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Here at Chicago magazine headquarters, we’re divided about Passion, the Sondheim musical that’s playing upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre through Nov. 11.

Passion is one of the hot tickets for fall, partly because of its director (Gary Griffin) but mostly because of its star: Ana Gasteyer, the SNL alum. Gasteyer doesn’t live here, but one of her early ventures into musical theatre was opening Wicked for Broadway in Chicago. Now she’s back!…

With a fully functioning bar on the second floor, Strawdog Theatre is something of an actor’s hangout. So when the playwright Hank Boland and his friend, the actress Kate Parker, decided they wanted to start a theatre “talk show,” it made sense that they’d do it at Strawdog.

Their show, The Callback, kicked off last week: it’s an hourlong variety program on Wednesday nights, including Kate’s interviews with guests like T.J. Jagadowski, one half of the improv duo TJ and Dave (who’s the guest tonight at 8 p.m). Also fueling the show are copious amounts of beer…

I’ve been a fan of Joanna Newsom since 2005, when I saw her at a Jeff Tweedy-curated, Wired magazine-sponsored concert at the Vic. The theme of the concert was the future of music, and she was on the bill, along with The Handsome Family.

The Handsome Family played first, and I thought, well, if this is the future of music, it sucks. Then some of the stagehands dragged a whopping gold harp on stage. Newsom, a pixie of a girl, came wandering out, straddled the harp like a bull, and started plucking away…