There's a wealth of offerings when it comes to LGBT theater this spring. There are a plethora of world and Chicago premieres, plus a number of returning favorites for you to catch if you've missed them the previous times they've played the Windy City. All shows in Chicago unless otherwise noted.
New and new-to-Chicago: Cock, Profiles Theatre, The Main Stage, now through April 6. A woman sexually lures away a man who was previously part of a troubled gay couple, causing the jilted partner to retaliate in Mike Bartlett's hit London and off-Broadway comedy. www.profilestheatre.org
Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, Theater Wit, now through April 27. A romantic triangle involving jealous lesbian academics is complicated by the shuttering of a dated natural history museum in the Chicago premiere of Madeleine George's 2011 comedy. www.theaterwit.org
Road Show, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, now through May 4. This 2009 off-Broadway musical by out composer Stephen Sondheim and playwright John Weidman is actually the final version of their show Bounce that played the Goodman Theatre in a critically dismissed 2003 production. Like Bounce, Road Show is based upon on the talented and conniving real-life Mizner brothers, one of whom briefly had a happy gay relationship in Florida. www. chicagoshakes.com
Brahman/i: A One-Hijra Stand Up Comedy Show, About Face Theatre and Silk Road Rising at Historic Chicago Temple, March 27 through April 27. Fawzia Mirza stars in the title role of the Chicago premiere of Aditi Brennan Kapil's play that explores the history, mythology and high school existence behind an Indian intersex person, or "hijra." www.aboutfacetheatre. com or www.silkroadrising.org
Songs from an Unmade Bed, Pride Films and Plays at Apollo Theater Studio, March 29 through April 27. Lyricist Mark Campbell collaborated with 18 different composers for this 18-number song cycle about the experiences of gay men living in a major metropolitan city. Though the original 2005 off-Broadway production only featured one performer, Pride Films and Plays has engaged three ensemble members for this Chicago premiere. www.pridefilmsandplays. com
Happy Endings, Second Thought Theatre Company at Stage 773, April 3 through May 4. Matt Tassell's world-premiere drama concerns a young gay man named Eddie who is faced with a dilemma when his ill straight friend, Stella, confesses that she's in love with him. www. secondthoughttheatrecompany.com
The Great God Pan, Next Theatre, Evanston, April 3 through May 11. Playwright Amy Herzog is behind this mysterious drama or a young man who must contemplate disturbing missing memories when a childhood friend reappears with claims of being sexually abused by his own father. Kimberly Senior directs the Chicago premiere of this acclaimed work. www. nexttheatre.org
A Place in the Woods, The Fine Print Theatre at The Alley Stage of Profiles Theatre, April 5 through May 4. This world premiere drama by Erik Gernand involves a gay man in Chicago who must return to his rural hometown of Hunter, Ind., when he's faced with his aging mother's growing dementia. www.thefineprinttheatre. org
Cicada, Route 66 Theatre Company at Greenhouse Theater Center, April 9 through May 25. A domineering mother and her artistic son are at the center of Jerre Dye's coming-of-age ghost story involving a small southern family, soon to receive its Chicago premiere. www.route66theatre.org
Buyer and Cellar, Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, May 6 through June 15. Direct from off-Broadway, Michael Urie ( Ugly Betty ) stars in Jonathan Tolins' acclaimed oneman show imagining what it might be like to be an out-of-work gay actor finding employment working in the mall built into the basement of Barbra Streisand's Malibu home. www. broadwayinchicago.com
Gay Play Weekend, Pride Films and Plays at the Center on Halsted's Hoover-Leppen Theatre, May 9 to 11. The finalists of this year's Great Gay Play Contest receive staged readings before the ultimate winner is announced. Finalist plays include The View UpStairs by Max Vernon, Michelangelo and Tommaso by James Rosenfield, Who Killed Joan Crawford? by Michael Leeds, The Book of Andy by Michael J. Mejia and Gentle Passage by Paul Elliottt. www. pridefilmsandplays.com
Classics and revivals: Gypsy, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, now through March 23. Out director Gary Griffin takes on this classic 1959 Broadway musical by out playwright Arthur Laurents, composer Jule Styne and out lyricist Stephen Sondheim. See why the role of Madame Rose is often considered on par with King Lear when Tony nominee Louise Pitre ( Mamma Mia ) plays the ultimate "stage mother from hell" in this highly mythologized story about the childhood and rise to fame of burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee. www. chicagoshakes.com
Rent, Paramount Theatre, now through April 6. This Aurora-based theater that has been producing Broadway-caliber work closes out its season with a new production of the late Jonathan Larson's 1996 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent. Jeff Award-winning out director Jim Corti stages this La Boheme-inspired story of love, friendship and loss among of group of bohemian New Yorkers in the age of HIV/AIDS. www.paramountaurora.com
Good Boys and True, Raven Theatre, now through May 3. A sex video involving what looks like a prep school football team captain and a girl from a different school stirs up controversy over issues of class and sexuality in Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's 2007 drama that previous debuted at Steppenwolf Theatre. A special "Out at Raven" reception for the LGBT community is at 7 p.m. Friday, March 21. www. raventheatre.com
Dorian, The House Theatre of Chicago at Chopin Theatre, April 4 through May 18. Ben Lobpries and Tommy Rapley's acclaimed dancedrama adaptation of Oscar Wilde's famous novel about inner wickedness and outer beauty is revived in a production featuring out company member Patrick Andrews. www.thehousetheatre. com
Hit the Wall, Chicago Commercial Collective and The Inconvenience at Greenhouse Theater Center, April 22 through June 29. Ike Holter's acclaimed 2012 drama with music that re-imagines what the seminal 1969 Stonewall Riots might have been like returns in a production featuring many members of its original cast. www.chicagocommercialcollective.com or www.greenhousetheater.org
Cabaret, Citadel Theatre, Lake Forest, April 25 through May 25. Gay author Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories inspired this musical by songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb about a bisexual U.S. writer who falls under the spell of a cabaret singer and other fleshy pleasures of Weimar Republic Berlin in the early 1930s. Somehow, Citadel Theatre obtained the rights to this Tony-winning musical just as it is being revived again on Broadway in Joe Masteroff's revised 1998 version. www.citadeltheatre.org
At the Flash, Pride Films and Plays rehearsal space, 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 29. This one-man show that Sean Chandler and its star, David Leeper, co-wrote looks at different decades of gay life and activism in a bar known as The Flash. It returns for a one-night-only fundraising performance before it heads off to Ireland to be a part of the Dublin Gay Theatre Fest. www.pridefilmsandplays.com
The Wizard of Oz, Cadillac Palace Theatre, April 30 through May 11. No, there aren't any overt gay characters or plot lines in this great American fairy tale, but the classic 1939 MGM film version is culturally significant to the LGBT community in oh so many ways. This national tour is based upon the recent London version that includes new songs thrown in by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. www.broadwayinchicago.com
5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche, Chicago Commercial Collective and The New Colony at Chopin Theatre, May 1 through June 8. Evan Linder and Andrew Hobgood's Eisenhower Eraset comedy returns after a critically acclaimed off-Broadway run. See what happens when five women who comprise the leadership of the Susan B. Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein cope with a nuclear holocaust in the midst of their annual summer quiche breakfast. www.chicagocommercialcollective.com or www.thenewcolony.org
Vieux Carre, Raven Theatre, May 6 through June 28. This semi-autobiographical drama by Tennessee Williams premiered on Broadway in 1977 and concerns a newly transplanted writer facing poverty and his burgeoning homosexuality in 1930s New Orleans. www.raventheatre.com .
Mamma Mia!, Cadillac Palace Theatre, May 13 to 18. The gay plot point in this jukebox musical that grafts the pop hits of ABBA to Catherine Johnson's flimsy script comes at the end to help provide an all-too-tidy conclusion to this globally successful smash hit. www.broadwayinchicago.com
M. Butterfly, Court Theatre, May 8 through June 8. Court Theatre artistic director Charles Newell helms a revival of David Henry Hwang's 1988 Tony Award-winning drama about a French diplomat who falls in love with a Peking Opera singer who is also a communist spy. www.courttheatre.org
Caged Dames, Hell in a Handbag Productions at Mary's Attic, May 28 through July 13. Chicago's celebrated camp theater company revives its 2006 musical comedy heavily inspired by the 1950s film noir drama Caged about a housewife who must face down a butch and sadistic prison matron when she gets wrongly thrown into prison. www.handbagproductions.org
Concerts:
Windy City Gay Chorus and Aria: The combined ensembles of Windy City Performing Arts perform It Gets Better: The Concert, inspired by the LGBT anti-bullying youth movement cocreated by advice columnist Dan Savage and his husband, Terry Miller. The concert features the premiere of the song "You Are Beautiful" ( "Vwy Prekrassny" ) by artistic director Paul Caldwell and Sean Ivory, written in support of Russia's oppressed LGBT community. Performances are at 5 and 8 p.m. Saturday, March 22, at Ebenezer Lutheran Church, 1650 W. Foster Ave. Tickets are $15 and $10 for students and seniors; visit www.windycitysings.org for more information.
Chicago Gay Men's Chorus: The few years of new Broadway musicals ( like Kinky Boots and The Book of Mormon ) and significant revivals ( like Pippin ) are the source materials for the concert Bouncing Off the Walls: Broadway Our Way. Performances are at three locations: North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 17; Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph Drive, at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 31; and North Central College's Wentz Concert Hall, 171 E. Chicago Ave., Naperville, at 8 p.m. Sunday, June 1. Tickets vary by venue, so visit www.cgmc.org for more information.
Artemis Singers: Chicago's Lesbian Feminist Chorus celebrates the eve of the statewide availability of same-sex marriage licenses in Illinois with A Feminist Mosaic Concert & Dance at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 31, at Broadway United Methodist Church, 3338 N. Broadway. Tickets are $15-$20 and $10 for seniors or kids and are available by visiting www.artemissingers.org .
Tony Tunes!: Pride Films and Plays' fundraising concert features non-Equity Jeff nominees and winners performing songs from Tony Award-winning musicals at 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 3, at Sidetrack, 3349 N. Halsted St. Tickets are $20. Visit www.pridefilmsandplays.com for more information.
Note: Scott C. Morgan is a member of Windy City Performing Arts and has also previously performed with the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus.
