Chicago, Drury Lane Theatre, Oakbrook Terrace, through June 18. For the first professional homegrown production of Kander and Ebb’s Broadway hit musical since the 1980s, director William Osetek cleverly takes aim at the media for elevating lying lowlifes to positions of fame and power. SCM
Great Expectations, Silk Road Rising and Remy Bumppo Theatre at Chicago Temple, through July 2. Victorian Brits may all look alike to us Yanks, but when you move the locale to colonial-era India, there’s no mistaking what Dickens meant. MSB
Johnny 10 Beers’ Daughter, Something Marvelous at Chicago Dramatists, through June 18. As long as there have been wars, there have been veterans haunted by their deeds, but you’ve never seen one like Randy Steinmeyer’s portrait of shock-and-awe infecting generations. MSB
Shakespeare in Love, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, through June 11. Time is running out to catch this sexy, funny, witty made-up tale—adapted from the hit film—of how Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. The lavish, rollicking production treats it like a musical. (It’s not.) Elizabeth I projects nobles oblige. JA
—By Abarbanel, Barnidge and Morgan