Ideation We’re in a meeting room at a consulting firm (whiteboard, ergonomic chairs). Four consultants (MBAs, engineers) and an intern (Scooter) have been tasked with conceptualizing a system for the liquidation and disposal (killing and hiding) of a million or more victims in the (as yet) theoretical event of an extinction-level viral outbreak. The consultants focus all their brainpower and arrogance on ideating (brainstorming) the problem. But as they draw arrows and circles on the whiteboard (“LF” = “liquidation facility”) it occurs to them that things may not be what they seem. The rest of Aaron Loeb’s erudite dark comedy presents the spectacle of smart people going nuts, weighing a possible genocide against keeping their jobs. Gus Menary’s Jackalope Theatre staging is hilarious and disquieting, its darkest joke being the first one: that these savants are gung ho as long as they think the job is just killing sick people. —Tony Adler

A Prayer for the Sandinistas When the first Polish pope, John Paul II, made Chicago an early stop on his American tour of 1979, reports were circulating nationally that a popular uprising had made strides against the Somoza client regime in Nicaragua. Leigh Johnson’s intricate and impressive play encapsulates this historical moment inside the Blaczks’ living room on the northwest side, where a family of staidly conservative Polish-Catholic parishioners, having invited a pair of Nicaraguan orphans into the home to experience the papal visit, encounter instead two revolutionary fighters in camouflage and berets. Jonathan Hagloch’s staging for Subtext Theater Company is straightforward, with natural dialogue and well-rounded characters that appear to be drawn from Johnson’s own past. Kate Robison is stunning in her minor role as Maria, a shy friend of the family. —Max Maller

Three Days of Rain Mercurial, carefully crafted performances by Kyle Curry and Kate Black-Spence drive Derek Van Barham’s intimate staging of Richard Greenberg’s 1997 drama, whose theme is the complex legacy—emotional and material—passed down from parents to children. Curry and Black-Spence play two characters each in this BoHo Theatre production. In act one, they are Walker and Nan Janeway, estranged siblings who reunite after the death of their father, Ned, a famous New York architect, to collect their inheritance, which they expect will be one of his celebrated houses. In the second half, set 37 years earlier, the actors portray Ned and Lina—the girlfriend of Ned’s business partner, Theo (Niko Kourtis, who also plays Theo’s son, Pip)—at the moment when Lina and Ned fall in love during a three-day rainstorm. Greenberg’s dialogue is witty and literate, as befits his privileged, urbane characters, but the humor serves an achingly painful narrative that haunted me long after the show ended. Curry is riveting as the quirky, narcissistic Walker and the shy, sensitive Ned, and Black-Spence is equally compelling as the nurturing Nan and especially the flamboyant, mentally unstable Lina, whose eccentricity—so alluring to Ned—will, we know, lead to a madness that will wreck her marriage and traumatize her children. —Albert Williams