Both Northlight Theatre and Court Theatre say they're breaking box office records this spring.

Court says that "Porgy and Bess" is already the highest-grossing show in its 56-year history; on Friday, Court took in more  at the box office than any previous day. "Porgy and Bess" now plays through July 3 and may go longer.

Meanwhile, Northlight also has been doing well, last Thursday enjoying  the strongest sales day in its history. "The Outgoing Tide," which has been attracting much out-of-town attention, now plays through June 26. A further extension is under consideration.

THEATER REVIEW: "The Outgoing Tide" ★★★½ Through June 19 at Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie; Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes; Tickets: $40-$50 at 847-673-6300 or northlight.org

Gunner, the memory-challenged central character in Bruce Graham’s new play “The Outgoing Tide,” is slowly losing his grip on the ebbs and flows of life. But whereas it must be tempting to play an elderly man suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s, or severe dementia, as a timid, nervous fellow, there is not a hint of that in John Mahoney.

Mahoney — whose performance in director BJ Jones’ superb world-premiere production is, I think, the best work I’ve ever seen him do on stage — understands that the agony of suffering from progressive memory loss is not best reflected theatrically through trepidation and confusion. On the contrary, it is best expressed through strength. Only then do we understand what is being lost.

And thus, in a display of robustness that one does not typically associate with this most genial of actors, Mahoney shows us a proud, flinty man for whom the loss of lucidity is entirely intolerable. It is an exceptionally moving performance that hones in on one thing that family members dealing with loved ones in this all-too-common situation too little understand: the importance of dignity and personal pride.

“The Outgoing Tide,” which is set on the shore of Chesapeake Bay, is, at its core, at exploration of how such a man as Mahoney’s Gunner — forceful, well-prepared, a father, a husband, a kidder — can live with a seriously diminished mental capacity, and whether he is within his rights to not want to live with it at all. It is a very tightly focused piece about a family of three. Rondi Reed plays Peg, Gunner’s earnest, straight-talking wife, and Thomas J. Cox plays his son. Events take place on a day when Gunner has called up his son and asked him to visit. Gunner wants to tell him about a plan to provide more for his family, and also to put himself out of his own increasing misery.

The upcoming production of "The Outgoing Tide" will include the Chicago actors John Mahoney, Rondi Reed and Thomas J. Cox in its cast, Northlight Theatre confirmed today.

The play by Bruce Graham about a family's summer on Chesapeake Bay will have its world premiere in Skokie under the direction of artistic director BJ Jones, running May 21 to June 19. Mahoney frequently works with Jones, but this will be Reed's first Chicago appearance since "August: Osage County" at the Steppenwolf Theatre. Previews begin May 12; tickets ($30-$50) are on sale now at 847-673-6300 or www.northlight.org

THEATER REVIEW: "Sense & Sensibility" ★★★ Through April 17 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie; Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes; Tickets: $30-$50 at 847-673-6300

Nothing was more perilous for the 19th century heroine than the combination of good breeding and a lack of ready cash. “She can't live on her interests,” it is wisely remarked in Jane Austen's “Sense & Sensibility,” a novel about love that never forgets for a moment the perennial truth that the more thousands that lie in one's hope chest, the better one's hopes.

Although written while Austen was at a tender age and flawed in the eyes of the some, her 1811 novel (pre-“Pride and Prejudice”) is one of her more appealing compositions. It's an exploration of sisterhood that manages to be both intensely intimate — it was likely based on Austen's own relationship with her sister — and clear-eyed in its pondering of whether you should place your personal stack of chips in life on the space marked “stay sensible” or the one marked “let it rip.” Although she tries to be even-handed with her tale of deliberative Elinor and impetuous Marianne (different in all ways except for their lack of funds, their desire for a good match and their mutual big love), Austen was on the side of the risk taker. I say they both have their pluses and minuses.

Northlight Theatre will stage a new play by Jeffrey Hatcher about the Broadway legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Called "Ten Chimneys" (as is the historic home that was their former Wisconsin retreat), the new play will imagine what happens when a very young Uta Hagen arrives in the midst of Broadway's royal couple. The play will open in Skokie next March.

Also on tap for 2011-12 at Northlight, along with the previously announced Stephen Schwartz musical "Snapshots":

• Frank Higgins' "Black Pearl Sings," a show featuring a-capella renditions of rare American folk songs. It will star E. Faye Butler and open in January 2012.
• "Seasons Greetings." A new production of the much-loved Alan Ayckbourn play directed by BJ Jones. It will open in November.

The Remy Bumppo Theatre Company will open its 2011-12 season in September with Eugene O'Neill's "Mourning Becomes Electra." The Marivaux comedy "Changes of Heart" follows in November. The season concludes with "Chesapeake," the solo piece by Lee Blessing that will feature Greg Matthew Anderson. 

All three shows at Remy Bumppo will be directed by Timothy Douglas, the incoming artistic director.

"Snapshots," a new musical that will be filled with the pre-existing songs of Stephen Schwartz, will premiere at the Northlight Theatre in the fall, the theater will officially announce Wednesday.With an all-new book by David Stern, the show will tell the story of a married couple though their ups and downs. The Schwartz songbook will score the show, which is billed as a bittersweet romantic comedy.

Gigi Pritzker's Relevant Theatricals is the lead commercial producer on the project and is partnering with Cardboard Belt Productions. (Pritzker is currently represented both in Chicago and on Broadway with "Million Dollar Quartet," which announced a new extension Wednesday and that Feb. 18 will mark its 1000th Chicago performance.)

In an interview, Pritzker said that the new Schwartz show would both emphasize some lesser-known Schwartz songs and reveal the bigger hits in a new context. She said the piece would include songs from the major Schwartz works like "Pippin," "Godspell," "Working" and, biggest of all, "Wicked."

Ken Sawyer will direct, with musical staging from Karl Christian and orchestrations and arrangements by Steve Orich. Schwartz is currently in and out of Chicago, working on the new commercial production of "Working," opening at the Broadway Playhouse on March 2.

Jason Robert Brown is working on a new musical, expected to bow at the Northlight Theatre at the end of the 2011-12 season.

"We are putting the finishing touches on our agreement," said BJ Jones, the Northlight artistic director. "This is a long and fruitful relationship."

Entitled "The Connector," the original piece is a chamber musical. It's to be directed by Daisy Prince. The show is about journalism, the lack of integrity that afflicts the media in the current age, and the advent of reporters who make up news. Northlight produced the premiere of Brown's "The Last Five Years," also directed by Prince.

THEATER REVIEW: "Eclipsed" ★★½ Through Feb. 20 at the Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd, Skokie. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes. Tickets: $30-$50 at 847-673-6300.

Now surely more than ever, we're blessed with a deep pool of young and profoundly talented African-American actresses who are choosing to make their careers in Chicago.

That perhaps explains why some of the best productions of the last couple of years here have been ensemble-driven shows featuring women like Alana Arenas, Tamberla Perry, Leslie Ann Sheppard, Penelope Walker and Paige Collins, a seemingly guileless newcomer who shot to notice in the Dog and Pony Theatre production of "The Twins Would Like to Say," and whose focus, presence and directness are remarkable indeed.

Hallie Gordon, the director of "Eclipsed," a new play by Danai Gurira about the effect of Liberian Civil War on the women who must service the warlords rebelling against Charles Taylor, has worked with many of these actresses before in her role at the Steppenwolf Theatre, where she runs the Theatre for Young Adults program. She knows how to create well-connected ensembles, and she has built one here.

However, the play in which these actors find themselves does not feel entirely organic. And although Gordon has forged a rich character study of "wives" forced to negotiate their personal and political roles, even as they sit in sexual servitude, the show lacks pace and narrative certainty. This is one of those plays where everything seems to happen off stage and narrative strands feel shoved together. The play needs more direct action, flowing in real time.

THEATER REVIEW: "A Civil War Christmas" ★★ Through Dec. 19 at the North Shore Center for the Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie; Running time: 2 hours; Tickets: $40-$50 at 847-673-6300

No tea is thrown into Boston Harbor, and there isn't a shot heard around the theater. But Benedict Arnold gets a mention. And Paula Vogel's “A Civil War Christmas,” in local premiere at the Northlight Theatre in Skokie, is a pretty open attempt to substitute Washington, D.C., for London Town; to ponder more diverse and egalitarian themes than the reformation of rich, white English gentlemen offering the Victorian equivalent of paycheck loans; and generally to wrestle away the lucrative U.S. Christmas franchise from good old Charlie Dickens.

And why not? Dickens was never especially kind to Chicago — he was hung up on the profligate brother who lived here.

Christmas is a fine time to pause and ponder the American identity, its diversity, inequalities, challenges, promises. Vogel — savvy, smart and emotionally centered — is the right writer to do it. And the choice of Christmas Eve 1864 — after Abraham Lincoln's re-election, but the last Christmas Eve that president would ever know — allows the chance to explore a time of both tumult and healing, as well as evoke some of the seasonal nostalgia we crave.

Suffused with the carols and songs of its era, “A Civil War Christmas” is, perhaps ironically, Dickensian in scope. We watch the night unfold in Washington from the point of view of a variety of Americans, rich and poor — and real, composite and fully fictional. We watch Mary Todd Lincoln (Paula Scrofano) wander anonymously around town, standing by her friend, Elizabeth Keckley (Felicia P. Fields). We see an African-American soldier (James Earl Jones II) fighting his bitterness over past wrongs. We see former slaves, secretaries of war, Christmas tree purveyors, Walt Whitman, John Wilkes Booth and, at the heart of it all, Will Clinger's version of Lincoln himself. Vogel paints a world at once pained, moving and hopeful. This is a superb piece of theatrical material. Past stagings in Boston and New Haven have been widely admired.

The uneven and haltering Northlight production, though, makes one wish to have seen one of those previous incarnations instead.

“A Civil War Christmas” is in previews, and it runs Nov. 20 through Dec. 19 at Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie; $35-$55 at www.northlight.org

You could make an excellent case that Paula Vogel is the most influential playwright in America. It's not really a matter of her own work — although a list of dramas that includes “Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief,” “The Baltimore Waltz,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning “How I Learned to Drive,” “The Mineola Twins” and “The Long Christmas Ride Home” is hardly a shoddy set of credits.

It's that Vogel has taught — at Brown and Yale universities — so many notable American playwrights how to write plays. Her list of former students is without compare: Bridget Carpenter, Nilo Cruz and, in Sarah Ruhl and Lynn Nottage, a pair of recipients of the so-called genius grants from the MacArthur Foundation. All of those names have significant profiles in Chicago. All of those names have significant profiles in theater circles everywhere.

Many playwriting teachers aren't themselves great playwrights. And many great playwrights aren't great teachers. Vogel, who turns 59 next week, is both. Aside from the lucidity of her clear-eyed plays, she also has those qualities that invariably mark distinguished educators: a curiosity about the world, a genuine lifelong interest in people other than herself, a love of making connections between individual creativity and the soul of a nation.