Theater events: Two actors play a dozen characters in 'Stones'

Northlight's ‘Stones'

A pair of down-on-their-luck locals get roles as extras in a big-budget movie being filmed in their small Irish town in Marie Jones' two-hander “Stones in His Pockets.” Northlight Theatre's revival, produced in conjunction with the Utah Shakespeare Festival, stars the festival's co-artistic directors Brian Vaughan and David Ivers playing more than a dozen characters, each of whom hopes for a Hollywood-style happy ending. J.R. Sullivan, artistic director of New York's Pearl Theatre, returns to the area to direct.

Previews begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 8-9, and 2:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday, March 10, at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. The show opens Friday, March 15. $25-$72. (847) 673-6300 or northlight.org.

Comic mystery

Nothing is as it seems in “Accomplice,” Rupert Holmes' 1990 comic whodunit, which opens with a woman and her lover spending a romantic weekend plotting to kill her husband. Robin M. Hughes directs Metropolis Performing Arts Centre's revival starring Kelly Lynn Hogan, Dylan Marks, Jonathan Nichols and Julie Schroll.

Previews begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 14, at 111 W. Campbell St., Arlington Heights. The show opens Sunday, March 17. $40-$44. (847) 577-2121 or metropolisarts.com.

More ‘Carnage'

Naperville's BrightSide Theatre's production of “God of Carnage” marks the second time in as many months a suburban theater company has revived Yasmina Reza's contemporary comedy of bad manners. Derek Bertelsen directs this comedy about a meeting between two sets of upper middle-class parents. Discussions about the playground scuffle involving their children degenerate into a name-calling, tantrum-filled melee.

Opens at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 14, at the Madden Theatre at North Central College, 171 E. Chicago Ave., Naperville. $20, $24. (630) 637-7469 or brightsidetheatre.com.

Ÿ Comedian Rex Havens invites audiences to look at the funny side of relationships when he brings his show “Everything I Need to Know I Learned from My Wife” to the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre, 111 W. Campbell St., Arlington Heights. Showtime is 8 p.m. Friday, March 8. (847) 577-2121 or metropolisarts.com.

Ÿ Playwright Paula Vogel imagines Shakespeare's virtuous Desdemona is every bit the duplicitous harlot Iago makes her out to be in “Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief,” Vogel's re-imagined take on the tragedy. Newcomer Sea Change Theatre Company revives the play beginning Friday, March 8, at Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston Ave., Chicago. See propthtr.org.

Ÿ Teatro Luna hosts combination workshops, performances and fundraisers Friday, March 8, to Sunday, March 10, at the Instituto Cervantes, 31 W. Ohio St., Chicago. Friday's event includes a Women's Independence Day reception beginning at 6:30 p.m. followed by the 7:30 p.m. performance of “Generation Sex” about how technology has affected the sex lives of Latinas. The Saturday, March 9, performance also begins at 7:30 p.m. and the 6 p.m. performance on Sunday, March 10, is preceded by a discussion of sexuality in virtual spaces at 5 p.m. (773) 819-5862 or teatroluna.org.

Ÿ New York City during the 1970s is the setting for Robert Falls' production of “Measure for Measure” for Goodman Theatre. Shakespeare's problematic examination of vice and morality centers on Isabella, a novice nun who pleads for the life of her condemned brother with the intransigent Angelo, deputy to the absent duke, who demands her virginity in exchange for her brother's life. Alejandra Escalante stars as Isabella with Jay Whittaker as Lord Angelo. Previews begin Saturday, March 9, at 170 N. Dearborn St., Chicago. The show opens Sunday, March 17. (312) 443-3800 or goodmantheatre.org.

Ÿ Trap Door Theatre presents a staged reading of “Symptomes,” Gabriella Maione's lamentation for the victims of Sept. 11, 2001, done in the style of a Greek tragedy. The free reading is at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 9, at Victory Gardens Theatre, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago. See trapdoortheatre.com for more information.

Ÿ Redmoon Theatre celebrates the opening of its new home with its annual Spectacle Lunatique, beginning at 7 p.m. Saturday, March 9, at 2120 S. Jefferson St., Chicago. The event includes music, art installations, cocktails, culinary tastings and late-night dancing. (312) 850- 8440, ext. 101, or redmoon.org.

Ÿ Previews begin Saturday, March 10, for Street Tempo Theatre's The La Ronde Project comprised of three plays: Arthur Schnitzler's 19th century sexual farce “La Ronde,” David Hare's 1998 adaptation “The Blue Room” and Joe DiPietro's loose adaptation of that play, which he titled “(Expletive) Men.” The plays run in repertory at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago. “La Ronde” opens Wednesday, March 13, “The Blue Room” opens Thursday, March 14, and “(Expletive) Men” opens Friday, March 15. (773) 327-5252 or stage773.com

Ÿ Barrel of Monkeys presents its Spanish language version of “That's Weird, Grandma,” featuring stories penned by Chicago Public School students and beginning Sunday, March 10, at the Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland Ave., Chicago. (312) 409-1954 or barrelofmonkeys.org.

Ÿ Theo Ubique revives Andrew Lloyd Webber's “Aspects of Love,” a sung-through musical that last played in Chicago 21 years ago. It chronicles the various relationships between an English painter, his nephew, a French actress, the painter's Italian mistress and the daughter of the painter and the actress. Artistic director Fred Anzevino directs the production, which begins performances Monday, March 11, at No Exit Cafe, 6970 N. Glenwood Ave., Chicago. (800) 595-4849 or theo-u.com.

Ÿ It's theater on demand. The Island Theatre Company brings Wallace Shawn's one-man show “The Fever” to the homes of audience members who reserve a performance through the company's website. Quinten Quintero and Derrick Van Barham share the role of the unnamed narrator who, from his hotel window, witnesses persecution in a poverty-stricken country, which causes him to reflect upon his comfort relative to the rest of the world. Performances begin Monday, March 11. Tickets are $45 for up to eight guests. See theislandtheatreco.org for more information.

Ÿ Chicago natives the Q Brothers return to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater for the U.S. premiere of their latest Shakespeare update, “Othello: The Remix,” beginning Tuesday, March 12. CST creative producer Rick Boynton collaborates on this hip-hop version of Shakespeare's tragedy, which opens Friday, March 15, at Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave., Chicago. (312) 595-5600 or chicagoshakes.com.

Ÿ Performances begin Tuesday, March 12, for the two-week, pre-Broadway revival of “Jekyll & Hyde,” the musical by Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse inspired by the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. “American Idol” alumni Constantine Maroulis stars along with Deborah Cox. The show runs through Sunday, March 24, at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St., Chicago. (800) 775-2000 or broadwayinchicago.com.

Ÿ Fox Valley Repertory celebrates St. Patrick's Day with a performance of the interactive comedy “Flanagan's Wake,” at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 14, at the Pheasant Run Resort, 4051 E. Main St., St. Charles. (630) 584-6342 or foxvalleyrep.org.

Ÿ Wayward Productions in association with Chicago Fusion Theatre seems to have taken a page out of the “Sons of Anarchy” playbook, imagining of Shakespeare's “Richard III” set against the backdrop of feuding motorcycle gangs in late 1960s Pittsburgh. Carlo Lorenzo Garcia directs the 90-minute production, which artistic director Brittany Ellis described as an examination of life after war, specifically “the late sixties to the mid seventies, when our men came back from Vietnam as villains. These gangs are viciously loyal and will do anything for their ‘kingdom,'” she said in a prepared statement. The preview is Thursday, March 14, at the Underground Wonder Bar, 710 N. Clark St., Chicago. The show opens March 15. See ticketweb.com or facebook.com/waywardproductions.

Ÿ Teatro Luna and the Chicago Theater Sweatshop collaborate on a pair of romantic comedies by Emilio Williams, who was born in Madrid and moved to Chicago in 2011. Chicago Theater Sweatshop's “Tables and Beds,” about unconditional love and lifelong friends, opens Thursday, March 14, at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago. That production runs in repertory with Teatro Luna's “Your Problem with Men,” about a woman who breaks off her engagement because the proposal wasn't executed the way she dreamed it would be, opens Friday, March 22, also at Stage 773. The productions also mark Teatro Luna's departure from its home at Clark Street's Luna Central and its anticipated relocation to a new home later this year. (773) 327-5252 or stage773.com.

Ÿ Previews begin Thursday, March 14, for Marriott Theatre For Young Audiences' musical production of “Alice in Wonderland,” adapted by Marc Robin from the Lewis Carroll book and directed and choreographed by Matt Raftery. The show, which stars Emily Rohm in the titular role, opens Saturday, March 23, at 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire. (847) 634-0200 or marriotttheatre.com.

Ÿ Silk Road Rising invites theater lovers to a conversation with playwright Jamil Khoury, who introduces his latest in-progress work, “Mosque Alert.” The event takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 14, at the Historic Chicago Temple Building, 77 W. Washington St., Chicago, and includes scenes from the new play and select video. “Mosque Alert” is about the resistance to the building of mosques in communities across the U.S. with a focus on two families — one Muslim and one Christian — living in Naperville. (312) 857-1234, ext. 201, or silkroadrising.org.

Ÿ Writers' Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe, has extended its winningly intimate “Sweet Charity,” the Neil Simon-Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields musical about a dance hall hostess with a good heart and terrible taste in men. Performances continue through Sunday, April 14. (847) 242-6000 or writerstheatre.org.

Ÿ Collaboraction has extended its world premiere of the docudrama “Crime Scene: A Chicago Anthology,” writer/director Anthony Moseley's examination of violence in the city using interviews, articles and online comments related to three true Chicago crimes. Performances continue through Sunday, April 7, at the Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. (312) 226-9633 or collaboraction.org.

Ÿ iO Chicago's new musical “Straight Camp,” about a teenage musical theater prodigy whose parents send him to Mount Saint Cleanliness, a gay-to-straight camp in Texas, continues through Thursday, April 11, at 3541 N. Clark St., Chicago. (773) 880-0199 or ioimprov.com.

— Barbara Vitello