In the first act of Theater Wit’s eerily timely, superficially ridiculous staging of “Mr. Burns, a post-electric play,” the musical’s mood whiplashes between mounting dread and inexorable silliness. At lights up (barely up, per the world the title evokes) we’re in the “very near future,” witnessing a campfire tended by bedraggled LARP enthusiasts specializing in reenactments of episodes of “The Simpsons.”

Actually, “enthusiasts” isn’t right. The crew in Anne Washburn’s post-apocalyptic tale (music by Michael Friedman, lyrics by Washburn) are obsessives, clinging to the world of Homer Simpson and Co. like Odysseus clinging to the mast.

Now in an open run directed by Jeremy Wechsler (a revival of the company’s 2015 production), the adventures of the cartoon Simpsons — parents Homer and Marge, their children Bart, Lisa and their arch-enemy Mr. Burns — morph into lore in Washburn’s post-electric world. As years pass, the Simpsons’ adventures become origin stories of a recreated world and cautionary tales of the one that’s been destroyed. It’s as sublime as it is absurd.

Filtered through the Simpsons, shards of dialogue explain what drove the group into the woods: The grid went down. The reactors melted. The cities emptied out, except for the dead left to rot where they fell.

Will Wilhelm (front) and Andrew Jessop star in Theater Wit’s “Mr. Burns, a post-electric play.”Charles Osgood

After the first act’s “Mikado”-inspired inspired finale (featuring Jonah D. Winston in a memorable rendition of “Three Little Maids”), the second act picks up seven years later. The campfire collective has pivoted to an embryonic form of capitalism. Survival alone might be insufficient to sustain the soul.

The final act takes place 75 years after the second. Primitive wigs and costumes have been upgraded. A painted backdrop evokes the Simpsons’ adventures as an elaborate cave painting. The battle against evil Mr. Burns starts to resemble something by Sophocles, complete with a chorus of angels delivering chant-like dirges through a blood-drenched denouement.

Under Wechsler’s careful direction, “Mr. Burns” needs to lose a solid 20 minutes, an easy fix given the repetitiveness of some scenes and the obsessively detailed Simpsons’ minutia.

But once the cast production finds its rhythm in the second act, “Mr. Burns” sweeps you into its weirdly funny, dystopian world.

Leslie Ann Sheppard stars as Quincy/Bart in Theater Wit’s eerily timely staging of “Mr. Burns, a post-electric play.”Charles Osgood

Wechsler’s ensemble maintains energy throughout the show’s wild ride. Everyone is double- or triple-cast, charged with playing both a Simpsons character (or two) and a survivor. As Quincy/Bart, Leslie Ann Sheppard brings the gravity of Odysseus into the petulant bombast of the yellow-haired cartoon child. Bart’s an unlikely charismatic leader, but Sheppard makes him heroic, somehow without dimming his obnoxiousness.

As Sam/Mr. Burns, Andrew Jessop leans into the latter with the ferocity of a chainsaw on blast. He chews the scenery to sawdust. Then, he eats the sawdust. That’s not a read: The more preposterously monstrous Mr. Burns becomes, the more he sucks you into his wickedly charismatic orbit.

And keep an eye on Wil Wilhelm as Jenny/Marge/Mrs. Krabapel. Costumed like a battered, underwater Statue of Liberty, they are the humming coil that runs the length of the third act, sending out vocals that prove “falsetto belt” is not an necessarily an oxymoron.

Costume designers Mara Blumenfeld and Mieka Van der Ploeg’s elaborate, DIY-aesthetic garb is filled with marvels: Laundry baskets serving as petticoats, garbage bags as fit-and-flare skirts, wigs made of buckets, soccer balls and rubber gloves, wings crafted from plastic cutlery.

In the end, “Mr. Burns” is both a story of creation and destruction. Love may win, as the angel chorus tells us, but hate leaves scars. It’s a brutal, compelling message.

NOTE: Proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test from the past 48 hours is required for all audience members per the theater’s safety protocols at theaterwit.org.

Catey Sullivan is a freelance writer.

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This account from Howie Rumberg, now deputy sports editor for The Associated Press, is excerpted from the book “September 11: The 9/11 Story, Aftermath and Legacy.” Rumberg came out of a lower Manhattan subway the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and found himself in the midst of chaos.

Seventeen minutes. Twenty years later, unraveling the morning of Sept. 11, it feels like an eternity.

About 17 minutes passed between the time I stepped out of the subway station at Canal Street to rush-hour shouts of disbelief and horror seconds after American Airlines flight 11 struck the north tower, and the shocking boom of United Airlines flight 175 crashing into the south tower as I stood one block north of the World Trade Center complex.

Just off an overnight shift in the AP sports department, a night that began by catching a glimpse of Michael Jackson emerging from Madison Square Garden into a shower of flashing strobe lights from fans and photographers, all I could think of was sleep — until I saw the jagged, burning hole in Tower One.

The explanation seemed implausible: A plane had flown right into the building. It had just happened. I didn’t even hear sirens yet, just the chorus of “Oh, my God!” from people instantly halted in their morning hustle.

I sprinted the 100 yards or so home, woke my girlfriend and breathlessly told her to look out the window. I then took her cell phone — I didn’t even have one then — and called the office. Did they need help?

“Yes. Go!” I was told by a voice I didn’t know.

I sprinted down Hudson Street, shouting at stunned people looking up at the building that we took for granted each day as it loomed over our neighborhood, “Did anyone see what happened?” A construction worker tried to describe the white bottom of a low-flying plane, but he was too shaken to focus.

The closer I got to the scene, the more intense the emotion got. Groups of gawkers formed on corners. Others raced away at the urging of just-arriving police. People on phones trying to explain where they were and what was happening.

People run from the collapse of World Trade Center Tower on Sept. 11, 2001.Suzanne Plunkett / AP file

As I approached the World Trade Center, it became apparent that it wasn’t debris falling from the higher floors but people overcome by the smoke and heat. It was shattering. But I focused on what I felt I needed to do.

Remembering the pictures from the first attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, I ran for West Street, the western edge of the Trade Center and a large thoroughfare where many emergency vehicles gathered during those attacks. And there it was: a growing hive of flashing lights a few blocks south. I didn’t think it was a smart place to be if I wanted to remain close by, with all the police around, so I turned to walk back toward a more pedestrian-focused area.

Then an explosion jerked my attention back up to the sky. The building was not in view, but you could see the flames, black cloud and debris bursting out from what was certainly the south tower.

In an instant, the tone changed.

The shock — a plane hit the World Trade Center! — turned to terror and chaos once that emphatic strike made it obvious that New York City was under attack. Commuters turned scared gawkers became sprinters. One woman ran right out of her shoes. A man in a suit and tie dropped his briefcase and took off. I thought, “Why’d he have to leave the briefcase?” The silver case sat on Greenwich Street as people scrambled for safety. I’m not sure anything felt safe in that moment, in a place most likely crushed not too much later by the debris of the collapsed north tower.

On a corner just two blocks north of the towers, a woman paused. Through sobs, she screamed: “What’s happening to my city?” Then she ran off.

Twenty years later, with almost an entire generation gone by, I’m still not sure whether I have her answer.

Smoke rises from the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center after hijacked planes crashed into the towers on Sept. 11, 2001.Richard Drew / AP file

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Simeon coach Robert Smith is the only active coach in the state with six state championships.

He’s also the only coach in the state with four active NBA players and a fifth battling for a roster spot.

“I have the NBA League Pass just for that reason,” said Smith with a proud laugh.

This has been an extremely busy — and for some a very lucrative — offseason for a bunch of former Illinois prep basketball products, especially for a trio of Simeon grads.

During the first week of August when NBA free agency opened, Simeon greats Derrick Rose (Class of 2007), Kendrick Nunn (Class of 2013) and Talen Horton-Tucker (Class of 2018) all signed multi-year contracts.

After rejuvenating his career, Rose is headed back to the Knicks with a three-year deal worth $43 million. The former NBA MVP with the Bulls in 2011 will have made just under $200 million when this current contract expires in 2024 at the age of 35.

Both Horton-Tucker and Nunn signed with the Lakers, teaming up with Lebron James and another former Chicago high school star, Anthony Davis.

Horton-Tucker signed a three-year contract that will pay him $32 million, while Nunn signed a two-year deal worth $10 million. Considering Nunn averaged 15.3 points a game two years ago when he was the NBA Rookie of the Year runner-up and put up 14.6 points a game this past season, the Lakers signing the lefty guard appears to be a free agent steal.

The second year on Nunn’s contract is a player option, so Nunn could test the free agency market again next offseason.

“I think it’s a luxury that those two will be playing together,” said Smith.

When you add what’s left on Jabari Parker’s contract with the Celtics, the four Simeon players will have just over $87 million owed to them over the next several years.

Zach Norvell (Simeon Class of 2017) continues to fight for a NBA roster spot. The 6-5 guard who starred collegiately at Gonzaga has played in five career NBA games — all during the 2019-20 season with the Lakers and Warriors.

Norvell played last month for the San Antonio Spurs summer league team and will continue to try and hook on with a team this fall.

These handful of Simeon players join a list that includes past Wolverines Nick Anderson and Bobby Simmons as NBA players.

“I feel so proud of them,” said Smith of his former players. “Watching them all grow up as kids, seeing the hard work they have put in and to reach their dreams? It’s pretty amazing. And not taking anything away from Derrick and Jabari, but they were phenoms, top five kids in the country. But with Talen, Kendrick and Zach, those are three who other people never game a chance to make the NBA.”

Smith plans on being in Los Angeles for opening night to catch Nunn and Horton-Tucker when the Lakers face the Warriors next month. He also lucked out with Simeon playing in Boston in the afternoon on Jan. 15. The Celtics and Parker will play that night at home.

“This isn’t just big for Simeon, it’s big for the city of Chicago,” said Smith. “These are kids from a basketball program at a public school on the South Side of Chicago.”

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Chicago’s 108-year-old athletic equipment manufacturer — which got its start making tennis racket strings and leather footballs using byproducts of the South Side stockyards — just opened its first retail store. The 2,200-square-foot Rush Street locale offers all the athletic fare you’d expect. “We consider this our heritage store, so our history is showcased throughout,” says Wilson sportswear president Gordon Devin. Fitting rooms are papered in catalog images and retro ad campaigns, and leather ottomans bear the same W’s that adorn the classic pigskins. Shop for eco-friendly activewear, or pop in for athlete meet-and-greets. Devin says, “It’s a space for discovery, inspiration, and nostalgia in the city we call home.” 932 N. Rush St., Gold Coast, wilson.com

$68

Men’s Millennium sweatshirt in Tennis Ball Yellow

$88

Women’s Essex polo in Bright White

$219

Blade 98 18×20 V7 tennis racket

$78

Men’s Metro track pants in black

$58

Limitless skirt in Bright White

$44

Lakeshore tank top in Club Navy

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I keep hearing about terpenes. What are they, and how do they affect my high?

That’s awesome! This means you’re learning about the plant and evolving your consumption. Terpenes, or terps, are compounds in the essential oils of cannabis that influence aroma, flavor, and effects.

Myrcene, linalool, and limonene are some of the most common. Myrcene, which is also in hops and mangoes, often has a relaxing effect. The same can be said for linalool, which boasts a lavender scent. And limonene, which smells like citrus, can be energizing.

These are just three examples. Once you figure out which terps meet your needs — do you want to reduce inflammation? get relief from anxiety? treat insomnia? — you can better determine which strains of cannabis to try. The more you know …

Datrianna Meeks is a cannabis writer and educator.

Have a question for our budtender? E-mail [email protected].

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For 20 years, Jim Maloney has carried a terrifying memory: running for his life when alarms went off, warning that a hotel might collapse near the destruction of the World Trade Center towers.

He carries something else, too: an emergency inhaler.

Like other Chicago cops and firefighters who volunteered to go to New York and help search for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Maloney is haunted by what he saw there. He’s also dealing with medical problems he believes were caused by breathing the talcum-like dust that blanketed Lower Manhattan like a snow storm.

“I never had asthma issues before,” says Maloney, who retired from the Chicago Police Department as a lieutenant.

Maloney says he developed a persistent cough after 9/11 and is now in the World Trade Center Health Registry, a research group created by New York City and the federal government.

“They sent me to a pulmonologist, and I got a regular inhaler and an emergency inhaler,” says Maloney, who arrived in New York on Sept. 15, 2001, two days after his brothers Pat and Tom, both Chicago firefighters, arrived.

About three-quarters of the nearly 100,000 people enrolled in the federally funded World Trade Center Health Program were rescue workers and other responders. The rest are described as survivors.

Maloney says he decided not to go to the 20th-anniversary memorials in New York and not to watch on TV, either.

“It’s emotional,” he says. “I think about my own family. My kids were young, and they were so worried. I plan to do a meditation weekend for myself.”

Jim Maloney (right) hugs his brother Pat Maloney on Sept. 15, 2001, after they found each other near the site of the World Trade Center’s collapse. Jim Maloney was a Chicago police officer. Pat Maloney was a Chicago firefighter.Robert A. Davis / Sun-Times file

His brother Pat Maloney, a retired Chicago Fire Department battalion chief, has been treated for cancer, which he thinks was caused by his time in New York. He also is in the national 9/11 health registry.

Still, he says, “I wouldn’t have done anything different. Maybe wear my mask a little more.”

He was planning to go to New York this weekend with his sons — a Marine and a Skokie firefighter. He was there for the 10th and 15th anniversaries of 9/11, too.

When Maloney retired from the fire department last year, some of the New York firefighters he met during 9/11 came for a ceremony at the Engine 14 fire house in West Town. They’ve been friends for 20 years, having bonded through the grief and horror of digging for victims at Ground Zero.

Now-retired Chicago Fire Department Battalion Chief Pat Maloney at the World Trade Center site in 2001.Robert A. Davis / Sun-Times file

“I will never forget the guys from New York’s Ladder 18,” Maloney says. “We saw the rig just demolished. I see a guy’s helmet, and it says Ladder 18. I ask, ‘How many guys you lose?’ He says, ‘We did OK.’ He says an engine company also ran to the scene. He says, ‘We went left, they went right, those guys got killed, and we didn’t.’ I said I am grateful for you and sorry for the loss of your brothers.”

Chicago firefighters worked grueling hours on top of The Pile, using their hands and heavy equipment to remove rubble in bucket brigades. Every time a New York police officer or firefighter was found, the Chicago firefighters would solemnly trek back to their encampment, some with tears streaking down their dirty faces, allowing their brethren to carry the remains away.

Chicago police officers searched the dangerously tilting office buildings nearby for survivors.

Accompanied by a New York cop who survived the collapse of the twin towers, Chicago cops were getting ready to enter one building when laser monitors triggered an alarm warning that the structure of the nearby Millennium Hilton Hotel had shifted.

“Everybody ran,” Jim Maloney recalls.

The officers sprinted and didn’t stop till they got about three blocks away. But the hotel, though leaning dangerously to one side, remained intact. It reopened in 2003.

Former Chicago police Sgt. Kenneth Boudreau in Bridgeport, where he was recently in charge of security on a movie set.Pat Nabong / Sun-Times

Kenneth Boudreau, a since-retired Chicago police sergeant, remembers searching the battered American Express building near the fallen towers. Giant pieces of twisted steel that fell from the towers were lodged against the 52-story building. The lobby was deep with fluffy, white powder — pulverized concrete, glass, ceiling tiles, you name it.

The floors tilted like the deck of a rocking ship.

The police officers, in helmets and face masks, huffed up the stairwells. They used yellow flashlights to scour floor after floor, looking for people. They didn’t find any.

They did find a half-eaten pie on a desk and purses and cups full of cold coffee.

“It was like time stood still, and all the people were gone,” Boudreau says.

Boudreau has remained friends with retired New York police Sgt. Mike Stefanovich, who continued to experience the devastation long after the Chicago cops left.

“They didn’t put out the fire until December,” Stefanovich says. “No lights or power. It’s what it must have been like in Japan when they bombed it, to a smaller degree. You were reminded of it daily. They were still recovering body parts over a year later. There were funerals every week. It was overwhelming. It seemed like it would never end.”

Stefanovich, who retired two years ago as a sergeant in midtown Manhattan, says that, because of 9/11, the New York Police Department developed informants in the city and overseas in an effort to prevent more terrorist attacks. He says it’s been successful, though many of those successes haven’t been made public.

“I think we stopped a lot more than they committed,” says Stefanovich, who was on duty when a man tried to blow up Times Square with a car full of gasoline and fireworks.

Stefanovich says he suffers from respiratory problems, too.

“I’m still sick from it,” he says.

Kevin Gyrion, now the police chief in Clinton, Iowa, was a Chicago police lieutenant who went to New York after 9/11.Clinton police department

Kevin Gyrion, a retired Chicago police lieutenant, was planning to spend Saturday, the 20-year anniversary of the attacks, speaking at a 9/11 memorial service in Clinton, Iowa, where he’s now the police chief.

He knew it would be tough for him to talk about even now. Like a lot of his fellow cops who were in New York, he won’t even watch the latest documentaries about 9/11.

“It brings back too many memories,” Gyrion says. “When we got there, everything was still smoking. I remember walking past empty firehouses with candles. They lost their whole fire house. I saw firefighters crawling through the rubble.”

He also remembers standing outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, directing traffic in blue jeans and a Chicago police shirt.

Uniformed New York police officers and firefighters were there for a funeral.

Jim Maloney remembers then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani walking up and thanking him and the other Chicago cops. Maloney says he gave Giuliani a Chicago Police Department patch.

“People on the streets were cheering for us,” Gyrion says. “New York policemen were walking up, hugging us. That’s what I want to remember.”

Then-New York Gov. George Pataki thanks Chicago police officers for coming to New York after 9/11.Robert A. Davis / Sun-Times file

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sFor Andrew Przybylo, it started like any normal morning. His kids were racing to get ready for school. He was preparing to head out to the family business in Niles. And the TV was on, though no one was paying attention to it.

Then, he got a call from his sister Vivian Kolpak.

They owned the White Eagle, a banquet hall and restaurant on Milwaukee Avenue, and usually got there around the same time to open up.

But not today. This was Sept. 11, 2001, and she was calling, worried about her daughter, his niece, Vanessa Kolpak. The 21-year-old St. Ignatius College Prep grad had been living in New York for just three months after landing a job with the investment firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. And she was in the firm’s 89th-floor office in the south tower of the World Trade Center when a jet struck the north tower that morning.

“I got a call from her saying she wasn’t coming in,” says Przybylo, who is a former mayor of Niles. “She told me that Vanessa was in the south tower, and she was told not to evacuate. The south tower didn’t fall at that point, and she was really worried about Vanessa.”

In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times on the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Vivian Kolpak said her daughter told was told not to leave the office even as people just two floors below hers were allowed to evacuate.

“Vanessa called me after the first building was hit, and she just told me, ‘Mommy, I’m alive.’ . . . She started crying and saying she was seeing people falling, and I said, ‘Find someone you know, and get to a safe place.’ I thought she was on the ground looking up. … I didn’t even suspect she was still in the building.”

Vivian Kolpak told the Sun-Times in 2011 that her daughter was brilliant and had plans to make a fortune on Wall Street and then donate her money to fight breast cancer and to help fund school music programs. She also said she was relieved when President Barack Obama announced that the architect of 9/11, Osama Bin Ladin, had been hunted down and killed, but she wasn’t happy.

“It’s a little bit of closure,” Vivian Kolpak said at the time, something she said her family had lacked because her daughter’s remains never were found. “We never found her, so we have been lingering, sort of in a limbo.”

In the 20 years since the World Trade Center attacks, Vanessa Kolpak’s family has tried to keep her memory alive — and even hold onto hope that somehow she might still be alive.

Former Niles Mayor Andrew Przybylo says his niece Vanessa Kolpak’s death on Sept. 11, 2001, still leaves him wondering how she might have changed the worldKevin Tanaka / Sun-Times file

“I think to this day she keeps hope alive,” Przybylo says of his sister. “They’ve kept Vanessa’s car and keep it in their home in Arizona.”

“Why keep your daughter’s car?” Przybylo says. “We do know that she is gone. Nonetheless, hopes springs eternal.”

The Sun-Times couldn’t reach Vanessa Kolpak’s parents. They’ve made it a tradition to travel on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, to never be in the home where Vanessa Kolpak grew up.

Instead, they use the day to celebrate the life of their daughter, Przybylo says, believing she is traveling with them in spirit and seeing different parts of the country.

Przybylo remembers his niece as highly intelligent, witty and caring.

“She had a lot of sympathy for people, and I think her upbringing and schooling had a lot to do with it,” Przybylo says.

Kolpak graduated with high honors from St. Ignatius and then Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Przybylo wonders how his niece might have changed the world if she’d had the chance.

Over the years, it has gotten easier to face her loss, he says, and the family has come to appreciate life just a little bit more perhaps than they had.

“There are days where I don’t think about 9/11 or the failing of Afghanistan and how profoundly pointless that military debacle was,” Przybylo says. “The fact is life is a gift, and you need to live it to the fullest and do as much good and as much as you can before you leave it.”

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One person was killed and 10 others wounded in shootings in Chicago Thursday.

A man was fatally shot while sitting in a parked car Thursday afternoon in Burnside on the South Side.

The man, 22, was sitting in a parked car when someone approached and shot him in the head around 1:45 p.m. in the 600 block of East 90th Place, Chicago police said.

He was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he was pronounced dead, police said. He was identified as Charles Alexander by the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

About an hour later, a 15-year-old girl was shot in the leg inside a Fernwood home on the South Side Thursday afternoon.

The girl was shot around 2:45 p.m. in the 10000 block of South Lafayette Avenue by someone who approached her, pulled out a gun and fired, police said.

She was transported to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in good condition, police said.

Detectives were questioning a person of interest.

A 17-year-old female was among two shot Thursday night following an altercation at a gas station on the South Side.

A man, 40, was pumping gas in the 400 block of East Pershing Road when he began arguing with occupants of a black Infiniti sedan and someone inside fired shots, striking the man in the leg, police said.

He then returned fire, striking a 17-year-old inside the Infiniti in the arm, police said.

He self-transported to the University of Chicago, where he was listed in critical condition, police said.

The teen was driven by a friend to Provident Hospital of Cook County, where she was listed in fair condition, police said.

Seven others were wounded in citywide gun violence Thursday.

Eight people were shot, two fatally, in shootings in Chicago Wednesday.

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