The week’s other openings

The week’s other openings

Chicago

A Charlie Chaplin Christmas

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DCA Studio Theatre, (312) 742-8497

Chicago’s Silent Theatre Company specializes in “the wordless re-creation of silent movies,” said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. In this holiday-themed show, 10 physically masterful performers “re-create not just the comedic chaos but that desperate urge to tell a truthful human story that made Chaplin so famous.”

Doctor Atomic

Civic Opera House, (312) 332-2244

This is the Chicago debut of composer John Adams’ 2005 opera about the Manhattan Project, said Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times. Adams’ score pulses with beautiful passages, and director and librettist Peter Sellars “has infused the opera with references beyond physics,” grounding the characters firmly in the intellectual and historical currents of the 1940s.

New York

Yellowface

Public Theater (212) 967-7555

Playwright David Henry Hwang has explored racial identity in award-winning dramas such as M. Butterfly, said Marilyn Stasio in Variety. But who knew he was “such a funny guy?” In this account of Hwang’s personal campaign against the practice of casting white actors in Asian roles, he wittily exposes the dangers of even well-intentioned racial rhetoric.

Los Angeles

Anything

Elephant Theatre, Hollywood; (323) 960-4410

Tim McNeil’s “bristly valentine to the unpredictability of the human heart” peeks into two broken lives, said F. Kathleen Foley in the Los Angeles Times. McNeil himself stars as the emotionally scarred Angeleno who takes up with Louis Jacobs’ transvestite prostitute. Both “find purpose—and ultimately salvation—in their unlikely new romance.”