Footlight Footnotes A mystery at Steppenwolf, a stunner at Court, & a fiasco at Goodman

Welcome to Footlight Footnotes, The A.V. Club's lowdown on the most interesting and notable productions in the city. Today’s performances: a historical whodunit, a jazzy '20s race drama, and a slapstick musical comedy.

Fake at Steppenwolf Theatre
In Fake, Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle invites three guests to his estate to accuse them of passing off a skull as an evolutionary missing link. It’s a kooky idea, but one that works well enough. Playwright Eric Simonson’s new work is ambitious, trying to balance the Doyle plot with a far less riveting story about a scientist and his unfaithful fiancée in 1953, but he excels at making Anthropology 101 accessible and fascinating. Even with plaid golf pants and an adorable Scottish accent, Francis Guinan makes Doyle a badass teddy bear: exuding a lovable charm, but possessing a boiling ferocity under the surface. This isn’t lost on co-star Kate Arrington, who develops incredible chemistry with Doyle as reporter Rebecca Eastman; it’s like she’s a female Watson to Doyle’s Holmes. The sexy intellectual competition between the two characters gives Fake, which is primarily lots of men talking about science, a refreshing jolt of electricity.

Cheapest tickets: Steppenwolf offers 20 tickets for $20 apiece, half-priced rush tickets (one hour prior to curtain), and $15 student tickets on performance days.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at Court Theatre
In a chilly South Side recording studio, the four men of Ma Rainey’s band rehearse while waiting for their lead singer in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Court Theatre's stunning season opener. They wax philosophical about blacks in America, get stoned, and maybe throw a couple of punches. The third play in Pulitzer-winning playwright August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle”—10 plays that chronicle the 20th-century black experience—Ma Rainey is the only one set outside of Pittsburgh, making it the perfect show for Hyde Park’s Court Theatre and Resident Artist Ron O.J. Parsons. Parsons tends to bring out the best in his actors, and Ma Rainey is no exception: Greta Oglesby captures all the sass and brass of “mother of the blues” Ma Rainey, but James T. Alfred anchors the show as Levee, the hotshot trumpet player who witnessed his mother’s rape and father’s lynching as a child. Alfred plays Levee with a spooky combination of bloodlust and naïveté, and his monologue at the end of the first act left the audience at The A.V. Club's performance riveted—nary a cough or fidget in the house. That’s always a good sign.

Cheapest tickets: Half-price rush tickets are available one hour prior to curtain, and Court offers three types of student discounts: $10 tickets for University of Chicago students, or 25 percent off for non-U of C, discounted student matinee performances, and rush tickets one hour prior to curtain ($5 U of C, $10 non-U of C). Seniors (60+) get 10 percent off any performance.

Animal Crackers at Goodman Theatre
This production of Animal Crackers is essentially a bunch of talented actors singing, dancing, hitting, falling, and dancing again from beginning to its absurd end. That makes sense, considering it's based on the Marx Brothers play/film, which follows the chaos at a high-society party after a sculpture goes missing. Molly Brennan steals the show as Harpo, particularly with one face she makes when aggravated. Her training as a 500 Clown (Chicago’s premier clown troupe) ensemble member makes her the ideal actor to fall from ladders, climb up paintings, and stand on her head. Jonathan Brody, playing Harpo’s partner Emanuel Ravelli/Chico, has serious musical chops (he plays accompaniment during the number “Everyone Says I Love You”), and Joey Slotnick, that guy from a ton of TV shows and films like Twister, does a remarkable job of capturing Groucho’s Gumby-like physicality while telling a couple of wise-cracks at the Goodman’s expense.

Cheapest tickets: Goodman offers half-price mezzanine tickets and $10 student tickets starting at 10 a.m. on performance days.