As a companion to our “Just for Laughs” page (comedies where humor is its own reward), we created this “Not Just for Laughs” list of shows, where exceptional comedy is accompanied by life lessons, social commentary, or an especially compelling walk in someone else’s shoes.
(in alphabetical order)
Abraham Lincoln Was a F*gg*t by Bixby Elliot, produced by About Face Theatre in 2015: This play tells the story of a high-school student (played by Matt Farabee) who sets out to prove that Abraham Lincoln was gay. Like many of our favorite comedies, this one augmented the humor with a heart and a fine ensemble cast. In fact, Dana Black was a veritable ensemble herself, providing many of the play’s funniest moments as she portrayed a Days Inn receptionist, an exceptionally imaginative sign language interpreter, the voice of a GPS system, and many other colorful characters. (One reviewer suggested that she be given her own one-woman show immediately.) Although the history lesson of this warm coming-of-age story may be unresolvable, the life lessons were right on the mark, thanks to the incisive cast and the thoughtful direction by Andrew Volkoff.
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. Who would have thought that chaos theory, arcane literary criticism, trends in landscape architecture, and the discovery of botanical exotica could co-exist in the same play, much less in a funny and provocative sex comedy. Although it was not our first Stoppard play, Arcadia cemented our awareness of the incredible scope of his intellect and talent, as well as his mastery of witty and literate dialogue. We have been avid fans ever since, voraciously devouring all of his plays with gusto at every opportunity. Among the numerous fine productions of Arcadia that we have seen, especially notable were those at Indiana Repertory Theatre in 2003, Remy Bumppo in 2004, Court Theatre in 2007, New Leaf in 2012, Shaw Festival in 2013, Writers Theatre in 2016, and American Players Theatre in 2016. All of these were terrific, but if forced to choose, our favorites would be Indy Rep because of its special zest and consummate cast of mostly Chicago actors, and New Leaf because of its setting in an intimate and elegant room in the Lincoln Park Cultural Center (eliminating the need for a set), where we were practically sitting at the table with the protagonists!
Completeness by Itamar Moses, produced by Theater Wit in 2013: Writing a play with a science or technology component is tricky; some audience members may be uninterested in the subject, while others are preoccupied with checking the accuracy of the technical details. Itamar Moses managed to write a smart comedy with passionate characters against a compelling backdrop of molecular biology and computer science. Theater Wit’s production of Completeness, directed by Jeremy Wechsler, featured a set by Joe Schermoly that seamlessly accommodated multiple venues and a dynamic video design by Michael Stanfill. The fabulous cast supplied the humor and passion, while believably delivering rapid-fire dialogue infused with technical concepts and terminology.
Failure: A Love Story by Philip Dawkins, produced at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater in 2012: Our favorite comedies embrace many styles: satire, physical comedy, farce, absurdity, tragicomedy, and sophisticated wit. Failure: A Love Story is unique in that it covers all these bases, and adds charming music played and sung by the endearing lead characters—all of whom are about to die. The premiere production at Victory Gardens, directed by Seth Bockley, featured an unbeatable seven-person cast that brought the fascinating, buoyant characters to life. As the play progressed, these characters, whom you cared about very deeply, imparted life lessons as their own short lives came to an end, yet somehow the play remained funny, upbeat, and utterly charming, but with palpable substance. In contrast to this intimate production in the upstairs theatre at Victory Gardens, we saw the play the next year at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival in a much more expansive production. The cast had grown from seven actors to 24 plus a similar number of puppets. In a local newspaper’s preview article prior to opening, playwright Dawkins explained, “I’m very interested in letting differing theater companies leave their fingerprints all over it. I don’t dictate how to tell a story, who says what line or how many actors are used.” The production was very entertaining and well received, but we missed the intimacy of the earlier production even though we enjoyed them both immensely. In addition to the “small cast” and “large cast” versions, an enchanting mid-size production at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2017 made our list of favorite college productions.
Goodbye Cruel World adapted by Robert Ross Parker from Nikolai Erdman’s 1928 play The Suicide, produced by Strange Tree Group in 2012: Strange Tree’s description of this play said it “crackles with comedy, costume changes and terrible tuba playing.” This absurdist farce also crackled with precision direction (by Bob Kruse), six committed actors playing 22 parts, and inspired accompaniment by two musicians playing Michael Huey’s original score. Interesting note: We also saw Scott Cupper, who played the lead in Goodbye Cruel World, in Strawdog’s marvelous 2016 adaptation of the film noir classic D.O.A. (their final show in Hugen Hall, prior to redevelopment of the Lakeview block they had called home for over a decade).
Making God Laugh by Sean Grennan, produced by Theatre at the Center, in association with First Folio Theatre, in 2012: This very funny and surprisingly thought-provoking comedy is a decade-by-decade snapshot of grown children returning to their parents’ home for holiday gatherings. Directed by William Pullinsi, the cast (Peggy Roeder, Craig Spidle, Kevin McKillip, Joe Foust, and Erin Noel Grennan) conveyed everything from sight gags and one liners to the emotional complexities associated with family relationships and aging parents. This was a multi-dimensional theatre experience, where somehow hilarity and subtlety coexisted.
P.Y.G. or The Mis-Edumacation of Dorian Belle by Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm, produced by Jackalope Theatre in 2019: In this riotous (in every sense of the word) satire, Dorian Belle, a young white Canadian pop star (think Justin Bieber), hires the Petty Young Goons, a duo of Black rappers from Chicago (the titular P.Y.G.) to teach him how to be “cool” (hence the allusion to Shaw’s Pygmalion). Naturally, Dorian’s “mis-edumacation” takes place as a reality TV series, complete with bitingly satirical commercials. Totally buying into this inspired premise, Director Lili-Anne Brown’s brilliant staging missed no opportunity to skewer racial and cultural stereotypes, aided by a pitch perfect cast (Eric Gerard as Blacky Blackerson, Tevion Lanier as Alexan Da Great, and Garrett Young as Dorian Belle) and a crackerjack design team that nailed the ambience of a reality TV show. This uproarious and wildly entertaining production may have had the highest density of laughs while providing insightful social commentary of any we’ve ever experienced. Cultural appropriation has rarely been so naked, and never so hilariously exposed!
Schweyk in the Second World War by Bertolt Brecht, produced by Red Theatre Chicago in 2012: This ambitious show staged in a very confined space at Stage 773 was the inaugural production of Red Theatre Chicago. The production, directed by Aaron Sawyer, included a 14-person cast, puppets, original songs, a frenetic pace, and an inspired performance by Kevin Cox in the title role. (We’ve admired his work since 2003 when we saw him in a Millikin University student production of Twelfth Night, playing Sir Toby Belch.) Other members of the cast, such as Gage Wallace and Kate Carson-Groner (new to us in this production), would become favorites of ours in numerous subsequent shows in Chicago.
The Secretaries: A Parable by Omer Abbas Salem, produced by First Floor Theater in 2022: Have you ever wondered what life was like in the secretarial pool at the Führer’s headquarters in 1944 Berlin? Thanks to the fertile imagination of the playwright, The Secretaries took us on that journey. The absurdist comedy ranged from cauliflower obsessions to recurring sight gags with an energetic telephone to a hilarious aerobics workout, all featuring unexpected laugh-out-loud juxtapositions. Director Laura Alcalá Baker was completely in sync with the playwright in mining every surreal possibility, whether verbal (enabled by brilliant pacing and acting) or visual (set design by Eleanor Kahn, costumes by Isaac-Jay Pineda, wigs by Royen Kent). Lying just beneath the comedy were inescapable questions about what people will do for self preservation—as one reviewer put it, “what choices we make to fit in”—and how complicity is both seductive and ultimately self-destructive, despite our psyche’s desperate efforts to cope.
Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England by Madeleine George, produced by Theater Wit in 2014: This offbeat comedy covers a lot of bases; it includes hilarious commentary by diorama characters in an endangered museum, the well-meaning but very funny denizens of a small college town, and characters experiencing complex personal relationships in sickness and in health. It’s one of those rare plays in which tears come from both laughter and pathos, with just the right balance from the cast and director Jeremy Wechsler. When we saw the show, the key role of the university dean was played by understudy Carin Silkaitis, who captured the tricky comedic/serious elements of the play, in harmony with the ensemble cast.
We also adored the next Madeleine George play we saw—The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence produced by Theater Wit in 2015 with three of our favorite actors (Joe Dempsey, Joe Foust, and Kristina Valada-Viars). And director Jeremy Wechsler again displayed his special talent for selecting and orchestrating intelligent comedies.
Suicide, Incorporated by Andrew Hinderaker, produced by the Gift Theatre in 2010: This dark comedy, directed by Jonathan Berry, takes a satirical poke at soulless big business by imagining a company whose business is helping its clients write their suicide notes. This outlandish premise yielded a perfect combination of wry humor and serious issues worth pondering. The best moments of the show were between Joshua Rollins, as the conflicted suicide-note facilitator, and Michael Patrick Thornton, a client who has sought his services. In the intimate Gift Theatre space, we felt as if we were in the office with them during their consultations, adding to both the humor and emotional impact of the performance.
Travesties by Tom Stoppard, produced by Remy Bumppo Theatre in 2015: Nick Sandys’ direction and a perfect cast didn’t miss a trick in this unforgettable production of a Tom Stoppard tour-de-force. It touched all our favorite bases: wordplay, satire, absurdism, historical context, theatrical references, flawed but charming characters, and yes, “think theatre,” Remy Bumppo’s trademark.
Interesting note: Kelsey Brennan, who played Gwendolyn in the Remy Bumppo production, played Cecily just a few months earlier in a fine production of Travesties at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, directed by William Brown. The tea party scene (in which the dialog is sung) between her and Cristina Panfilio’s Gwendolyn was the highlight of the show. In the fabulous Court Theatre Travesties we saw in 2005, directed by Charles Newell, Heidi Kettenring (Gwendolyn) and Cristen Paige (Cecily) were similarly incandescent. Unfortunately, we didn’t discover Court Theatre until a couple of years after their previous production of Travesties in 1995, also directed by Charles Newell, with Hollis Resnik playing Gwendolyn.
Trevor by Nick Jones, produced by A Red Orchid Theatre in 2013: The title of the Chris Jones review in the Chicago Tribune was “Unexpected riches in a story about a chimp.” Indeed! The physical comedy from the 6’4″ Larry Grimm playing the title chimp was phenomenal (you wonder how many hours he spent studying chimpanzee videos to get the movements down pat). But this play, directed by Shade Murray, had so much more than physical comedy, from both the humans and the chimp. The exuberant humor was complemented by wry lessons about human relationships and communication. It seems ironic but somehow fitting that Larry Grimm’s two Jeff Award nominations (as of 2016) were for Trevor and The Glass Menagerie.
White by James Ijames, produced by Definition Theatre Company in 2022, presented at Steppenwolf’s 1700 Theater: White is loosely based on a 2014 incident in which a white visual artist (who has served on the faculty at Yale and Princeton, incidentally) exhibited his work under the name of a fictional Black female artist, played on occasion by various Black actresses. The resulting play is a seriously funny and deeply thought-provoking exploration of white/male privilege, representation, dominance of the white viewpoint, and more—best characterized by the playwright:
“Equal opportunity. No one is safe. We all need a mirror to fix our hair. I’m also obsessed with the American experiment. How we can use art to expose how imperfect this place is, in an effort to make it more perfect. ‘A more perfect union.’ One play at a time…amiright!”
In the hands of insightful director Ericka Ratcliff and an unbeatable cast, Definition’s production plumbed the depths of both the comedy and the substance in this very clever play. The delicious performances included the hyper-intense, self-important art museum curator (played to comic perfection by Carley Cornelius); the artist who specializes in white-on-white paintings and shoulders the heavy burden of false victimhood (Niko Kourtis somehow made this character somewhat likable rather than merely exasperating); the actress who navigated the play’s most complex personal journey (Kierra Bunch, with perfect timing and spot-on emotional choices); and the artist’s boyfriend (Jonathan Allsop deftly conveyed his character’s journey of discovery). Note: The 2018 Northwestern production of White, directed by Tasia A. Jones, is included in our list of favorite college productions.