In this hilarious, freewheeling adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, Michael FitzgeraldMurphy arrives in a fictionalized former Soviet state hoping to scam a quick buck in the real estate market. As an American indulging far beyond his means, Murphy is mistaken for the dreaded U.N. inspector come to check up on the newly-minted democracy’s progress. With the hospital hosting a soap opera instead of real patients and the electric company gifted to the Minister of Education’s daughter for her 16th birthday, the President and his cronies must hustle to cover up their fraud. Murphy indulges their confusion accepting lavish bribes, babes and royal treatment revealing corruption, coercion, and conspiracies right up to the top.

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WELL By Lisa Kron Directed by Damon Kiely Chicago-area Premiere November 13 - December 14, 2008

Events Reviews Photos Go in Depth

Tony Award nominee Lisa Kron puts herself onstage in this quirky and delicious memoir about her mother’s fight for racial integration and healthy communities in Lansing , Michigan . But Kron’s self-assured character is defeated – and deconstructed – in the retelling by her own mother, who occupies a La-Z-Boy at the edge of the stage.  At first grudgingly, then energetically, Kron’s mother Ann takes over the memoir, recalling and revealing the fiery sprit beneath her lifetime of illness.  Ann buddies up with the rest of Lisa’s cast, derailing her smart and savvy performance about social and physical health, and instead weaves a funny and touching story of her daughter’s growing up.  “Kron’s hilarious, deeply affecting play cuts to the core of the mother-daughter relationship” – Entertainment Weekly

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One year after Craig's death in Iraq, his widow Kelly is confronted by his twin brother, Peter. Carefully, the two probe the aftermath of one another's grief and the costly secrets they are protecting in the tragedy that links their lives. Playwright Christopher Shinn is hailed by the New York Times as "among the most provocative and probing of American playwrights today." His penetrating, charged tale of unexpected loss is an "an achingly compassionate new play" (Variety), revealing the intimate and often unseen impact of historical events on our most private selves.

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With his tenure at risk, Professor Jack Exley uproots his family from Illinois to Rwanda on the eve of the genocide to interview a mysterious doctor about his AIDS treatment program.  When the doctor vanishes without a trace, the family finds itself lost in sea of changing stories and shifting alliances. A hit in London in 2006 and off-Broadway in 2007, The Overwhelming is a potent, gripping drama about the challenges facing a progressive American in a foreign country on the brink of disaster.