David R.
Yelp
No love yet on Yelp for the Writers Theater?
That's a shame. Although it's rather far north, this company was founded in 1992 and has been thriving since at least the early 00s. I often see their shows in the various review outlets such as TimeOut and the Tribune. They consistently feature top-notch talent from the Chicago theater scene and produce a variety of text-focused drama.
And city-dwelling theater lovers have little excuse for inconvenience, as the UPN line of the Metra stops half a block away at the Glencoe station.
This venue is their Tudor Court Theater inside the Woman's Library Club of Glencoe. The charming brick building is just what you would expect from a century-old North Shore women's club, but the theater tucked inside is a delightful surprise. It is a very cozy, 108-seat marvel, not quite an Elizabethan thrust stage, but with risers on three sides and truly not a bad seat in the house. The first row is actually on the stage floor, inches away from the action.
What finally drew me to attend a show up there was a star-studded production of Hamlet, featuring some of my long-time Chicago Shakespeare Theater favorites, including Ross Lehman, Timothy Edward Kane, Scott Parkinson in the title role, and Larry Yando as the Ghost, Player King, and First Gravedigger. It can hardly get any better than that. Overall, the cast was very strong and the production outstanding. There was one weak spot, and I have a few other quibbles, but this isn't a theater review. I will say, though, that the intimacy of the space enhanced the performance tremendously.