Bonnie and Clyde Kokandy Productions does all it can with Frank Wildhorn, Don Black, and Ivan Menchell’s 2011 Broadway flop (it only ran for four weeks), here in a Chicago premiere. The performances crackle (in particular Desiree Gonzalez and Max DeTogne as the titular star-crossed outlaws), the score soars under John Cockerill’s musical direction, and the pace moves at a fine clip under director Spencer Neiman. Sadly, however, Wildhorn and company have put some formidable roadblocks in the way of success: some of the ballads slow things to a crawl, and Menchell’s book feels unfocused and fragmented at times. Most damning of all, the show can’t decide whether it’s an eager-to-please entertainment or a pointed commentary on hypocrisy and cruelty in Depression-era America. It tries to do both and fails to do either consistently or well. —Jack Helbig
Ubu II: Electric Boog-Ubu or Free Ubu Ubu Roi has become shorthand for an oaf who burps and farts his way into the highest office in the land, blending transparent lies with the most cynically invigorating of half-truths, only to reveal his total incompetence the moment he has his hands on some power. How this notion could appeal so much to playwrights and audiences right now is beyond me. Alfred Jarry wrote two more Ubu plays after the famous one, Ubu Roi; this production from the Plagiarists freely adapts the third, which finds Ma and Pa Ubu (Jessica Saxvik and Gregory Peters) in a new mode as, fed up with ruling Poland, they decide to try their hands at being servants. Once it plops them down into a political arena not unlike our own, this rendition, with already familiar Orwellian overtones and references ripped from the headlines, has loud, brash fun. Nick Freed directed. —Max Maller
