6th Annual Chicago Musical Theatre Festival

Chicago Musical Theatre Festival – Underscore Theatre

The Chicago Musical Theatre Festival returns to Underscore Theatre for the sixth year with a slate of eight shows, with stories ranging from time travel to Moby Dick.

During the festival, eight new shows will get professional productions in one of The Edge Theeatre’s two spaces in Edgewater. In advance of those shows, CMTF presented a sample of each show this week. I attended last year and was thrilled to be able to do so again. Even the classics we all love seeing revived started life somewhere, and it’s great that there is a forum to nurture new works.

This year’s slate includes a show about two children who discover a potato-based time machine in their grandfather’s basement, a show about the very interesting life of the creator of Wonder Woman, a musical adaptation of Moby Dick, and the story of some high school students who find a very creative way to make their bake sale a success.

In additional the shows themselves, the festival includes staged readings of other new works as well. The shows are being performed over the next few weeks and any of them is worth your time. Just think, when one of these shows hits it big, you can say you saw it back when…

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Kevin Curran

Presented by Underscore Theater through February 23 at The Edge Theater at 5451 N. Broadway, Chicago.

Tickets and show schedules available at www.cmtf.org.

Additional information about this and other fine area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.