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Possibly of interest to my co-citizens headed to New York for the holidays: what I plan to see on my busperson’s holiday, when I’m unconstrained in my choices–and paying my own money.

1. A Little Night Music with Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch.  The loveliest of Sondheim musicals performed by two of his finest interpreters.  The New York Times, which gave the show tepid reviews when it starred Catherine Zeta Jones and Angela Lansbury, calls the production with this cast a must-see–and who am I to disagree?  Stritch appeared before Chicago audiences this past summer at Ravinia’s Martin Theater, but Peters hasn’t been here in four years.  So if Mohammed won’t go to the mountain...

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Just in time for the holiday season, when airports and highways are filled with people en route to visit family, comes "Travels with My Aunt." This black comedy  has been adapted from Graham Greene's novel of the same name by Giles Havergal at the Writers' Theatre.

Directed by Stuart Carden, the show features four actors—LaShawn Banks, Sean Fortunato, John Hoogenakker and Jeremy Sher—who portay the 25 plus characters in the play. 

Dueling Critics Jonathan Abarbanel and Kelly Kleiman reviewed the production, which runs at the Writers' Theatre through March 27.

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1. "The Brother/Sister Plays" at Steppenwolf. This trilogy was supposed to be the unveiling of a major new talent addressing the African-American experience, and instead it turned out to be a single excellent one-act flanked by one that was mediocre and another that was out-and-out poor. ("Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet," seemed virtually pointless.) Tarell Alvin McCraney may be a big deal but we have yet to see it except in "The Brothers Size," which also had the unfair advantage of starring K. Todd Freeman, who just gets better and better.

2. "Candide" at the Goodman. When Leonard Bernstein, Voltaire and Lillian Hellman (to name only a few) meet Mary Zimmerman, what could possibly be bad? In this case, the answer is “this musical,” and actually it shouldn’t have been a surprise: when that many people have had to take a crack at a piece, there’s most likely something fundamentally wrong.

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On this date, Dec. 16, Noel Pierce Coward was born in London in 1899. You may ask, what does the sophisticated English master-of-all-theatrical-trades have to do with Chicago? The answer is: plenty. Chicago was a regular personal stop for Coward for 40 years for several reasons.

First, the great acting couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne lived on a marvelous rustic estate in the rolling kettle moraine countryside southwest of Milwaukee (Lunt was born and raised in the area). Coward would visit his lifelong friends, The Lunts, every few years, arriving in Chicago by train or (later) plane on his way to Wisconsin, and often stopping for a few days.

By the mid-1950s, Coward had a second reason to visit Chicago: his personal physician was here. In 1955, Coward flew into Chicago on a return Eastbound trip from Los Angeles. Feeling acutely unwell, he checked himself into Passevant Hospital (now Northwestern Memorial Medical Center) where he came under the care of Dr. Ed Bigg, a prominent physician and socialite who often treated visiting celebs. Bigg’s tests confirmed a kidney stone and Coward promptly underwent successful surgery.

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I already honored Ron OJ Parson for his outstanding direction of Home at Court Theatre, by honoring every one the actors he directed in that superb production. That means I get five more bites of the apple!

1. Michael Menendian, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" at Raven. I don’t understand it, actually—for some years, Raven was known as a middling producer of chestnuts. With the same company and leadership, in the last two years it’s come roaring out as a premier interpreter of classics. Menendian’s thoughtful and re-focused Cat . . . (not Maggie’s play, in this rendition, but Brick’s and Big Daddy’s) comes on the heels of his definitive "Death of a Salesman" last year, literally the best production of that play I have ever seen—and I saw Dustin Hoffman do it on Broadway. It’s a joy to see a journeyman turn into master craftsmen, and ours not to reason why.

2. Mark Ulrich, "Mary’s Wedding" at Rivendell.

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Venerable Pegasus Players has left its home of 25 years, the O’Rourke Theater of Truman College, but the troupe is not abandoning the Uptown neighborhood. Sometime late next year (2011) Pegasus will move to the theater of the Jane Addams Hull House Association center on Beacon Street, when the Black Ensemble--the current resident--moves to its new arts complex now under construction. The recent announcement laid to rest fears that Pegasus Players had closed its doors after 32 years, although the troupe’s longtime phone number has been disconnected and its website hasn’t been updated in over a year.

The announcement said Pegasus is taking a year-long hiatus from producing a season in order to restructure under the artistic leadership of veteran director Ilesa Duncan and board leadership by playwright David Barr.

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By late November, Actors Equity Association—the union of live theater stage managers and actors—usually has released statistics on how many weeks of work Equity members chalked up in the previous 12-month season (not a calendar year). The break-down by categories—Broadway shows, resident companies, dinner theaters, etc.—is a good barometer of theater industry health and performing arts health more broadly. In Chicago, the stats for the Chicago Area Theater (CAT) contract are especially important. This year, the statistics are late and won’t be released by Equity until next week earliest and possibly not until after the first of the year. What Equity spokespersons have confirmed, however, is that the numbers will be down both nationally and locally.

In terms of economic factors, theater is what’s called a lag indicator responding more slowly to trends. Theater hardly was affected at all by the economic meltdown of mid-2008, the reason being that financial commitments already were in place for 2009. Especially with non-profit theater companies, the grant money from foundations, corporations and government agencies already was in the pipeline. Only in the past year has the theater industry felt the cash flow and grant pinch.

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