The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow. Photo by Joel Moorman_______
The Diary of Anne Frank, Steppenwolf Theatre, through June 10. Tina Landau's unobtrusive direction of this classic drama is efficient and affecting. Wendy Kesselman's 1997 adaptation rightfully scrapes off any perceptions of sugary sentimentality. SCM
The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, Collaboraction at Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, through June 3. Cyberpunk robots, rock-n-roll rhythms and adolescent angst add up to a show audiences of all ages loved so much, they extended it again. MSB
My Children, My Africa, Victory Gardens Greenhouse, through June 10. Director ( and Gardens co-founder ) Cecil O'Neal elicits brutally vivid performances from a cast you couldn't improve in Athol Fugard's incendiary drama about South African Apartheid. CS
Ragtime, Porchlight Music Theatre, through May 27. The forces that shaped early 20th-century America—technology, immigration and race—explode in this powerful staging of the epic yet personal and evocative musical based on the Doctorow novel. Don't miss. JA
—By Abarbanel, Barnidge, Morgan and Sullivan