Multitalented is hardly enough of a word to describe Hershey Felder, the Canadian-born multilingual pianist, actor, composer and playwright. He can now be captured on the Writers Theatre stage in the Chicago/Midwest premiere of “Rachmaninoff and the Tsar.”

From the semi-obvious to the semi-obscure, a roundup of Chicago-area arts recommendations awaits.

The winter theater season in Chicago is a reliable source of heat. Here are five promising productions.

Having missed the opening, I saw the glowing reviews for this Chicago-area premiere and trekked up to Writers Theatre in Glencoe. I went with a skeptic’s eye and my arms folded. “Critics think it’s good, huh? What do they know?” Well, they know enough to have the good sense to embrace this irresistible production.

If you happen to be looking for a synonym to the word “polymath” you are sure to find its very best definition by heading straight to Writers Theatre. That is where the exceptionally multi-talented Hershey Felder is lighting up the stage with his remarkable performance of “Monsieur Chopin, A Play With Music.”

Felicia Fields, the Chicago-based actress who won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway production of “The Color Purple,” radiates joy and a good bit of mischief in this stellar production at Writers Theatre in Glencoe.  

How do you design a pandemic-era theater season? The Glencoe-based theater has devised a multifaceted plan that combines a degree of certainty with the option of built-in flexibility, with the ultimate goal of keeping live theater alive.

“The Niceties” is a brief and telling chronicle of the temper of our times, and actors Mary Beth Fisher and Ayanna Bria Bakari sustain the necessary tension and subterfuge required to keep things at the boiling point. 

Writers Theatre’s production of “A Doll’s House,” cannily but faithfully adapted by Sandra Delgado and Michael Halberstam, and featuring a bravura performance by Cher Alvarez, brought the play back to life in the most unexpected ways.

One of Stephen Sondheim’s most popular works is now on stage at Writers Theatre in a sophisticated, powerfully sung, environmentally enveloping production directed by longtime Sondheim aficionado Gary Griffin.

This 2008 musical is unsettling, irritating, frustrating, relentless and more. But director David Cromer and his actors have tapped into the dark charm and moments of humor in the show with great skill.

The harmonies, dissonances and inflections of the conversations among the four men who form Ma Rainey’s fractious band are something of a spoken-word blues opera in this Writers Theatre revival.

Now receiving an altogether riveting world premiere production at Writers Theatre, “Witch” is a pitch-black fairy tale for our times, and one that is not to be missed. 

Qui Nguyen’s play, now receiving its Chicago premiere at Writers Theatre, is a second generation, rap-era kid’s flashy, sexually charged version of a story about the pain and rage that come with being a refugee, and the difficult process of assimilation. 

Within the span of a single week I saw productions of two plays – Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” and Sam Shepard’s “Buried Child” – that I wouldn’t necessarily have linked together had I not seen them in such quick succession.

In her brilliant play “Smart People,” Lydia R. Diamond creates an impossibly thorny and twisted verbal, emotional and intellectual maze of race, sex and “super-achieverdom.”