THEATER REVIEW: "Murder for Two – A Killer Musical" ★★ Through June 19 Upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Navy Pier; Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes; Tickets: $25-$30 at 312-595-5600 or www.chicagoshakes.com. With Joe Kinosian and Alan Schmuckler.

In “Murder for Two — A Killer Musical,” the campy new whodunit at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, two piano-playing actors play 14 characters. Or more precisely, the actor Alan Schmuckler plays the police officer trying to solve a country-house murder, while Joe Kinosian, who co-wrote this frenetic, 90-minute show with Kellen Blair, plays all 13 of the suspects.

“Murder for Two” partly follows the playbook of successful shows like “The 39 Steps,” wherein four actors play something like 140 characters, and partly spoofs the traditional setup (detective, isolated locale, array of suspects with ample motives) of Agatha Christie murder mysteries such as “Ten Little Indians.” Second City is currently doing something similar on Norwegian cruise ships. “Murder for Two,” which also recalls John Kander and Fred Ebb's “Curtains,” also throws an original score into the mix (music by Kinosian, lyrics by Blair).

Such tours de force can be fun for an audience (and, with only two actors, profitable for summer-stock theaters). Indeed, “Murder for Two,” which is premiering as part of CST's new-works initiative, has its amusements. You'll laugh at some of the shtick.

But director David H. Bell's production forgets a couple of crucial truths. Shows with actors playing multiple characters only really work if the actors disappear inside the roles. Kinosian doesn't disappear anywhere. He's certainly a very entertaining personality with a plethora of talents and eye-popping energy. But if he got any bigger or showier, he'd be holding back the tides of Lake Michigan.

"The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity," the hit show by Kristoffer Diaz that premiered at Chicago's Victory Gardens Biograph Theatre under the direction of Eddie Torres, won an Obie Award Monday night in New York for Best New American Play.

"Chad Deity" was subsequently staged by Torres at New York's Second Stage Theatre with most of its original cast intact. The piece is still on the agenda of Fox Theatricals for a potential future Broadway staging.

Steppenwolf's Laurie Metcalfe was honored for her performance in "The Other Place," while fellow ensemble member Austin Pendleton was honored for his remarkable direction of "The Three Sisters" at the Classic Stage Company.

 
The initial six-week run of Jonathan Berry's remarkable production of "Festen" has completely sold out. On Tuesday at noon, Steep Theatre is to put on sale a slew of new performances, including additional Sunday shows and an added four more weeks. "Festen" will now play through July 10. Steep's Peter Moore say the extension means another 1,150 seats will be available.

Meanwhile, Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre also has a hit on his hands. The hit revue "Some Enchanted Evening: The Songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein" has extended a second time. The show will now play through July 3.

 
THEATER REVIEW: 'Hickorydickory' ★★★ Through June 12 at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Ave.; running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes; tickets: $32 at 312-633-0630 or www.chicagodramatists.org

One walks out of the world premiere of Marisa Wegrzyn's "Hickorydickory" newly certain of one little truth about this mortal coil: It would not to be good thing to know the precise moment we get to shuffle it off.

In Wegrzyn's play, a script that won her the Wendy Wasserstein Prize in 2009 and which currently is ticking through a long-delayed but consistently intriguing debut at Chicago Dramatists, a spunky 17-year-old character named Cari Lee (Joanne Dubach) articulates the horrors of having one's mortal clock lodged inside one's skull, revealing the precise time of death.

"When you know, you don't tell the people you love," she says. "It's like your skin gets heavier like wet clothes you can't really take off. Your lungs fill and empty, and you know exactly how many more times you'll get to sigh and laugh and cry. Nothing seems important because everything is important."

The sting there is in the tail: Surely, it would be thus. If you had to figure out your personal final countdown, how could you possibly discern what is important? You'd spent your life like a rabbit transfixed by headlights. I swear, the older I get, the more convinced I am that there are many things I am better off not knowing.

In her On the Fringe column this week, Nina Metz reviews "Tragedy: a tragedy" at Red Tape Theatre and "Road Kill Confidential" at Dog and Pony.

 
"The Oprah Winfrey Show" has made its home in Chicago since its launch in 1986.

Left, several blocks of Michigan Avenue were closed in Sept. 2009 for the taping of the premiere show for the 24th season. (Tribune photo by Nuccio DiNuzzo) | PHOTO GALLERIES AND BIG MOMENTS FROM THE LAST 25 YEARS

“The Oprah Winfrey Show” wraps up its tapings next week, does that mean that Chicago will be saying goodbye to one of its most beloved citizens? Not at all, Winfrey insisted in a recent interview with the Tribune.

“Chicago will remain forever the home base for me,” Winfrey said. “I will keep my apartment here. I will maintain my infrastructure for business here. I will be knocking around.”

That surely means knocking around — some of the time, at least — at Harpo Studios, which is to be the principal (albeit not the exclusive) supplier of programming for the Oprah Winfrey Network, Winfrey's next major TV venture, and, Winfrey said, the base for all of her television work in the future, wherever that may land. Then there is also the little matter of that 25-year catalog of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” that can surely be repackaged, rebroadcast, reissued and resold in myriad chronological, pedagogical, thematic and other ways. Winfrey said she plans to oversee that long process at Harpo.

THEATER REVIEW: "Freedom, NY" ★½ Through June 12 by Teatro Vista at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.; Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes; Tickets: $25 at 773-975-8150 or www.theaterwit.org

Early in the new play “Freedom, NY,” a production of Teatro Vista, we see a recent Mexican immigrant to the titular upstate New York town start digging a body-size hole in his yard. This guy, you immediately think to yourself, is digging a grave.

But the plot of “Freedom, NY” requires the other two characters on stage — an African-American grandmother and her 12-year-old granddaughter — to not share this obvious thought until well into the 75-minute drama. Even though they spend much of the time staring into their new neighbor's yard and wondering what he is doing. It was about all I could do to resist standing up and shouting, “He's digging a grave for someone.” See that hole?

That problem emerges, along with several others of credibility, because playwright Jennifer Barclay is trying to cram so much into her very short and pretentious play. Her topics in “Freedom, NY,” aside from the desirable state of being the name of the town suggests, include a community recovering from a terrible tragedy that has befallen its young people, the dreams of immigrants and the prejudices against them, the changing nature of neighborhoods, the way in which angry people can wrench families apart, and the way we build fences to keep people out.

Polly Carl, the director of artistic development at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is leaving Chicago to join Arena Stage in Washington as director of the American Voices New Play Institute.  Arena Stage announced Carl's hiring Thursday night.

Carl's tenure at Steppenwolf has been short. She arrived from Minneapolis in May, 2009. But she's been influential in developing the company's artistic relationship with smaller theater groups, especially through the Garage Repertory program. She has also worked as a dramaturg on several new plays, including "Detroit" and "Sex with Strangers," both of which are looking forward to Broadway futures.

The institute, Arena Stage said in a statement, has been designed not just to develop new plays but as " a center for research, development and dissemination of effective practices, programs and processes for new play development in the American Theater." Polly was a wonderful contributor to Steppenwolf and we'll miss her," said Steppenwolf artistic director Martha Lavey, who praised Carl's "intelligence, energy and good humor."

 
Rema Webb, Andrew Rannells and Josh Gad in "The Book of Mormon" at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in New York.

The Broadway musical "The Book of Mormon" will launch its national tour in Denver in Dec. 2012, it was announced Thursday.

So far, it's been slim pickings indeed for Chicago amid the announcements of new touring productions of this season's Broadway hits. "War Horse" is to get a dedicated production in Toronto (and will start its U.S. tour in Los Angeles). "Sister Act" is to start its tour in Toronto. The London hit "The Railway Children" (which uses a real steam train) just opened in Toronto. And "The Book of Mormon" is starting in Denver, where Trey Parker and Matt Stone grew up.

Most, if not all, of those titles will arrive here eventually. And Broadway in Chicago often delays its announcements to suit its own schedule. But launching a tour is important. And at this juncture, at least, Chicago is not first out of the gate on any of the big new shows.

Nor is there any news of sit-down productions, which are cruical for many Loop restaurants and other vistitor-oriented businesses.

The Chicago premiere of the indie- rock musical "Hostage Song" (May 2012), the winter world premiere of "Motion" a play by Ronan Marra ("Aftermath"about the pro-football draft, and a pairing of two one-acts, "East of Berlin" and "The Russian Play," by Hannah Moscovitch all are on tap for 2011-12 at Singal Ensemble Theatre.

This will be the company's ninth slate. The Signal Ensemble Theatre is at 1802 W. Berenice Ave. in Chicago.