Funk It Up About Nothin’, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, through Aug. 3. The Q Brothers’ hip-hop adaptation of MC Willie’s Much Ado About Nothing generates enough raucous good humor to start even unreconstructed baby-boomers flowin’ to the beat. MSB
Much Ado About Nothing, First Folio Shakespeare Festival at Mayslake Peabody Estate, Oak Brook; through Aug. 17. A perfectly lovely and traditional take on MC Willie’s (aka Shakespeare) romantic comedy, with a first-rate cast. SCM
Termen Vox Machina, Oracle Productions, through Aug. 3. Actors lip-synch to recorded voices in this impressionistic aural and visual tale of the inventor of the Theramen and electronic spying. Mystery and intrigue blend as mood and style trump fact and truth. JA
Yes, This Really Happened to Me, Theatre 7 at Chicago Dramatists, through Aug. 3. Nine actors, 30 roles and ‘a lifetime’s worth of memories’ means either indulgent disaster or a marvel of autobiographical truth. With Theatre 7, we expect the latter. CS
—By Abarbanel, Barnidge, Morgan
and Sullivan