My first visit to Provision last summer did not inspire much confidence. Their production of Godspell was energetic, but not particularly polished. And the selection of their current offering—Shadowlands—was not the sort of choice that gave much hope of innovation.

And certainly William Nicholson’s Shadowlands isn’t the sort of script that is going to do anything but make established theatre-going audiences comfortable. Based on the late-in-life love affair and marriage of novelist C.S. Lewis to American Joy Gresham, this story of affection, unexpected love, and difficult loss, is exactly the sort of fare that’s calculated to appeal to the older, educated, liberal audience that buys the vast majority of theatre tickets.

But what director Tim Gregory’s production has going for it is two exceptional performances from a pair of Chicago stage veterans. And that’s no small thing. Brad Armacost as Lewis and Susan Moniz as Gresham navigate Nicholson’s not-especially-subtle script with practiced ease. And they do a credible job of unfolding an intellectual connection that turns into romantic affection.

One of the great divides in theatre—right below musical theatre vs. straight plays—is new work vs. established canon. It’s a largely uneven battle. Revivals generally are less risky (audiences know what they’re getting and the recognize the playwright) and get better press (reviewers are less likely to spend their column inches on script critiques). There was a time when a new work offered the upside of the occasional long-running hit, but even that province seems to have been taken over by revivals lately.

Which makes the choice pretty obvious for theatres, and it perhaps explains why so many of the itinerant storefront theatres in town focus on remounts of well-established plays. I can’t say that I, personally, like it, but I get it. But that raises another question that is particularly pertinent to Infamous Commonwealth’s mounting of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. When should we let a classic go?

Any theatre scene as crowded as Chicago is going to have its share of lookalike companies. Even small theatres seem to be loading up on remounts to the point where you need a scorecard just to remind yourself who’s doing what show you heard of when a different company did it four years ago. But even as some companies seem to blend in together, there have always been at least as many companies that find a niche and fill it happily and well.

Wildclaw isn’t the first to do horror theatre. Defiant got a lot of buzz for their Dracula back in the day. Factory’s zombie apocalypse, Among the Dead, remains one of my favorite of their shows. But, to the best of my knowledge at least, Wildclaw remains Chicago’s only theatre dedicated to bringing horror to the stage.

I have to confess I was not looking forward to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Steppenwolf. It seemed to me like a pretty blatant attempt to draw audiences: popular show; buzz-worthy actors in Amy Morton and Tracy Letts in the leads. I prefer to see something less well known.

That said, if you are a fan of this play or have never seen it staged, you should catch Steppenwolf’s production. Well directed and featuring strong central performances, this production overcomes all of the traps inherent in Albee’s script to offer three hours of truly compelling theatre.