Hot new faces of the Chicago stage

Chicago actress Laura Coover

Laura Coover, 24


This freshly minted University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign theater graduate is heating up staid Glencoe with her droll, simmering and highly sophisticated portrayal of Henry's dangerously seductive mistress Alais in the Writers' Theatre Chicago production of "The Lion in Winter." Coover has quickly embraced the great women of the classics—she already played Juliet in the Great River Shakespeare Festival's "Romeo and Juliet." Onstage at Writers', Coover wraps herself around James Goldman's language and has her middle-age lover in knots.