Goldstar has comp tickets available for nine performances of Lydie Breeze; other tickets are $10 – still half off!  For more than 30 years, playwright John Guare has been obsessed with Lydie Breeze, one of his finest works in a career full of standouts (Six Degrees of Separation, Atlantic City, The House of Blue Leaves).  Audiences, too, have been drawn into this melodrama charged with mystery, misery and uncanny power. Lydie Breeze transports you back to 1895, to a weather-beaten beach house that was once the center of a failed utopian community. Inside, characters deal with the fall-out from the commune’s tragic history of adultery, murder and suicide. The persistence of American optimism — and the prevalence of American corruption — are gorgeously illustrated in Guare’s enduring play, now brought to haunting life by Ka-Tet Theatre Company.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Fall Series: 4 Languages, No Words is available for half-price on Goldstar.  Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s “dancers of spectacular versatility” (Los Angeles Times) present four different visions of contemporary dance. Each speaks eloquently about the human condition — without one word ever being uttered. Robyn Mineko Williams, 2012 winner of the Pretty Creatives International Choreographic Competition, premieres a dramatic new work on the heels of her recent Recall, which “used a body’s store of moves — a Michael Jackson thrust, a Flashdance swoon — to inject the present with the texture of memory,” as described by Financial Times. Her new work is both firmly rooted in the moment and resonant with cultural echoes from the past. Passomezzo, an athletic, romantically tough duet by Israeli dance artist Ohad Naharin, is set to familiar folk songs plus selections from The Beggar’s Opera (1728). The piece showcases Naharin’s influence in dance’s frank body language, sublime musicality, bold showmanship and aching humanity. Swedish master choreographer Mats Ek presents Casi-Casa, a 40-minute composite of two of his earlier works plus original choreography. And rounding out the diverse program is a world premiere chamber-sized work by resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo.

Some performances of To Master the Art are almost half-off with this Goldstar deal.  Experience the adventure and romance of Julia and Paul Child’s journey of discovery to Paris during the 1950s. From the bistro where she fell in love with food to the kitchen table where she recreated everything learned during cooking class and the room where her husband was interrogated by U.S. agents about alleged Communist contact, To Master the Art tells the rich story of larger-than-life culinary icon. The Chicago Tribune hailed the show as “an excellent, intimate, foodie-friendly staging, resonant with atmosphere.”