Marissa Oberlander, author at Chicago Reader

A man and woman in 1980s club regalia, including fringed leather jackets and leopard-print leggings, stand holding hands center stage.

Hair metal hijinks

by Marissa Oberlander July 26, 2023July 26, 2023

The Mercury Theater production of this five-time Tony-nominated musical re-creates the 80s with such abandon that the audience’s fervor was palpable (and loud) on the night I attended. Tommy Novak’s staging of Rock of Ages creates a fun environment where musical theater mainstays intermingle with fresh standouts on the local scene. Reminiscent of the Emcee […]

Six people sit at a cabaret table with items for close-up magic scattered before them.

Arts & Culture

Magic College spells out more than tricks

by Marissa Oberlander June 29, 2023July 5, 2023

It’s nice to have at least one surprising hobby, so I read recently. It’s a core value I didn’t know I had, despite being a lifelong collector of offbeat and often impassioned pursuits. I cofounded a burlesque troupe in college; I jammed in a klezmer band with my dad; I canoodled with chickens as a […]

Five performers in deconstructed 18th-century garb cluster onstage on a pile of sand. Wooden casks and chests are on the side of the stage.

Theater Review

Undiscovered country?

by Marissa Oberlander June 23, 2023June 23, 2023

This world premiere from the Plagiarists, written by Chicago-based playwright Alexander Utz and directed by Jonathan Shaboo, has a unique premise and immersive staging (watch out for sand) but lacks focus and clear direction. The story is based on a 1761 Danish expedition to explore the Arabian Peninsula; in this case, a narrator (Maliha Sayed) […]

A group of people gathers around a table as if at a seance. The walls behind them look like crisscrossed iron bars. A young woman is standing behind the bars.

Theater Review

Unhappy mediums

by Marissa Oberlander April 27, 2023April 27, 2023

Eclectic Full Contact Theatre’s first full-length production in Chicago since 2019, a world premiere penned by Maggie Lou Rader, is haunting, literally. Based on the first reported instance of spiritual possession in the midwest, in Watseka, Illinois in the late 19th century, the story merges ghostly occurrences with the all-too-real trauma of a family consumed […]

A notecard showing a cartoon of a white poodle mix dog on a turquoise background. It's hanging on a line of string with the white envelope, both held up by small gold clips.

Buy Local

Best values-driven custom pet art

by Marissa Oberlander April 5, 2023April 9, 2023

Hopefully other pet owners can relate to my obsessive need to order custom art pieces of my dog, Swift, in literally any medium you can imagine. If only our four-year-old, now iconic, mini poodle mix knew he’s a muse—captured with felt, on a wood block, in photo shoots, on holiday cards, and even on a […]

A large group of people of all ages, genders, races, and ethnicities are shown on a pickleball court. They are holding pickleball rackets and smiling.

Best of Chicago

Best racket sports enthusiast

by Marissa Oberlander April 5, 2023April 7, 2023

For college tennis player Chris Clark, the COVID-19 pandemic became an unexpected reset that helped him bring his master’s of business administration back to the court. After stints at Gatorade, Wilson Sporting Goods, and the Kraft Heinz Co., he found himself out of a sports start-up job, with his love of racket sports “staring me […]

We see what appears to be an apartment setting, with four people. There is a man on the far left, bald with a dark beard, who is wearing an athletic shirt and blue jeans. He is looking down at a bottle of what looks like whiskey. Next to him is another man with long dark hair, wearing a T-shirt and some kind of cardigan. In the foreground are two women. At the far right is a woman seated on a couch. She has reddish hair pulled into a ponytail and wears a white T-shirt and jeans. Standing on the left of the couch is another woman, who also has light-colored hair pulled into a ponytail. She wears a short-sleeved blue knit sweater, a blue denim miniskirt, and pattered tights. She is looking out and holds a multicolored backpack in one hand.

Theater Review

Too soon?

by Marissa Oberlander April 5, 2023April 5, 2023

It feels early to stage a play set during, and concerning the effects of, the early days of COVID-19 on its characters. We can still feel those days intimately, given the short passing of time, and the degree of veracity required to make this a world we want to and can meaningfully revisit is high. […]

Theater Review

Utopia for two

by Marissa Oberlander March 23, 2023March 23, 2023

Promethean Theatre’s world premiere of local playwright Trina Kakacek’s two-act dramedy, directed by Anna C. Bahow, is a unique and meaty thought experiment that would benefit from some cleanup and a tighter approach. Between Ida (a winning and scene-stealing Cameron Feagin) and Vivian (Kali Skatchke)—the lone inhabitants of Progress, Ida’s vision of matriarchal utopia rooted […]

Alexis J. Roston, a Black woman, portrays Billie Holiday. She is wearing a sleeveless white formal gown with a gardenia in her hair and long beaded white fingerless gloves. She is standing in front of an old-fashioned microphone, caught mid-song.

Theater Review

A heartbreaking Lady Day

by Marissa Oberlander February 9, 2023February 9, 2023

Alexis J. Roston’s sixth go-round playing jazz legend Billie Holiday in the last year of her life is beautifully layered, heartbreaking, and still affirming of the great vocalist’s accomplishments, against a multitude of odds. After a decade on and off in the role, Roston is now a codirector in Mercury Theater’s production of the Lanie […]

Harrison Lampert, a white male magician, stands onstage left at the Chicago Magic Lounge. He is holding a length of white rope. There are several audience members seated at cabaret tables on the right.

Theater Review

Absurdist sleight of hand

by Marissa Oberlander January 18, 2023January 18, 2023

For the uninitiated like I was, just entering the Chicago Magic Lounge on a chilly Wednesday evening was a thrill. Via a secret door, the faux-laundromat entry gives way to a luxe theater both steeped in history with posters of illusionists past and very much alive with a small army of close-up magicians working the […]

Nine actors onstage, performing "La Vie Boheme" in Rent. Most of them are seated in the background, but Angel, wearing a green dress and knee-high white boots, and Tom Collins, wearing dark trousers, a red T-shirt, and a camouflage jacket, are standing on chairs front and center, their fists raised.

Theater Review

Rent pays off

by Marissa Oberlander November 9, 2022November 9, 2022

After thoroughly enjoying the shameless perversity of Kokandy Productions’s Cruel Intentions, under Adrian Abel Azevedo’s direction, I found Azevedo’s Rent at Porchlight to bring a stark, often heart-wrenching dose of relevance to his now-known talent for embodying nostalgia. Musicals can be tough when you have the cast recording memorized, but this production of the late […]

Six people representing the characters in Clue are in a library set. Two Black men stand behind the couch. Three white women and a white man sit on the couch. They are all holding weapons associated with the game and the show (knife, rope, candlestick, etc.)

Theater Review

Catch the Clue bus

by Marissa Oberlander October 28, 2022October 28, 2022

The game Clue taught me what “confidential” means, that a conservatory is just a fancy greenhouse, and that Miss Scarlett is always the right choice. Any armchair detective that could identify those little toy weapons in the dark with their eyes closed will enjoy this new stage adaptation of the 1985 movie based on the […]

A woman in a dark blouse with dark hair is grapped against a wall. Another woman with short dark hair, wearing a lacy blouse with a necklace, leans in toward her in an intimidating fashion.

Theater Review

An ‘exciting and subversive” Richard III

by Marissa Oberlander September 8, 2022September 8, 2022

In partnership with the University of Illinois Chicago’s Disability Cultural Center, Babes With Blades’s interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s darkest plays is exciting and subversive. From overt to subtle, disturbing to laughable, the production empowers a cast of female and nonbinary actors, some with disabilities seen and unseen, to portray the breadth of human experience […]

Ross Johnson, an older white male in a gray suit, stands center stage. Two other older white males stand on either side of him. Johnson has his right index finger raised. There are two red chairs visible behind them.

Theater Review

Mind games

by Marissa Oberlander July 27, 2022July 27, 2022

More than 30 years into his second act as a mind reader and psychic performer, Ross Johnson, a former schoolteacher, is still eliciting gasps. The second performer at Rogers Park’s new Rhapsody Theater—formerly the Mayne Stage—the 77-year-old is like Mister Rogers meets Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling in his interactive one-man show. It’s hard to shock […]

Four young people in flowing colorful robes surround Bottom, who is playing a guitar and wearing donkey ears.

Theater Review

Al fresco dreams

by Marissa Oberlander July 20, 2022July 20, 2022

On its ten-year anniversary and return from a COVID-19 hiatus, Midsommer Flight is restaging A Midsummer Night’s Dream,the play that started it all in 2012. On the night I attended, the crowd, close to 100 people by my estimation and incredibly engaged, was compelling proof that free summer Shakespeare continues to bring communities together around […]