“Of all the Spiegeltents in all the neighborhoods of Chicago, Cleopatra walks into Chef Caesar’s joint…” starts the Teatro Zinzanni program, and I think that statement sets the stage (the circular stage) just as well as any. Because now you know if you go to see this dinner theater performance on the 12th floor at the Hotel Cambria, and enter the lush, reflective environment of a mirrored wooden Spiegeltent, there will be funny, there will be fantasy, and there will be food.

But maybe what you don’t know yet is that there will be music, dance, circus, nostalgia and above all else, variety acts delivered with a dash of mayhem and a spicy attitude. The recently relaunched enterprise, which originally opened in 2019 in Chicago (1998 in Seattle) is the first to open back up in Chicago’s Loop, and it hits all of the marks for hungry audiences–those hungry for gourmet grub and booze, as well as those hungry for live entertainment. Perhaps just as important, the cast seemed just as hungry and relieved to provide that live entertainment, and all of the catharsis that comes from the temporary bonding achieved from mutually experienced live art, after a year plus of lockdown. The joyous way the performers reveled in the limelight made joining in the fun irresistible. For the duration of this three-h...