Akeelah and the Bee In Cheryl L. West’s adaptation of the 2006 inspirational film of the same name, Akeelah Anderson (La Shone T. Kelly) needs the help of her entire community if she’s going to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. West transports the action from Los Angeles to Chicago and cuts down the size of Akeelah’s family, but otherwise the story is the same. Brandon Rivera’s gleefully over-the-top performance as Akeelah’s preppy friend Javier delights the children in the audience, and Aaron Quick’s projections add excitement to the spelling sequences as words form around the set. Daryl Brooks directs this Adventure Stage production with the effervescent energy demanded by children’s theater, but the darker elements of the plot need more definition to reinforce the high stakes of the spelling bee. —Oliver Sava
The Consul Sad to say, the displaced-person theme of this Gian Carlo Menotti opera, written in the wake of World War II, is as relevant today as it was when it was first performed in 1950. Chicago Opera Theater’s production, directed by former COT general director Andreas Mitisek, features a strong cast headed by luminous soprano Patricia Racette as a woman trapped in a brutal totalitarian country with a critically ill baby and a husband (baritone Justin Ryan) who’s an activist in the cause of freedom and on the run from the police. The story turns on her desperate, perpetually stymied efforts to get a visa from a surreal bureaucracy. Mezzo-soprano Victoria Livengood—veteran of numerous productions of this work—is a vocal and physical powerhouse as the couple’s live-in mother-in-law. Kristof van Grysperre conducts an appropriately jarring score. It’s not an easy piece to see, and not meant to be. —Deanna Isaacs
The Low Upside With John Sabine John Sabine is a cheeky comic. He’s one of the only people I’ve seen who can unironically lampoon the Dave Matthews Band. As the eponymous Dave, he thanks his endless band members at the end of a show, including “a swarm of bees on the bongos.” He angles toward absurd playing a macho motivational speaker defining what constitutes grounds for turning in your “man card,” e.g., “If you think lizards are homeless turtles . . . turn in your man card!” And so forth. Sabine’s show plays like a McSweeney’s listicle, punctuated by his constantly shifting characters, from a confident Julian Assange to an anxious German teacher. He’s clever, charming, and knows how to read a room: I saw him turn up the ham-o-meter when playing to a room full of 40th birthday party attendees unfamiliar with sketch. —Steve Heisler
This Wonderful Life American Blues Theater founding ensemble member James Leaming is brilliant in this one-man rendition of It’s a Wonderful Life, the Christmastime classic about a small-town fella who learns the meaning of his life just as he’s about to throw it away. Leaming serves as both storyteller and actor, playing all the parts as he recounts the familiar story of Frank Capra’s 1946 film. (Steve Murray’s witty script was developed more than a decade ago at Portland Center Stage in Oregon; this is the show’s long-overdue Chicago premiere.) Leaming pokes fun at the old movie’s hokier aspects while celebrating its enduring emotional power, and he deftly and delightfully mimics the iconic portrayals by James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Donna Reed, Henry Travers, and the rest of Capra’s cast. Carmen Roman’s staging supports Leaming’s virtuosic performance with clever multimedia projections by Joe Huppert. —Albert Williams
