Surely no words ever written by any theater critic stirred more local buzz than Michael Billington's 2004 observation in London's Guardian that "Chicago . . . [is] the current theatre capital of America." It came like manna from heaven to the denizens of this no longer even second city, and they seized upon it. At last the flyover on the prairie—home to more bustling, inventive, hardscrabble theater than anyplace o…
