Arnie the Doughnut Can a rainbow-sprinkled doughnut and a rules-loving man find happiness together without one eating the other or without both running afoul of the overzealous condo board president? These are the central questions of Frances Limoncelli’s adaptation of Laurie Keller’s children’s book, and while some of the solutions defy basic logic, who really cares? Doughnuts make everything better! Lifeline’s current production is a delight, from George Howe’s songs to Rachel Sypniewski’s doughnut costumes, and especially Juanita Andersen’s performance as the evil condo board president and the French Cruller. —Aimee Levitt
Don’t Look Back/Must Look Back Last year, Albany Park Theater Project used the shuttered Ellen Gates Starr High School building to incredible effect for the site-specific drama Learning Curve. For this 75-minute promenade experience by Tanya Palmer about immigration, the grown-ups at Pivot Arts operate out of a similar playbook in and around the Chinese Mutual Aid Association office in Uptown. But the long, artsy movement and dance interludes don’t educate as well here—cursory overviews of realities like ESL classes and resettlement financing give way to abstruse and scattershot fragments. An indicative moment: audiences are asked to sit on the floor in a room and reflect on context-free statistics projected on the wall, then handed a snack of rambutan. Rather than tapping into Uptown’s rich history, Devon de Mayo’s production mostly exploits it as set dressing. —Dan Jakes
A Swell in the Ground When your romantic partner doesn’t listen, or says insensitive things, or pays an old flame a visit, or cheats on you, or breaks up with you, you feel shitty, especially if your career sucks and/or your parents die. That’s about all there is to Janine Nabers’s world premiere navel-gazer, in which four college friends pair up, split up, recombine, and feel shitty across 17 years. Like many young contemporary playwrights, Nabers seems convinced her job begins and ends with letting characters stew, fret, seethe, and occasionally wax quirkily poetic, as though the expression of reasonably injured feelings is compelling drama. The talents of director Chika Ike’s admirably thoughtful cast make these 105 minutes more compelling than they ought to be. —Justin Hayford
