Sister stories – Chicago Reader

Lauren Gunderson has a knack for bringing 19th-century sisters to life; her ongoing series with Margot Melcon about Jane Austen’s Bennet family has provided seasonal hits for theaters across the country—including Northlight, which has produced all three of the “Christmas at Pemberley” plays. Now Gunderson has tackled Louisa May Alcott’s beloved quartet in Little Women, presented in a new rolling world premiere in Skokie. (The adaptation was co-commissioned by Pittsburgh’s City Theatre Company, People’s Light in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in Palo Alto.)

Under Georgette Verdin’s direction, it’s a sturdy and often moving look at sibling rivalry and partnership. Little Women starts at Christmastime, but it’s the family dynamics that make it feel right at home this time of year (as Heather Chrisler’s stellar version for now-gone First Folio Theatre showed two years ago). Gunderson’s script adds a few locutions that sound a tad contemporary, and there’s a sly suggestion of the sexuality of Alcott’s stand-in, Jo March (Tyler Meredith), when she proclaims, “I don’t even like girls,” followed by a wink to the audience. (Recent scholars have suggested that Alcott may have been nonbinary or a trans man.) 

Little Women
Through 1/5/2025: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu–Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2:30 and 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; also Thu 12/26 1 PM and Sun 12/29 7:30 PM; no performances Wed 12/25 and 1/1; open captions Fri 12/20 7:30 PM, open captions, audio description, and touch tour Sat 12/21 2:30 PM; North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, 847-673-6300, northlight.org, $49–$91, $15 students (subject to availability)

Then again, being a woman in the 1860s with a civil war raging and poverty and disease banging on the door is reason enough for Marmee (Lucy Carapetyan) to declare, “I am angry almost every day of my life.” The juxtaposition of Jo learning that she’s sold a story with the arrival of news of Mr. March’s illness in a military hospital is a suitably sharp-elbowed way to remind us that fortune and fear go hand in hand in life. (People who think Little Women is just saccharine “chick lit” generally are telling me that they’ve never actually read it.)

It’s a well-cast production, with Demetra Dee’s Beth—the sickly sister who stays home while Amy (Yourtana Sulaiman) travels to study art in Europe, Meg (Janyce Caraballo) marries, and Jo pursues writing in New York—providing the emotional heart of the story. Her death scene is still a tearjerker, but Verdin has found a simple and profound way to mark the transition. And though the show is, as advertised, very much about the women, Erik Hellman as John Brooke and Friedrich Bhaer (the suitors for Meg and Jo, respectively) and the boyishly charming John Drea as Jo’s neighbor, best friend, and missed-it-by-that-much love interest, add heart and nuance to the story of the March girls. (“It’s not enough to get one of them to love you,” Drea’s Laurie warns Brooke when he begins to woo Meg. “They come as a set.”)

Sotirios Livaditis’s set, featuring a large carved proscenium frame, a dollhouse-sized house suspended in the air, and trees garlanded with lights and greenery, distills the domesticity and yearning for the larger world twined together particularly in Jo’s nature. Meredith’s take on Jo shows the young writer’s forthright-to-a-fault character that deepens over the course of the show, and makes her an irresistible guide and narrator.