Theater: Second City, But First Love

Chicago's vital theater scene brings back its proven stars

Chicago may not always have been receptive to the grandeur of drama, but it has always been a theatrical town--a city of pugilistic journalists and publicity-hunting mobsters, of outrageous politics and a histrionically unruffled electorate. It was probably inevitable, in a city where showmanship has been so much a part of public life, that a feisty, populist stage community would emerge sooner or later. And sure enough, over the past decade, it has, with at least half a dozen companies elbowing their way into national prominence and the best known of them, the Steppenwolf collective, capturing a 1985 Tony Award as...

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