Flanagan’s Wake The Improv Institute’s original 1994 production of Jack Bronis’s interactive, mostly improvised Irish wake ran for more than a decade. Now Chicago Theater Works disinters these stereotype-laden, intermittently amusing 90 or so minutes, and even brings back Bronis to direct. The results are decidedly musty (think drunk Irishmen jokes), and the challenging acoustics and overlapping, brogue-heavy dialogue make comprehension a regular chore. But the seven improvisers graciously accommodate some delightfully dopey audience participation, giving the evening a refreshingly communal feel. On the night I attended, they even managed to turn one audience member’s perfectly inept rendition of “Danny Boy” into the show’s emotional highlight. —Justin Hayford
Purity Ball: The Musical High-schooler Isabel (Tabitha Rooney) wants to be a good wife when she grows up, just as her evangelical community has groomed her to be, but sexual urges and longing for the wider world make her break free. In this musical by Brad Kemp and Molly Miller there’s incest, embezzlement, a lousy first love, and a saintly, adopted, gay older brother (played by Alex Garday with enthusiasm matching Rooney’s) to show Isabel life in all its contradictory splendor. But every character is such an on-the-nose grotesque that it’s difficult to take Purity Ball seriously as the send-up of religious intolerance it aspires to be. Director Tiffani Swalley lets Rooney belt out the best numbers, which she does with abandon. —Dmitry Samarov
