Theater Spotlight
Gay actor Steven Strafford, famed for his one-man show Methtacular!, goes solo once again to star in William Spatz's world-premiere play Jesus the Jew As Told By His Brother James for Forum Productions. Strafford plays a modern-day biblical history professor who tries to make sense of a recent tragedy by imagining himself as a Jewish brother of Jesus Christ. Jesus the Jew As Told By His Brother James plays from Friday, Feb. 17, through Sunday, March 26, at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Regular-run prices are $30-$35; call 773-404-7336 or visit GreenhouseTheater.org .
Critics' Picks
High Fidelity, Refuge Theatre Project, through March 5. Last year's sleeper hit is back in a fully-accessible space even more environmentally intimate than the former temporary shelters favored by this up-and-coming new company. MSB
Hobo King, Congo Square Theatre Company at Athenaeum Theatre, through March 5. The contradictions of homelessness are endowed with tragic dignity in Javon Johnson's gritty fantasy, starring the indomitable Velma Austin. MSB
The Temperamentals, About Face Theatre at Theater Wit, through Feb. 18. Jim Marans' intelligent play illuminates perhaps the most-important pre-Stonewall event in American LGBTQ history, the 1952 founding of the Mattachine Society by unlikely lovers Harry Hay and future fashion great Rudi Gernreich. Their love, and their history with Mattachine, are bittersweet and important. JA
Wit, The Hypocrites at Den Theatre, through Feb. 19. Lisa Tejero gives a heartbreaking performance of a stern English professor facing down a severe course of chemotherapy in director Marti Lyons' impressive production of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama. SCM
By Abarbanel, Barnidge and Morgan