OPENINGS
MONDAY
Jeff Awards Citations Ceremony — 7:30 p.m. at the Park West, 322 W. Armitage Ave.; $30-$35, www.jeffawards.org. The annual occasion for Chicago to honor its own.
WEDNESDAY
“Apparently Heaven Can’t Wait … The Best of Jim Zulevic at The Second City” — through June 17 by Second City at Theater on the Lake, 2401 N. Lake Shore Drive; $17.50, 312-742-7994. A sardonic, rubber-faced actor with improbably expressive eyebrows, the late Jim Zulevic was one of Second City’s greatest comic talents. For its Theater on the Lake stand this year, Second City pays tribute to the work of this big, funny and big-hearted actor who died last year at age 40.
EXTENDED, more shows
“The Puppetmaster of Lodz” — through July 15 by Writers’ Theatre, 664 Vernon Ave., Glencoe. Tickets have been flying out of the door for Jimmy McDermott’s flawed but imaginative production of Giles Segal’s drama about a puppeteer who escaped Auschwitz and has barricaded himself in an attic outside Berlin, unable to believe the war is over. You won’t be able to get the expressive puppets by Michael Montenegro out of your head.
“The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow” — through July 22 at The Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, 777 N. Green St.; $20-$30, 312-733-6000. The third (and reportedly final) extension of this hit Collaboraction production of Rolin Jones’ hip, smart and insightful play about a woman adopted from China as a baby and raised in the United States. There’s a career-making, tour-de-force performance in the title role by Chicago actress Jennifer Shin.
CLOSINGS, last chance
SUNDAY
“Arcadia” — In Charles Newell’s provocatively assertive revival of Tom Stoppard’s prismatic 1993 drama “Arcadia” at Chicago’s Court Theatre, the play’s over-articulate characters-the pursued from the early 19th Century and the pursuers from the late 20th-yak on about gardens, Newtonian physics, Lord Byron, mathematics and sex. That’s to be expected and enjoyed. But in this revisionist, daring and well-acted production, the ever-smart Newell gives you the sense that they’re all a bunch of sputtering, well-dressed atomic particles he has dangerously unleashed on our world-much as Enrico Fermi and his nuclear crew did in 1942 just a bit farther south on Ellis Avenue. It’s all a thrillingly intellectual endeavor. At Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave.; $28-$54 at 773-753-4472.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” — Tina Landau’s smart take for the Steppenwolf Theatre Company is fully in sync with Wendy Kesselman’s clear-eyed 1997 revision of the original, hoary, sentimentalized dramatization. Landau mostly cuts away the tired trappings of realism. Landau’s rich character actors build complex figures before our eyes. Claire Elizabeth Saxe’s quicksilver Anne is a quirky, engaging presence, driving the story forward even when an adult might see no reason to go on. At Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.; $20-$65, 312-335-1650.
