What’s New

When Elder emerged in Massachusetts in the mid-2000s, they worshiped at the altar of stoner-doom heavyweights such as Sleep and Eyehategod. But in the years since, they’ve emerged from behind the weed to establish a voice of their own. By their fifth LP, 2020’s Omens, most of the band had relocated to Berlin, and as a group they’d shed much of their early sludge and grime in favor of heady strains of prog, psych, postrock, and more. Unfortunately, it came out just as the music industry shut down. Elder’s new album, Innate Passage, arose from that period when the very definition of time felt like it’d come unmoored—days and weeks blurred together, and it became a morbid half-joke to wonder how many months long March 2020 could possibly be. Though a global pandemic is by definition a collective experience, prolonged isolation rendered each person’s experience of it intensely personal. Innate Passage loosely explores the notion of life and time as an individual journey—not just the paths we take, but the lenses we use to filter reality. Heard in that light, it feels appropriate that the record’s five long-form tracks sometimes feel simultaneously kaleidoscopic, fantastical, and yearning; “Coalescence” pairs motorik chug with celestial melody and delves into forlorn atmospheres, then jets off to space with intergalactic synths. Innate Passage is a milestone from musicians who’ve proved themselves unafraid of reinvention. There may be more rocky waters ahead, but Elder’s silky, exploratory rock doesn’t get mired in turbulence—and it’s inspiring to hear them sail on through it.

Elder’s Innate Passage is available through Bandcamp.

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Mosque4Mosque is not a monolithic representation of the Arab American Muslim experience, and perhaps that’s exactly the point. 

Written by Omer Abbas Salem and directed by Sophiyaa Nayar, this charming production challenges all preconceived notions of a play about an Arab American Muslim family. 

In this sitcom-esque dramedy, Ibrahim (played by Salem) and his family navigate their lives in Chicago prior to and after Trump’s inauguration. Ibrahim is a queer Syrian American millennial working through his first relationship ever, with his white boyfriend James (Jordan Dell Harris). Having helped raise his 18-year-old sister Lena (Gloria Imseih Petrelli) after his father died from cancer, Ibrahim is accustomed to taking care of his family first, even if that means living a hushed life. His mother Sara—“Sa like sorry, Ra like ramen”—(Rula Gardenier) on the other hand, has other plans; she is determined to find him the perfect Muslim man to marry. 

Mosque4Mosque Through 12/17: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Wed 12/14, 7:30 PM, no shows Thu-Fri 11/24-11/25; Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, aboutfacetheatre.com, pay what you can ($5-$35 suggested)

Salem, who is also Syrian American, first wrote Mosque4Mosque in 2019 through Jackalope Theatre’s Playwrights Lab. In July 2020, the play was workshopped and performed virtually through the Criminal Queerness Festival and Dixon Place, directed by Sharifa Elkady. Steppenwolf Theatre Company then selected the play, under the direction of community advocate Arti Ishak, for its SCOUT New Play Development Initiative, a groundbreaking accomplishment for MENA artists like Salem and Ishak. But a seat at the table is not enough. “They have made it very clear to us they are ill-equipped to predict what our needs may be because they’ve never worked with a group of Arab actors and they don’t have any Arab actors in their ensemble,” Salem said in an interview with the Reader. 

Now produced at About Face Theatre and supported by Silk Road Rising, Mosque4Mosque deconstructs stereotypical and harmful media portrayals of MENA communities and Muslims. The Den’s Bookspan Theatre becomes Ibrahim’s family kitchen—the heart of an Arab home. The subtle details can be easy to miss but are indispensable. In front of the shoe rack, a pair of cream balgha—traditional heelless slippers from the Maghreb region—sit next to a pair of hot-pink fluffy sandals. Vibrant oriental rugs cover the wooden floors and complement the Arabian vermilion armchair.  A hookah and a massive jar of pickled green olives rest on their white refrigerator, which is decorated with family photos and receipts. Some props almost feel ironic, like the ceramic camel by the kitchen sink. (Steven Abbott designed the set, with props by Lonnae Hickman.)

But it is Salem’s witty writing style that shines throughout this production. Through his use of comedic relief, Salem drives sensitive topics forward in a way that allows the audience to lean into the conversation. We first meet Ibrahim in a church. Ibrahim’s holy confession is amusing, but it is a monumental scene because it instantly forms a reverent connection between religions and dissects the contrasts between Catholic and Muslim guilt. 

In his depiction of an Arab American family, Salem avoids creating unrealistic portrayals by poking fun at the family’s eccentricities. Gardenier’s heartwarming performance as Sara is an enjoyable representation of the hospitable, lovable, and sometimes quirky nature of Arab, Muslim, and immigrant mothers. She immediately wins our hearts, and we recognize her controlling behavior as a form of love. Sara’s naiveté is hyperbolized to reflect her desire to be a part of Ibrahim’s life. Who else would google “famous Muslim gay men” to better understand her son?

In just two hours (including an intermission), Salem even manages to weave in subplots to highlight the multifaceted complexities of these characters. Lena, for example, is a walking paradox. We first see Lena coming home late, fumbling to put her hijab back on, which she occasionally wears, mainly for her mother. As she struggles to tell her mother that she quit the Scholastic Bowl to join the cheerleading team, she reflects the internal pressures children of immigrants experience to please their parents.

In between two cultures, young Arab Americans often struggle with the fear of disappointing their parents and their aspiration to live shamelessly. This message really resonates when Ibrahim says, “There’s a little bit of a lie in every truth I tell her,” referring to his mother. Still, this is a play about identity and belonging, highlighting universal struggles that everyone can relate to. 

Even with all the hardships, Salem never forgets what makes these families so special. It’s the chaotic family dinners. It’s the unbreakable sibling bond between Lena and Ibrahim. It’s Sara’s willingness to create a dating profile for her son on a queer Muslim “rearranged arranged marriage” website. This play also addresses the immigration issues caused by Trump’s Muslim ban, but it skims the surface. In the end, Sara returns home after her trip to Damascus but is stopped by immigration. While this story line felt rushed, its call to action couldn’t be clearer. In an era where Arabs and Muslims are either invisible or perceived as problems, Mosque4Mosque demands for us to be seen as whole. At the same time, it sends a message to MENA and Muslim communities that they are seen.

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Taylor Hanna taught herself to cook on the job. “I don’t have formal training,” says the 17-year veteran of nine restaurant kitchen lines, and one half of the pickling power duo Vargo Brother Ferments. “Chefs would give me tasks to do and I wouldn’t know what they were talking about. I’d go into the walk-in and google on my phone, ‘What is soubise?’ And you’d just have to be quick on the fly with it. It’s a luxury if your chefs and managers are willing to teach you. Oftentimes, there’s no time in the shift to go, ‘Hey, can you spend 15 minutes with me to teach me how to sharpen my knife?’”

Jennifer Kim learned the fundamentals in culinary school, and sharpened them in kitchens such as Blackbird and Avec, but when it came time to open her first solo brick-and-mortar Passerotto, she was flying blind with respect to financial operations. (She sought help from industry friends.)

During the pandemic both Hanna and Kim emerged as ardent participants and organizers in the semiunderground microbusiness economy that flourished in its first 18 months. They didn’t just rely on skills learned on the fly to further their own ends, but shared them with the loose collaborative community that grew up within this alternative economy. Through pop-ups, workshops, and a barnstorming cross-country tour in the summer of ’21, Alt Economy—the open-source mutual aid platform Kimstarted—provided hospitality workers with educational resources to survive and thrive outside the established restaurant industry.

“You could kind of fly under the radar with certain things,” says Kim. “We were working at homes, working without licensing. There was flexibility with creativity on how you got to operate your microbusiness.”

But ask any number of cooks, bartenders, and servers who supported themselves within this decentralized labor movement how it’s going now, and the thrilling autonomy that came along with it has lost some of its shine. The reopening of brick-and-mortars drained blood from the microbusiness model, while a shift in algorithms withered the robust Instagram engagement many of these businesses depended on to get their food in front of eyeballs. Burnout and/or the need to make rent sent many workers back to brick-and-mortars—or out of the industry altogether.

“The pop-up scene was on fire,” says Hanna. “It was very trendy and cool. But you can’t rely on something to be cool to sustain you. It has to be deeper than that.”

“A lot of people are trying to figure out, ‘How do I keep this a viable business?’” says Kim, who’s currently teaching a fine dining course at her alma mater, Kendall College. “’How do I work within these rigid systems again? How do you compete with these giant businesses?’”

That’s why the pair, building from an informal fish butchery class Kim led in her home last winter, are launching a series of free industry worker skill-share classes, entirely funded by the community. “It was just, ‘Bring over some fish, and we’ll learn how to break it down from whole into filets,’” says Kim.“Participants felt empowered to continue building butchering skills. A few felt more confident to order whole fish versus filets, which has a financial impact on their food cost.”

Kim also posted a series of free financial worksheets that give “workers and biz owners a road map on how costs, cash flow, and profits work within whatever ecosystem they are currently participating.” In the meantime, she and Hanna began imagining how to go bigger: “Is there something that we can build out that people can come and share information, share skills, share resources in an environment that’s driven by the community and taught by the community?”

Earlier this month they put out a call for resources to support a series of three classes, the first beginning December 12 and featuring hands-on sessions on pickling, canning, curing, and fermentation (taught by Hanna and partner Sebastian Vargo); knife sharpening (Kevin Silverman of Northside Cutlery); whole fish butchery (Hatchery instructor Matt Miller); and fish curing and fermentation (Kim). They’re working on adding a pastry class. This first set of classes will be held at Impact Kitchen at the Hatchery, a space they’re renting out through donations. Others have offered drinks, snacks, or their own bar and kitchen spaces for future classes, but Kim and Hanna haven’t yet hit their goals to finance the next two sessions yet.

They’re still looking for support for December’s microbusiness courses on financial acumen and cash flow; business plan development, graphics, and design; and food photography. In early 2023 the plan is a series of introductory courses for BIPOC and undocumented workers interested in food photography and styling; bartending; coffee and barista work; and wine 101.

“We heard a lot from industry workers who are interested in entering the specific positions within hospitality that are typically gatekept from BIPOC or undocumented workers,” says Kim. “A lot of those positions, you need prior experience. We can at least jump-start the process of, ‘Here are the basics of behind the bar; all the tools that you’ll see; the language that they use.’”

Networking is a natural outgrowth of these classes, both for potential job leads and brainstorming on larger systemic issues within the industry. “It gives us a chance to almost have a town hall,” says Hanna. “We’re all gathered. Let’s start talking about the realities of what’s happening. For people who do want to keep doing this, what are the changes that we need to make? It’s a part of a conversation that needs to be had collectively.”

Donations of money, food, time, space, or equipment to support future classes can be made via Venmo @itsforpickles or Zelle at [email protected]. Kim and Hanna pledge to publish transparent financials on how all dollars are allocated.

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When Elder emerged in Massachusetts in the mid-2000s, they worshiped at the altar of stoner-doom heavyweights such as Sleep and Eyehategod. But in the years since, they’ve emerged from behind the weed to establish a voice of their own. By their fifth LP, 2020’s Omens, most of the band had relocated to Berlin, and as a group they’d shed much of their early sludge and grime in favor of heady strains of prog, psych, postrock, and more. Unfortunately, it came out just as the music industry shut down. Elder’s new album, Innate Passage, arose from that period when the very definition of time felt like it’d come unmoored—days and weeks blurred together, and it became a morbid half-joke to wonder how many months long March 2020 could possibly be. Though a global pandemic is by definition a collective experience, prolonged isolation rendered each person’s experience of it intensely personal. Innate Passage loosely explores the notion of life and time as an individual journey—not just the paths we take, but the lenses we use to filter reality. Heard in that light, it feels appropriate that the record’s five long-form tracks sometimes feel simultaneously kaleidoscopic, fantastical, and yearning; “Coalescence” pairs motorik chug with celestial melody and delves into forlorn atmospheres, then jets off to space with intergalactic synths. Innate Passage is a milestone from musicians who’ve proved themselves unafraid of reinvention. There may be more rocky waters ahead, but Elder’s silky, exploratory rock doesn’t get mired in turbulence—and it’s inspiring to hear them sail on through it.

Elder’s Innate Passage is available through Bandcamp.

Read More

Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for nonprofit theater, is about to release its latest annual report on the fiscal health of the field, Theatre Facts 2021. (Yes, it’s almost 2023, but this stuff takes time to collect.)

The news is not great.

The report, which compares results over a five-year period, tracks the startling COVID-era jolts the theaters experienced. Average income from single ticket sales, for example, was 93 percent lower in fiscal 2021 than in 2017. And subscription income took an 83 percent dive.  

It was a crash. But, says TCG communications director Corinna Schulenburg, there was a financial upside: expenses were down during that period when theaters were shuttered, while government aid kicked in. The result was a frothy blip of budget surpluses.

“Because of federal funding, and because theaters were producing less, they actually had some liquidity,” Schulenburg says. In fact, “what we call their working capital, which essentially is cash flow,” hit a peak in 2021.

It was so good that, according to a “snapshot survey” TCG conducted earlier this year, only 10 percent of reporting nonprofit theaters had a deficit budget in 2021, and over 70 percent reported an operating surplus that year.

Now, Schulenburg says, the challenge is that the federal funding has gone away, and the cash cushion is disappearing. By 2022, according to the same survey, 30 percent of responding theaters were projecting deficit operating budgets, and there’s a huge increase in that cohort on the horizon: 62 percent are projecting budget deficits in 2023.  

Meanwhile, audiences have not been fully returning. (Arts Alliance Illinois says, anecdotally, that members are seeing a  30-to-50 percent drop in performing arts audiences.)  And Schulenberg notes that board member and individual giving has also declined.

“This was a big surprise for us,” Schulenburg says. “We’ve seen individual giving continue to rise, annually. Theaters have been able to count on that kind of community support.” But from 2020 to 2021, trustee giving declined 26 percent, while individual giving was down 7 percent. “The pandemic is still active, shows are being canceled, and audiences are not totally returning. From our perspective, we know how resilient our field is, but we’re deeply concerned.”

The bright spot in all this, Schulenburg says, is the success of advocacy for federal funding at the height of the pandemic. It was “really remarkable; the investment from the shuttered venues operators grant and especially the PPP, as well as the ERTC [Employee Retention Tax Credit].” Over 97 percent of surveyed theaters received some form of federal relief funding, a level of investment not seen since the Federal Theatre Project during the Great Depression.

Goodman Theatre executive director Roche Schulfer Courtesy Goodman Theatre

Schulenburg mentions a presentation on nonprofit theater economics (“Why Not-for-Profit Theatre?”) that Goodman Theatre executive director Roche Schulfer delivered at a TCG forum in 2017. It was “prescient,” she says.

I went to the source for an update.

“In 1966, two economists, William Baumol and William Bowen, wrote a book [Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma] illustrating the basic economic challenge of the performing arts, which is that you can’t take advantage of gains in productivity or technology like other sectors of the economy. It takes the same number of musicians the same amount of time to play Beethoven’s symphonies, or actors to do Shakespeare’s plays, as it did when they were written,” Schulfer says. “So, as the cost of labor goes up, unless there’s a significant gain in fundraising, there’s a gap that’s filled by increased ticket prices.”

“Over the last 50 years or so, ticket prices have risen by far more than the cost of living. At the Goodman, for example, our top ticket is around $90 now. If it had followed the cost of living, it would be in the range of $33. We’ve been raising prices to make up for the gap in fundraising.”

“Our mission is to provide new and engaging work, and not to just respond to what the marketplace wants,” he told me. “But consumers will pay more for something they’re familiar with than for something unknown to them.”  

Schulfer says this disconnect, amid a shift in institutional funding, means tough times ahead:

“I think there are going to be major performing arts organizations around the country that are going to face real crises in the next 48 months. Groups like Arts Alliance Illinois and TCG are trying to build on what happened during the pandemic, which was an awareness of the importance of the arts to the overall economy. There’s an effort to build on that through the National Endowment for the Arts or other federal programs. We’ll see if that happens.” 

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Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky riffs on the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty, and interviews politicians, activists, journalists and other political know-it-alls. Presented by the Chicago Reader, the show is available by 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays at chicagoreader.com/joravsky—or wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t miss Oh, What a Week!–the Friday feature in which Ben & producer Dennis (aka, Dr. D.) review the week’s top stories. Also, bonus interviews drop on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays. 

Chicago Reader podcasts are recorded on Shure microphones. Learn more at Shure.com.

Chicago Reader senior writer Ben Joravsky discusses the day’s stories with his celebrated humor, insight, and honesty on The Ben Joravsky Show.

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It’s a common misconception that prisons are designed to rehabilitate people, and that we are getting educated, receiving therapy, and learning trades inside. People seem to think that recidivism occurs simply because people released from prison decide to throw all of that away and choose to commit new crimes. It’s just so far from the truth.

The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) doesn’t “correct” anything. There is no such thing as rehabilitation here. Prisons in Illinois are nothing more than a waste management system: society views people in prison as trash and throws us away. Society’s attitude toward prisoners has led to increasingly harsh conditions and dehumanization techniques. 

Prisons go out of their way to dehumanize people. It starts with stripping us of our names. Within IDOC I am not Anthony Ehlers; I am B-60794. Your name doesn’t matter. If you get mail, they ask for your prison number. To get medicine, they ask for your prison number. If you leave your cell for any reason, they ask for your prison number! Unconsciously, you begin to think of yourself in terms of a prison number as well: once they take away your name, who are you?

When a person endures year after year of being degraded, hated, used, assaulted, and dehumanized, told they are garbage by society, is it any wonder they become depressed, antisocial, and angry?

IDOC offers no educational opportunities and does next to nothing to educate prisoners. I have been told repeatedly that because I have a natural life sentence, I’m not worth being educated. Education should be a basic human right, particularly in prison; it should be a mandatory part of one’s prison sentence.

It’s only recently that Northwestern’s Prison Education Program (NPEP) has provided an option for people imprisoned in Illinois. It’s through this program alone that I’ve been able to get a formal education while incarcerated. Spots are coveted and hard to come by: in their third cohort of students, 20 people were chosen out of some 400 applicants. And from what I’ve heard, IDOC told NPEP not to accept anyone with long sentences, because in the prison administrators’ eyes, those people aren’t worthy of education, either.  

Think about that. People being released from prison have been deliberately denied any education, yet they are expected to be rehabilitated. When these people get out, they need an education and job skills, because the vast majority will return to the community they came from. Without even an education, what are they to do? How will they live? 

Society should have a vested interest in their education and programming. If rehabilitation is truly IDOC’s goal, then education and job training should be a priority.

When people don’t have something positive to focus on in prison, like education, they find other, more negative ways to fill their time. You get an education in prison one way or another: if IDOC won’t provide it, other prisoners will. In prison, you can learn from others’ mistakes, or how to get away with things, or how to do things you’ve never done before. You can learn to hate, and to let your anger fester against the system. You can learn to hate society, which you learn hates you in return. 

In prison, mental health issues are exacerbated, and you must learn to deal with them alone, because you don’t have help. The prison population is disproportionately made up of Black and Brown people who have been subjected to racist systems all their lives. Nearly all prisoners have experienced trauma and both physical and sexual violence; many have been through the foster care system; many suffer from mental illness; some dull their pain with substance use. Prison has a messed-up culture and is filled with broken people.

The medical care we get in prison is disastrously subpar, and COVID-19 hit prisoners particularly hard. Here in Stateville more than 25 men died of COVID-19, and many had family and friends on the outside who also died or were hospitalized. That kind of worry and pain is difficult for anyone, but especially in a place like this. Imagine being locked in a cage far from people who need you, trying to make it through the death of your family or friends all alone. It’s a wonder some guys were able to hold on to their sanity at all.

Prisoners are at a higher risk for heart disease and other stress-related ailments because in an environment like this one, you must maintain constant situational awareness. Being sentenced to prison is punishment, but we are often subject to additional, extrajudicial punishment, because some staff feel it’s their duty to make prisoners’ lives miserable. 

Our mental state is always stressed, always on alert, not just from the threat of assault from other prisoners, but also from the staff who put obstacles in your way at every turn. During “shakedowns,” they take property—including school work and legal work, and letters and pictures from loved ones—destroy it, or throw it away. Sometimes during shakedowns they break an imprisoned person’s TV, radio, or tablet, severing their connection to the outside. Sometimes they place you in a cell with someone who is hostile or dangerous, and you either have to fight or voluntarily go to segregation (solitary).

Most guards believe their word is law. After all, who can you complain to? They often fabricate rules to deny your rights, and if you challenge them in any way, they will write you a disciplinary report. This allows them to take away the few privileges you do retain, like phone calls to loved ones, digital messaging, and access to the commissary. Every positive accomplishment you achieve in prison is accompanied by an intense struggle to overcome, circumvent, or blatantly break the arbitrary rules made up by staff. 

All the while you have to convince yourself daily that your life has value, even when the rest of the world tells you it doesn’t.

The prison itself is in a shocking state of disrepair. The cell houses are crumbling. Cracks run from the foundation to the roof. The cells are full of peeling lead-based paint and black mold. Many cells have plumbing that doesn’t work. The entire prison has had no hot water for five months, and we’re forced to take showers and wash our clothes in cold water. The water here is poisonous. We have very high levels of both copper and lead in our water. Both metals will make you very sick, and can lead to fatal cancers and other ailments. We’ve had previous bouts of Legionella bacteria here. We have rats, roaches, and birds in our cell houses and chow halls. How many people have to deal with birds shitting inside their homes, or in the places that they eat? How many have woken up because cockroaches are crawling on their face? 

These are the deplorable conditions we live in. 

Most of the people here do not have an education or a skill that will help them get jobs after they’re released. Many who are released from prison will walk out with untreated mental health problems and trauma, many of their issues having been made worse by prison time. After spending years in conditions like those I’ve described, they will walk out with nothing more than when they came in. How does that help or benefit society? 

People in prison have been marginalized by society in many different ways. In prison, we are taught that there is no way out, and that our marginalization is state-sanctioned. Society can’t expect people getting out of prison to do better, if society won’t do better by them. We all have to be responsible for what the state does in our name.

It’s time to realize that punishment helps no one. It’s time we began recycling people instead of throwing them away.

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At 25 years old, The Lion King has been seen by more than 110 million people and played every continent but Antarctica. Between global warming and ticket demand, it’s probably just a matter of time. 

The latest U.S. tour to stop in Chicago feels significantly less lavish from earlier versions that blew audiences and critics away with its visually, aurally stunning Hamlet-but-with-lions tale of an African king, Mufasa (Gerald Ramsey), murdered by his evil brother Scar (Peter Hargrave). Mufasa’s cub Simba (Darian Sanders) flees the kingdom, and the journey of Simba from reckless cub to royal king is the nexus of Elton John’s soaring, percussive score (lyrics by Tim Rice).

The Lion KingThrough 1/14: Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 1 and 6:30 PM; also Tue 12/20, 12/27, and 1/10 7:30 PM, Fri 11/25 and 12/23 2 and 7:30 PM, Mon 12/26 7:30 PM, Fri 12/30 1 and 6:30 PM, Sun 11/27 1 PM only, Sat 12/24 2 PM only, Sat 1/7 7:30 PM only; Cadillac Palace, 151 W. Randolph, 800-775-2000, broadwayinchicago.com, $55-$195

The production at hand feels far too “Hakuna Matata,” as if the producers calculated that it didn’t matter if the savannah was a few creatures short of a “Circle of Life” because the show would sell regardless. 

John’s magnificent score is ever in the service of The Lion King’s glorious visual aesthetic, famously the costume/puppet creations designed by the show’s original director Julie Taymor (who became the first woman to win the Tony for director of a musical in 1998). But at the Cadillac Palace, the creatures are starting to look a little long in the tooth. The human cast is fine. Those puppets look tired. The iconic wildebeest stampede appears weirdly akin to an early Atari game. The flora inflatables look like they’re close kin with those inflatable men who live on used car lots. Rafiki (Gugwana Dlamini) looks vaguely like a neglected Christmas tree, all manner of bits and bobs sagging from her bulbous costume. 

The cast is competent and energetic and kids are apt to be delighted regardless. They probably won’t even notice how droopy the vultures are. 

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Theatre Above the Law’s sampler platter of four one-acts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (most of them seldom produced) offers mixed results. The opening piece, A Dollar by Yiddish playwright David Pinski, feels like an extended acting exercise in which archetypes (the Comedian, the Villain, the Ingenue, etc.) fight over the titular object. But things improve quickly with Thornton Wilder’s The Wreck on the 525, an odd and haunting piece about Mr. Hawkins (Nick Barnes), a “family man” who seems to be having big doubts about his life. It’s a cunning taste of Wilder’s ability to find the mysterious in the quotidian (as in Our Town), with a scosh of Cheeverlike dark suburban angst woven in.

A Night of Classic and Unique One ActsThrough 12/18: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon 12/5 7:30 PM (industry night); no performances Fri-Sun 11/25-11/27; Jarvis Square Theater, 1439 W. Jarvis, theatreatl.org, $25 (senior/student $20)

Alice Gerstenberg’s Fourteen is a madcap feminist comedy of manners, presented like a sitcom, applause track and all. A society woman (Jamie Redwood) attempts to achieve the perfect number at a dinner party, as represented in the title. As guests drop on and off the RSVP list, her frustration grows, and she also berates her shy daughter (Lena Valenti) about the need to entice the wealthy bachelor Mom’s chosen as her seatmate. (Gerstenberg was a pioneer of the “little theater” movement in Chicago, probably best known for her play Overtones.) Finally, Anton Chekhov’s The Proposal (perhaps most popular of the four) is a silly confection in which a neurotic and hypochondriacal young man attempts to win the hand of the farmer’s daughter next door—only to find that they cannot stop arguing over who owns a slice of meadowland, and whose hunting dog is superior. (Andrew Cawley as the suitor demonstrates excellent physical comedic skills.)

Under Tony Lawry’s direction, the cast generally finds the tonal shifts between the pieces. The Wilder and Chekhov selections are easily the standouts, but for anyone with an interest in theater history, the 90-minute show provides an opportunity to delve into lesser-known works.

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Like much that passes for entertainment during the holiday season, this 2010 musical, based on the 2003 movie, lives on the infinitely thin line between charm and utter stupidity. The characters are all derived from earlier entertainments and holiday advertising—jolly old Santa Claus, his myriad elf slaves, the sweet naif who believes in “the spirit of Christmas,” the sour workaholic/nonbeliever/misanthrope who doesn’t—and the happy endings they find themselves trapped in are no less well-worn and formulaic. The naif redeems, the skeptic learns to love Christmas, the orphan finds his father—and a family.

Elf Through 1/8: Wed 1:30 PM, Thu 1:30 and 8 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 6 PM; also Thu 11/24 3 PM only, Tue-Wed 12/20-12/21 1:30 and 7 PM, no performance Sat-Sun 12/24-12/25, Wed 12/28 1:30 and 8 PM, Sat 12/31 5 and 8:30 PM, Sun 1/1 2 PM only; Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, 630-530-0111, drurylanetheatre.com, $75-$85

The true miracle is that director/choreographer Lynne Kurdziel Formato and her cast and crew are able to weave a pretty entertaining evening out of this insubstantial stuff. Part of the credit surely must go to book writers Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin and composer Matthew Sklar, who were inspired enough, and respectful enough of the original movie (which is not bad), not to ruin it. Chad Beguelin’s lyrics are even at times pretty witty (“to thine own elf be true”). But most of the credit for creating a holiday show that actually entertains must go to the folks at Drury Lane. The whole production is imbued with a happy, playful spirit that, like a clever TV commercial, makes every familiar trope and cliche feel shiny and new. The pace of the show is live and quick. And whenever things slow down, Formato speeds things up with her inventive choreography. Ben Dow is delightful as the show’s protagonist Buddy the Elf; God bless him for playing a character made famous by Will Ferrell and making it his own.

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