“The Long Red Road” is a bleak drama currently in its world premier performances at the Goodman Theatre in a much heralded production directed by Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman.

As the curtain opens on the Lyric Opera of Chicago's premiere presentation of "The Damnation of Faust", it seems we are watching a giant television set.  In a rectangular box suspended above the stage Faust, tenor Paul Groves in a business suit, is working on his computer.

Heart-warming, hilarious and huge. That describes the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago's lavish revival of "Cinderella," now on stage at the Auditorium Theatre through Feb. 28.

Next Theatre Company's world premiere presentation of "Return to Haifa" by M.E. H. Lewis is a haunting tale torn from the pages of recent history and sweeps the audience into the most personal aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Full disclosure: I never wanted to see "August: Osage County." I heard Tracy Letts had written about a family full of drunks and pill-poppers, who were tearing each other to pieces on the stage night after night and I was not interested.