Theater year in review: First Folio bids farewell, Lookingglass goes on hiatus, Goodman stages blockbuster

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect that Steppenwolf Theatre laid off 13 full-time employees.

Lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including declining audience numbers and rising costs, continued to impact Chicago-area theaters in 2023.

But not all news was bad news. The League of Chicago Theatres reported ticket sales for 2023’s 11th Chicago Theatre Week surpassed every previous year. Goodman Theatre staged the most successful show in its nearly 100-year existence and, after nearly 40 years, mid-size stalwart American Blues Theater moved into its permanent home.

Here’s a look back at the year in Chicago-area theater.

Bittersweet departure

Oak Brook’s well-loved First Folio Theatre - founded in 1996 by executive director David Rice and his late wife, Alison C. Vesely, the company’s longtime artistic director – closed after 27 years, leaving the suburban theater community poorer for its absence.

In 2020, four years after Vesely died of ovarian cancer, Rice announced the 2024 season would be the Joseph Jefferson Award-winning theater’s last. But his own bout with cancer prompted him to move up the date, and in February the curtain came down for the last time on First Folio, whose 87 productions, including 16 world premieres, played to more than 100,000 patrons.

First Folio’s era concluded on a bittersweet note, with a revival of Ann Noble’s Irish domestic dramedy “And Neither Have I Wings to Fly,” which poignantly paired Rice as family patriarch Peter and Rice and Vesely’s daughter Hayley Rice as Peter’s oldest daughter Evilene.

Ongoing challenges

In July, Lookingglass Theatre, the pioneering Chicago ensemble founded by Northwestern University graduates (“Friends” alum David Schwimmer among them), laid off staff and suspended programming, citing as the reason declining donations and smaller audiences. Vowing to reimagine the future of the regional Tony Award-winning theater, Lookingglass will produce a show in the spring and has embarked upon a fundraising campaign to finance its next incarnation.

• Steppenwolf Theatre responded to falling revenue and diminished subscribers by laying off 12% of its staff in August, including 13 full-time employees.

• Similar challenges forced BoHo Theatre to close after 19 seasons. AstonRep and Interrobang theaters called it quits after 15 seasons and 13 seasons, respectively.

Reason for optimism

Despite a 30% dip in theater attendance overall, ticket sales for this year’s 11th Chicago Theatre Week surpassed every previous year with more than 20,000 tickets sold, according to League of Chicago Theatres representatives. The demand for tickets prompted a seven-day extension of the festival, which featured 78 different productions from 61 organizations.

Goodman’s Broadway-bound blockbuster

Goodman Theatre’s Broadway-bound, 30th anniversary production of “The Who’s Tommy” broke box-office records, prompting two extensions, and swept the 2023 Joseph Jefferson Awards, winning in every category in which it was nominated. The highest-grossing production in Goodman’s 98-year history, director Des McAnuff’s reimagining of composer/lyricist Pete Townshend’s 1969 rock opus (featuring additional music by John Entwistle and Keith Moon) opens on Broadway next March, to the surprise of no one who experienced Goodman’s incandescent revival.

New leadership

Metropolis Performing Arts Centre named as its new artistic director Brendan Ragan, co-founding artistic director of Florida’s Urbanite theatre, a company known for producing new works.

Facing the same financial challenges as other theaters, Metropolis sought and received $200,000 from the Village of Arlington Height’s restricted contribution reserve fund, established in 2015 and funded through food and beverage taxes (not property taxes), to assist the theater in its post-pandemic rebuilding efforts.

The theater also established the Secure Our Future Initiative, a matching gift campaign, whose tax-deductible donations will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $300,000. The goal, Ragan said, is to raise $571,000 to pay artist and teacher salaries and other expenses, including sets and costumes.

• Writers Theatre welcomed new artistic director Braden Abraham, the former Seattle Rep artistic director.

• Theater, TV and film director Edward Hall succeeded Chicago Shakespeare Theater founder Barbara Gaines as CST’s new artistic director, while Kimberley Motes took over from outgoing CST executive director Criss Henderson, who stepped down last year.

• After 30 years, Court Theatre artistic director Charles Newell announced in September that he will transition out of the leadership role in 2024 and will serve as senior artistic consultant through June 2025. A search for his replacement is underway.

• Lyric Opera general director and president Anthony Freud announced his July 2024 retirement after 13 years helming the company. His tenure included the 2015 world premieres of Jimmy López's “Bel Canto,” based on the 2001 Ann Patchett novel, and 2023’s “Proximity," a triptych composed by Caroline Shaw, Daniel Bernard Roumain and John Luther Adams.

A new home

American Blues Theater’s 22nd production of the holiday favorite “It’s a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago!” marked the inaugural show in its new, permanent home at 5627 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago. Founded in 1985, ABT stages new and classic works that examine what it means to be an American. Since executive artistic director Gwendolyn Whiteside took over in 2010, the theater doubled the size of its ensemble, diversified its base of artists, established the Blue Ink Award for playwriting and adapted an arts education program with Chicago public schools.

Hail and farewell

Beloved theater artist and longtime Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Frank Galati, a Highland Park native who colleagues described as a leader who "infused joy into the rehearsal room," died in January at age 79. Galati adapted and directed Steppenwolf's epic 1988 production of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," earning two of his 11 Joseph Jefferson Awards as well as Tony Awards for play and direction. He also served as Goodman Theatre's associate director from 1986 to 2008, and was a longtime Northwestern University performance studies professor.

Other Chicago-area theater artists who died in 2023 include three-time Joseph Jefferson Award-winner and Broadway veteran Joseph Anthony Foronda; Chicago theater champion and longtime Ivanhoe Theatre owner Doug Bragan; actress Lia Mortensen, a veteran of Northlight, Goodman and Chicago Shakespeare theaters; and actor and Evanston native Ernest Perry Jr., who appeared in more than two dozen Goodman productions, as well as Victory Gardens, Court and Chicago Shakespeare theaters.