“Northwest Highway” is a new play by William Nedved set in Jefferson Park, opening soon at the Gift Theatre.

There have been plays about Chicago as long as there has been a Chicago theater. Indeed, I've long thought that one way of understanding the best early work of David Mamet, arguably the greatest of the Chicago scribes, is to think in terms of Lincoln Avenue.

Mamet set “Sexuality Perversity in Chicago” near where that street starts, in Old Town, where Mamet was living at the time. He set “American Buffalo” in the Lakeview and North Center neighborhoods, and there is some evidence to suggest “Glengarry Glen Ross” takes place in Lincoln Square.

But I don't think there has ever been quite so many plays about this city as are rushing our way.

Let's review. You can read my new review of Keith Huff's “The Detective's Wife,” which is a drama set in Edgebrook on the Northwest Side. This weekend, Theatre Seven will open The Chicago Landmark Project, a two-part program of a dozen short plays, all set in Chicago. Theatre Seven is listing them by intersection: State and Madison; Lincoln and Webster; Garfield and State; Division and California; 63rd and Woodlawn; and so on.

THEATER REVIEW 'The Front Page' ★★★ Through June 12 at TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington Ave.; running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes; tickets: $28-$38 at 773-281-8463 or timelinetheatre.com

Comedy always thrives on confidence, and scribes Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur caught Chicago newspaper men when they felt like regal untouchables. Cops? Sandwich-delivery guys in uniform. Chicago mayor? Illinois governor? Insecure and impotent without the right headlines. Sheriff? An object of endless abuse. Editors? Totally dependent on the fellow sniffing out the news.

Taking a job at The New York Times? Akin to turning in your masculinity and “working in a bank.” In a “rube town.” That, in the world of “The Front Page,” meant pretty much any place other than Chicago.

THEATER REVIEW: "In Darfur" ★★★ Through March 20 at TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington Ave.; Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes; Tickets: $28-$28 at 773-281-8463 or www.timelinetheatre.com. With Kelli Simpkins and Mildred Marie Langford.

In 2006, a young playwright named Winter Miller persuaded the globe-trotting New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof to let her hitch a ride as he travelled along the border of Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan. He was reluctant — it's a very dangerous part of the world — but Miller was his research assistant, a persistent research assistant, and she told Kristof that a consciousness-raising play about the genocide in Darfur would result.

As Kristof has written in his blog, the two travelled in an area that had been mostly abandoned by aid organizations, with the notable exception of Doctors Without Borders. And they talked to genocide survivors, who courageously recounted narratives of unspeakable horror.

“In Darfur,” which opened this past weekend in a very accomplished Nick Bowling production at the TimeLine Theatre in Chicago, is the play that Miller promised Kristof she would write.

It's not a straight-up docudrama featuring characters based on the author and her mentor (which would, I think, have been a better idea). Instead, Miller creates a fictional, hard-bitten correspondent for the New York Times (played here by Kelli Simpkins) and a young and passionate doctor (Gregory Isaac) for an aid organization clearly based on Doctors Without Borders.

The two toughest tickets in Chicago right now? "Billy Elliot"? "Million Dollar Quartet"?

Nope. "To Master the Art" at TimeLine Theatre, a play about Julia Child that sold out its entire eight-week run a matter of days after opening. And "To Kill a Mockingbird" at the Steppenwolf Theatre. A production developed primarily for schools. One young gentleman of my acquaintance has been to Steppenwolf three times, trying to talk his way into a seat. No could do. And he keeps going back.

Sell-outs are becoming routine at TimeLine, one of the Chicago theater's most impressive growth stories. This theater, which operates on Chicago's North Side and is known for taking care of its patrons, has developed a large and fiercely loyal following. It is a theater that audiences trust. And it is reaping the rewards. TimeLine has just added three Tuesday night performances for "To Master the Art" on Nov. 16, Nov. 30 and Dec. 7.

THEATER REVIEW: "To Master the Art" ★★★ Through Dec. 19 at TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington Ave.; Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes; Tickets: $28-$38 at 773-281-8463 or www.timelinetheatre.com

There are few incontrovertible rules in acting, but proceeding with caution around playing real-life celebrities, and not playing anyone recently interpreted by Meryl Streep are pretty reliable maxims.

Karen Janes Woditsch bravely blows past any and all such notes of caution in the enjoyable new play “To Master the Art” at the TimeLine Theatre, a premiering biographical piece about that big-boned, colorfully voiced eccentric Julia Child, the woman who tamed the elitist glories of the cordon bleu for the everlasting benefit of the quotidian American dinner table.

And the very happy result is a most distinguished piece of acting — a kinder, gentler, more accessible Julia than the Child re-created by the excellent Streep in the otherwise mediocre 2009 Nora Ephron movie, “Julie & Julia.” Woditsch creates an exceptionally full and honest portrait that captures the fragility and insecurity of a woman known for stuffing the cavities of chickens and pigeons without a moment's pause.

There's no question that “To Master the Art,” which focuses on Child's attempts to penetrate Le Cordon Bleu and get her cookbook published, will feel like familiar territory to anyone who saw “Julie & Julia.” In fairness to the authors William Brown and Doug Frew (and to Timeline, which commissioned this piece), “To Master the Art” was under way before the film was penned. And here, you do not see Child through the eyes of a contemporary disciple (an irritating aspect of that film), but in the context of her relationship with her husband, Paul (the ever-honest Craig Spidle), a government bureaucratic charged with selling American culture to the French.

 
THEATER REVIEW: "Frost / Nixon" ★★★½ Through Oct. 10 at TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington Ave.; Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes; Tickets: $28-$38 at 773-281-8463 and www.timelinetheatre.com

Few would call Rod R. Blagojevich wholly Nixonian. In fact, the former Illinois governor probably has more in common with the legendary British interviewer David Frost, a man with a famously full head of hair, a relentlessly sunny disposition, a gregarious temperament and the honor of being one of the very first media celebrities to become famous mostly for being hungry for fame.

But in the excellent Chicago premiere of Peter Morgan’s savvy play, “Frost/Nixon,” at the TimeLine Theatre, there is a gripping scene, one among many gripping scenes in Louis Contey’s compellingly intimate production, when Terry Hamilton’s remarkably adroit version of Nixon tries to justify his actions during Watergate.

Since Morgan’s play, a Broadway hit that became a Hollywood movie, was dealing with the real Frost interviews, which took place in 1977, you may well be familiar with Nixon’s arguments.

One doubts that Blagojevich would have said “when the governor does it, that means it is not illegal” on the stand, had he chosen to testify. But it’s a pretty fair bet that he would have waxed lyrical on such themes as the necessity of the governor getting frank and confidential advise, how effective politics requires dealmaking and quid pro quos, the unreliability of tapes taken out of context. As a visit to “Frost/Nixon” reveals, Nixon mostly got there first.

Such are the pleasures of political theater just slightly removed. You go to a play about Frost and Nixon and you end up musing all night on the Blago phenomenon.

That’s because Morgan (“The Queen”) is really writing about the corruption of power and the rise of hubris. And, yet more interesting for that Blago connection, he also writes about how personal insecurities and peccadilloes don’t suddenly vanish if we achieve power (just think about your boss).

In one of the best scenes in the play, Morgan imagines Nixon making a late-night, drink-fueled call to his interlocutor, painting a man for whom no achievement was enough to vanquish his own inferiorities as a sweaty man who had to shave several times a day, hated crowded parties and was forever battling the snobbish elites.

I wish there were more juicy plays like “Frost/Nixon,” combining elements of Greek tragedy, politics and tabloid journalism. But I think TimeLine will have a big and deserved success with this production. It’s much less flashy, certainly, than the Broadway version, which has its price. But with the help of the brilliant videographer Mike Tutaj, Contey still makes the point that Frost triumphed because he understood TV, and that politics and showbiz were, to Nixon’s chagrin, becoming one and the same.

Better yet, Contey and his cast make that point right in your face. Contey’s fine work here reminds me of his glory days at the old Shattered Globe Theatre on Halsted Street.

I’ve seen both Frank Langella and Stacy Keach do Nixon in this play, and Hamilton, who is surely doing the best work of his career, stands honorably in that distinguished company. And you get to see him in a tighter close-up. Aside from a few moments when his high tenor pops out in a non-Nixonian way, Hamilton is disciplined, complex, rich and entirely credible. It’s one of the best performances of the year in Chicago.

Young Andrew Carter certainly nails the physicality and the celebrity essence of Frost. The only thing missing in his performance (and it’s significant) is his killer instinct. You don’t ever fully believe that his Frost, once he engages, can take down his man. He hangs back a tad too much.

But that fixable issue hardly spoils a show that’s uncommonly well cast, with the superb Matthew Brumlow’s Jim Reston, the conscience and the narrator of the piece, anchoring the drama. David Parkes, who plays the Nixon aid Jack Brennan, reveals the moral force of loyalty. And the focused Beth Lacke, who play’s Frost’s girlfriend Caroline, takes this role deeper than others I’ve seen.

Contey and his designer, Keith Pitts, get rid of the clutter and instead focus everything on two men in two chairs, sparring, concealing, revealing.

Chicago-style.

Nick Bowling (pictured left) is the newest full-time staffer at the TimeLine Theatre Company.

The busy Chicago director will be TimeLine's associate artistic director, working alongside artistic director PJ Powers on season planning and other matters.

Bowling has been the associate artistic director at the Court Theatre. He has a long association with TimeLine, a small but growing and well-managed Chicago company that has been able to add staffers in tough times.

TimeLine has also hired Tracy Domeracki as its new full-time audience services manager.

TimeLine's production of Aaron Sorkin's drama  "The Farnsworth Invention," which is directed by Bowling, has now been extended through July 24.

TimeLine Theatre said Thursday that it will produce Winter Miller's "In Darfur" in its 2010-11 season, filling the hitherto empty subscription slot in January.

To be directed at TimeLine by Nick Bowling, "In Darfur" draws from Miller's experiences accompanying columnist Nicholas Kristof on a trip to the Chad/Darfur border in 2006.

The play was originally commissioned by the Guthrie Theatre and the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis; this will be its Chicago premiere.The commission was designed to encouraged writers to spend time with an interesting person outside of the theater, and then write about what they found. "In Darfur" was produced in Washington earlier this spring.

TimeLine also said that Terry Hamilton will play Richard Nixon and Andrew Carter will play David Frost in its upcoming production of "Frost/Nixon," slated for the fall.

THEATER REVIEW: "The Farnsworth Invention" ★★★ Through June 13 at TimeLine Theatre Company, 615 W. Wellington Ave.; Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes; Tickets: $25-$35 at 773-281-8463 and www.TimeLineTheatre.com. Rob Fagin plays Philo T. Farnsworth and Bridgette Pechman his wife.

Extended through July 24, with ticket prices now $32-$42

Aaron Sorkin, the famously intense, notoriously controlling creator of “The West Wing” and “Sports Night,” packs more words into a single minute of television than any writer who'd come before. That breathless, restless rush of smart verbosity has long infuriated Sorkin's detractors, who construe it as smug and artificial. But for Sorkin's fans, the cascade of words that spill from the mouth of impossibly articulate, passionate and self-aware characters offers incomparable textual excitement.

That was the split reaction when “The Farnsworth Invention,” Sorkin's amped-up, pseudo-documentary yarn about the battle to be the first to invent and exploit television, opened on Broadway in 2007. Here was a play (first penned as a screenplay) shimmering with metallic flash, structured around a David-and-Goliath battle between the Idaho geek Philo T. Farnsworth and the media mogul David Sarnoff and his Radio Corporation of America. It relied not so much on thoughtful inquiry and nuanced characterization as back-and-forth banter and a love of slick dramatic irony. Time after time, Sorkin made sure the audience could feel superior to the boobs who thought TV was either a fad or (as is Sarnoff's case) a potent force for moral good.

Phillip James Brannon, Glenn Davis and K. Todd Freeman in "The Brother Size," part of Steppenwolf’s "The Brother/Sister Plays."

• Getting to know Cheryl Lynn Bruce (published Feb. 5 by Lauren R. Harrison)

In the last week or so, I've seen four different Actors' Equity-affiliated Chicago shows with almost exclusively African-American casts. Demonstrably, it's February.

As many of Chicago's black theater professionals wryly observe, theater in this city would much better reflect the makeup of the people who live here if only our arts leaders carried over this kind of programming commitment to the other 11 months of the year.

If you're an African-American actor in Chicago, you certainly don't want to head to the beach in February. It's peak season.

But while these actors surely wish all these gigs didn't seem to come all at once, and while one might wish that “‘Master Harold' … and the Boys” (Timeline Theatre), “The Island” (Remy Bumppo Theatre Company), “The Brother/Sister Plays” (Steppenwolf Theatre) and “Blue Door” (Victory Gardens) were better spread over the year, this little clutch of openings, and an associated news item, has much to say.