes and deeper resonances than I’ve usually encountered in these scenarios. Layla (Aila Ayilam Peck) is a professor at Wayne State University. She shows up at a party thrown by successful writer Imran (Faiz Siddique), seemingly to let him know she won’t include him on her syllabus because she thinks he’s sold out by exploiting Muslim stereotypes in his bestsellers. Well, as the title implies, that initial acrimony gives way to passionate physical and intellectual fireworks. (Kudos to Samantha Kaufman’s inspired intimacy direction.) “It’s not my job to make Muslims human,” Imran declares. “We are human,” Layla retorts. Lew Mirza’s script is loaded with direct-to-the-gut revelations but also subtle moments that tease out the nuances in how Layla and Imran have become the people they are in a place and time that’s all too quick to reduce them to convenient tropes about burqas and bombs. And at the center of Hatefuck is a funny but aching dissection of an evergreen question: can you change a system from within, or must you settle for holding onto your values while remaining on the sidelines?

—KERRY REID HATEFUCK Through 6/10: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 5/22 and 6/5 8 PM (industry), Wed 5/31 8 PM (understudy performance) and Sat 6/10 3 PM; Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, 773-697-3830, firstfloortheater.com, $5-$35

R Unleashed moms

MotherFreakingHood! celebrates the sisterhood of parenting.

Mother’s Day weekend provided the perfect time to open this irreverent, boisterous look at three women’s journey from two blue lines on a pee stick to graduation day. Running at Mercury Theater Chicago’s Venus Cabaret, the musical by Julie Dunlap and Sara Stotts features first-time mom Rachel (Tafadzwa Diener), second-time mom Angie (Jacquelyne Jones), and fourth-time mom Marcia (Leah Morrow) assisted by Maya Rowe playing every role from birthing specialist to principal to Mother Xanax.

Director Heidi Van has them dancing in the aisles, enveloping the audience with their high-energy hilarity, and making the crowd coconspirators in this tale that omits none of the messy, frustrating, embarrassing, and joyful aspects of motherhood.

Rowe delightfully swaps out wigs, costumes, physicality, and intonations to provide a riotous parade of foils to the three mothers who become fast friends. Diener charms as she grows from naive to powerful; Jones captures the CPA control of a powerful mom who must deal with the shattering of careful plans; and Morrow creates a tired, older mom who thought she was done with all the diaper stuff.

Dunlap and Stotts play to the rule that three times is funny with jokes repeating over the 18-year period of the show, eliciting more laughs each time.

While unabashedly a comedy, MotherFreakingHood! is filled with moments of sweetness, celebrating the bonds of women who help each other through the incomparable journey of parenting. —BRIDGETTE M. REDMAN MOTHERFREAKINGHOOD! Through 6/11: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; Venus Cabaret at Mercury Theater Chicago, 3745 N. Southport, 773-360-7365, mercurytheaterchicago. com, $65 (premium reserved tables $260)

RA refreshing October Storm

Joshua Allen’s south-side story is a rich slice of life.

Expertly written, exquisitely performed, steamy, and hilarious, The October Storm at the Raven Theatre offers a warm slice of south-side Chicago life in the 1960s. Joshua Allen’s play, the second in his Grand Boulevard Trilogy (the first was The Last Pair of Earlies, produced by Raven in 2021) is refreshing in that it explores the depth and humanity of Black life without being tethered to the specter of racism. The outstanding ensemble cast is anchored by powerhouse actor Shariba Rivers, who plays Mrs. Elkins, the tightly wound young grandmother in desperate need of a reason to let her spine slip. Rivers’s portrayal of the terse matriarch is wry and profound as her inescapable gravity suspends the other characters for better or worse.

Jaeda LaVonne is deliciously petulant in her portrayal of Gloria, Mrs. Elkins’s naive and unmoored granddaughter, bursting at the seams with teenage angst. A delightful Brandon J. Sapp provides the perfect counterweight as Crutch, Gloria’s boyfriend, chipper and earnestly dorky. Felisha D. McNeal is an absolute comedic genius, keeping the audience in stitches from her very first line as Lucille, the jolly, busybody neighbor with the heart of gold. Nathaniel Andrew provides the catalyst for this story as the charming army vet Louis, his presence a lightning bolt of change to their predictable lives.

Director Malkia Stampley doesn’t miss a single beat in this richly layered tale, including thoughtful scene transitions that further the storyline and keep you deeply immersed in the storytelling every moment. A rich and nuanced exploration of identity, longing, trauma, and hope, The October Storm is as refreshing as the rain.

—SHERI FLANDERS THE OCTOBER STORM Through 6/25: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; touch tour Sun 6/11 1:45 PM; Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark, 773-338-2177, raventheatre.com, $40 (students, active military, and veterans $15)

Queer Singapore stories

Tango gets a U.S premiere at PrideArts.

Last year, speaking to a BBC reporter about the Singapore government repealing Section 377A, a colonial- ist-era holdover that criminalized gay sex, local LGBTQ+ historian Isaac Tng paraphrased the gay community’s mixed response to the news as follows: “It’s like a nice, hot cup of coffee,” he says, “that got le on the table.”

It’s a sensation I remember from the U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, which felt like a victory long-deferred and wedged behind a brewing, more vicious, litigiously nihilistic anti-queer movement.

Originally produced by Singapore-based company Pangdemonium in 2017, Joel Tan’s Tango was written to be performed to an audience already immersed in the nonlinear modern history of queer rights in Singapore, a fact that gave director Carol Ann Tan some pause to present to a Chicago audience. In practice, though, sharing this uncompromised vision of Joel Tan’s story with Americans introduces viewers to enlightening parallels and echoes of both progress and backwards steps taken in the West. It also adds complicated, thought-provoking, squeamish layers to watching a white, wealthy British banker shout down an elderly service worker, homophobic as she may be.

In a story that deals with explosive Internet virality, though, ignition points in the story don’t quite build enough dramatic spark to hit as hard as they could. Reliance on aging and de-aging actors, too, creates artifice in a story deeply rooted in generational politics. But moments of tenderness, like those between father (Cai Yong) and son (G Hao Lee), or clandestine lovers (Oscar Hew, Ronnie Derrick Lyall), ring true and hit home—wherever that is. —DAN JAKES TANGO Through 6/11: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Pride Arts Center, 4139 N. Broadway, pridearts.org, $35 (students/ seniors $30)

RA perfect Ten

Gi ’s long-running short play festival makes a triumphant return.

What can you say in ten minutes? If the ten examples in the Gi ’s triumphant return production of its long-running series are any indication, anything and everything.

A mother agonizes over getting her eight-year-old an iPhone. A young man acts out revelations from his childhood telenovela-style. A Da Bears type chafes at COVID-related changes before being rescued by the target of his abuse. A first date skips forward to a deathbed farewell and many points in between. An improv team riffs on audience suggestions in a local tradition as old as deep-dish pizza. A Chicago Lab School summer camp counselor reminisces about watching over some of the city’s most kidnappable children. A theater company agonizes over what to cut from their production of The Seagull while reining in each member’s boundaryless ego. Doctors hold a secret meeting to suss out a response to an existential threat to their profession.

An old man and young woman in a park talk past and around one another to show the incompatibility of one another’s love languages before somehow coming together. Five people bang noisemakers, scream out rhymes, and dance anarchically to purge their collective and individual lockdown traumas.

The wonder of this show is how within each short increment some pieces feel expansive while others zip by, but all suggest only a tip of an iceberg, a hint of endless comedic and dramatic possibility from a very talented theater company. It’s a miraculous grab bag without a rotten apple in the bunch. —DMITRY

SAMAROV TEN 2023 Through 5/22: Mon and ThuSat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Filament Theatre, 4041 N. Milwaukee, thegifttheatre.org, $10 v