In just the past couple of weeks, theaters have started sending out announcements that they’re getting ready to reopen. Second City is already welcoming audiences back with Happy to Be Here on the mainstage and Out of the House Party at Second City e.t.c. Goodman plans to open its doors with Jocelyn Bioh‘s School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play, directed by Lili-Anne Brown, on July 30. (The show was in previews in March 2020 when the COVID shutdown hit, and a recorded performance from that truncated run was available as a streaming show for a time last year.) Teatro Zinzanni opens a new circus-dinner theater extravaganza July 8, for those ready for both indoor dining and entertainment under the Big Top. (The company performs in a spiegeltent, adorned with mirrors and chandeliers, set up inside downtown’s Cambria Hotel.)
Walkie Talkies
This 1980 Pulitzer Prize-winning piece by Lanford Wilson, the first in his celebrated “Talley Trilogy,” is in fact set outdoors. A boathouse in Lebanon, Missouri in the 1940s is the backdrop for this unlikely romance between Sally Talley, the “spinster” daughter of a conservative Protestant family, and Matt Friedman, an offbeat Jewish accountant and immigrant who woos Sally. Glenview’s Oil Lamp Theater offers an appropriately al fresco production, directed by Tad Ingram. St. David’s Episcopal Church, Glenview, 6/17-7/18, oillamptheater.org.
Sea Change
Chicago Repertory Ballet performs a revival of artistic director Wade Schaaf’s interpretation of the classic Ballets Russes piece, composed by Igor Stravinsky, along with other works in a ticketed outdoor performance at Montrose Harbor’s Cricket Hill. The company cautions that some material may not be suitable for younger audiences. Montrose Harbor, 7/23-7/25, chicagorepertoryballet.com.
