Alissa Norby

CHICAGO – Chicago theatre often surprises its audiences in the notorious fizzling summer months by providing us what I like to call “Christmas in July”. In this case, though, it’s August and Santa has hopped onto Route 66.

CHICAGO – Ah, it’s summer again. Kids in Chicago are playing in the Millennium Park fountains, teenagers are flooding in to see the latest cinema blockbusters and families are enjoying Lake Michigan’s beaches.

CHICAGO – On the fourth of July in 1862, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson rowed a boat up the River Thames with 10-year-old Alice Liddell. Alice was the daughter of the new dean of Christ Church where Dodgson was employed as a lecturer in mathematics.

CHICAGO – If you were to visit Harlem in the 1920s, you might have found yourself in a nightclub exploding with hot keys, cold booze and swingin’ dances about as far from the stylings of “So You Think You Can Dance” as possible.

CHICAGO – I wouldn’t have wanted to be Tracy Letts on Saturday afternoon. After winning both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for his opus “August: Osage County,” he had to have been feeling the tremendous pressure being placed on his newest work and first comedy “Superior Donuts”.

CHICAGO – Forget the Year of the Rat. This is the year of the dysfunctional family reunion.

With Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “August: Osage County,” the Broadway remounting of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and the Tony-sweeping revival of “Gypsy,” 2008 has been saturated with some of the finest performances of relational drama that theatre has seen in years.