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To bring us all up to Electra: prior to Electra, Agamemnon, to appease the goddess Artemis in order to allow his troops to reach Troy, sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia (Iphigenia at Aulis); then, to avenge the death of her daughter (and because she had, during Agamemnon’s 10-year absence, taken up an adulterous affair with Aegisthus, Agamemnon’s cousin and rival to the House of Atreus), Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon, prompting Electra to send her brother, Orestes, into hiding (lest her mother should murder him, too), until the time when he might return to avenge his father’s death (Agamemnon).

Continuing its 40th Anniversary Season’s playlist of greatest hits, Black Ensemble Theater opened Jackie Taylor’s I Am Who I Am this week, yet another musical homage to one of America’s legendary Soul singers, this time Teddy Pendergrass. Featuring some very fine vocal performances accompanied by the Black Ensemble Band, the production takes us through Pendergrass’ musical career, from his time with Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes in the early ‘70s all the way up through his “Teddy 25” performance in 2007. Shining the blinding light of grace and gratitude, the play side-shuffles the dark side of Pendergrass’ personal tragedies, making it a consummate feel-good tribute that will delight long-time fans and likely entertain newcomers with an appreciation for or openness to Soul music.

If avant-garde, absurdist-cum-intellectual theatre with socio-political spice doesn’t sound like your fantasy of choice, I would encourage you to reconsider: having once been suspicious of “avant-garde” theatre, and being none too impressed by the typical fare of Chicago theatres’ socio-political commentary, I write with confidence that Trap Door offers something truly fresh and interesting in their curious productions. And while maybe not their strongest production to date, Fantasy Island for Dummies is still more exciting, exploratory, and entertaining than most — so long as you’re willing to dive into the oddly fantastical.

The New Colony, under the direction of Evan Linder, puts their attention to where it truly matters: into a very strong cast. And though the story is sometimes confusing and, to me, ambiguous as to its meaning, it too raises some curious questions as to what it means to be human and how sometimes the gap between who we are and who we want to be cannot be bridged.

The artists’ program bios are a long list of persecutions they have suffered for protesting the revived Soviet regime and refusing to submit to government control. Even the fact that the production is in Belarusian carries significant weight in Belarus, which many of the company members are exiled from, and where their ensemble performs secretly. I advise theatre-goers to brush up on King Lear before seeing this version of it, in order to focus more on the specifics of director Vladimir Shcherban’s presentation.