Lorelei Sturm, Robert Wood Frank, Naomi Hershman, and Mindy Shore Photo by North Shore Camera Club

Citadel Theatre is known for powerful playwrights, skillful directing, and actors who transform in such a subtle manner on stage that the audience almost feels voyeuristic. This production is no exception. Tom Dudzick's script rings true–especially if you've grown up in the Chicago area. Director Scott Shallenbarger has marshalled this cast through Dudzick's words and the highs and lows of the Nowak family holidays and household.

The small, focused cast portrays a true Chicago "salt of the earth" family who has had their share of gains and losses–perhaps a bit more in the loss category in recent times. A number of young adults living with or near their widowed mother are clearly emotionally close, but all harbor secrets. The matriarch, Clara Nowak, is portrayed as loving and at first glance an unbending Catholic, strong in faith and weekly mass and all the traditions that go along with it.

Clara (Naomi Hershman) is a "good citizen" wishing good things for her neighbors, known and unknown, and a hard worker at her pet project, a soup kitchen. She has two daughters, Beverly and Ruth, who are about as alike as salt and pepper and beautifully acted by Lorelei Sturm and Mindy Shore. The youngest sibling, Jimmy (not James), is hilariously portrayed with such lifelike accuracy by Robert Wood Frank that it is astonishing to know that he is a recent transplant to Chicago. Every word and movement by him on stage oozes original Chicagoan. He's like a young Mike Royko, thought provoking and bringing the laughs.

Watching the Nowak family convene in a disjointed family meeting at the Christmas holiday and evolve from a mundane agenda to one with much deeper emotion and meeting is a peek at a microcosm in their kitchen, beautifully styled by Bob Knuth (scenic) and Ellen Markus (props). The set and costumes (Danielle Reinhardt) lend a credibility and nostalgia to the whole show.

This show will resonate within your own thoughts, memories, and anticipation of the holidays past and present and is the perfect thing to kick off whatever holiday you celebrate. It will cause you to mull and marinate along with the holiday recipes, food, and drink of your own ethnicity and give unexpected, deeper, and emotional thought to what a holiday miracle is to you. Provoking, funny, nostalgic, and entertaining–what more could you ask for? Family, that's what.

Miracle on South Division Street runs through December 14, 2025, at at the Citadel Theatre, 300 S Waukegan Rd., Lake Forest IL. For tickets and information, please visit www.citadeltheatre.org or call the Box Office at 847-735-8554 Ext. 1.