Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Act 1 of the new musical at the Broadway Playhouse, “A Taste of Things to Come,” is set in a Winnetka kitchen in 1957, amid women bonding over (and singing about) pregnancy, cooking, thw…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:00PMSpace is a perennial crisis in the Chicago theater. There’s not enough of it obtainable for affordable rent. And when a theater decides to try and make more, the build-out costs tend to be…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:25PMThe conceptual director Mary Zimmerman will return to the Lookingglass Theatre next season with a new family-friendly project called “The Steadfast Tin Soldier: A Christmas Pantomime,” L…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMMonday, March 26, 2018
Just 17 days after the filming ended for Stanley Kramer’s beloved 1967 movie, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” its star, Spencer Tracy, died of cancer. Tracy’s mortality is very evi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:35PMSunday, March 25, 2018
NEW YORK — We may all be fabulous creatures in our own heads but, heaven forfend, we are doomed by the brevity of our individual lifespans to keep repeating the same mistakes. How could an…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:15PMFriday, March 23, 2018
“I’d die before you’d put me in a home,” says the old Irish lady. “Aye,” says her daughter, “hopefully.” That’s not a slogan you generally read in the mailers for The Mathe…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:00PMThursday, March 22, 2018
Vastly improved from its rocky Denver tryout, director Michael Grandage's heavily sold production of Disney's “Frozen” is set to open here Thursday night, replete with richer storytellin…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMJerry Mitchell’s “On Your Feet,” the jukebox bio musical aimed at fans of Gloria and Emilio Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, danced its first conga in Chicago three years ago, and …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:25PM“It’s time to protect yourself — and your friends — from Facebook,” read the click-bait headline Monday on Mashable, one of many columns this week decrying how Cambridge Analytica,…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:00PMThe new season at the Goodman Theatre includes a new production of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” from director Mary Zimmerman — I vote Patti LuPone for Harold Hill, but don’t …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMTuesday, March 20, 2018
For a vista of how deeply cynical America has become in this age of division and manipulation, this moment when you don’t know whether the news is real or fake, whether your boss is under …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:25PMFriday, March 16, 2018
American Theater Company — the storied Chicago theater company that first staged the Broadway hits "Disgraced" and "The Humans," opened a new musical by the creators of "Urinetown," staged…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:30AMThursday, March 15, 2018
NEW YORK — For anyone who has watched some 40,000 Jimmy Buffett fans shout "Salt! Salt! Salt!" at Wrigley Field or Fenway Park and proceed en masse to move their fins first to the left and…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMTwo phenomenal Brits died this week. One, Steven Hawking, seemed to dwell among stars, planets — and black holes — that revealed their secrets only to him. The other, Ken Dodd, stayed fi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:15PMWednesday, March 14, 2018
Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s 2018-19 season features a whopping 14 productions — which will include the North American premiere of Jessica Swale’s “Nell Gwynn,” a hit comedy from …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PMThe Broadway Playhouse has a new show celebrating female friendship in the 1950s and 1960s. And after a long spell outside of the spotlight, the Apollo Theater in Lincoln Park is coming back…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:50AMTuesday, March 13, 2018
Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd,” which opened Monday night, is the final major production at the No Exit Cafe, the longtime Rogers Park home of the Theo Ubique Cabar…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PMMonday, March 12, 2018
Hardscrabble lives, spent in the shadow of Walt Disney World, made up “The Florida Project” — for my money the best movie of 2017, Oscar or no Oscar. “Kingdom,” the new drama from …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:50PMSunday, March 11, 2018
At the beginning of “Hang Man,” during the usual friendly announcements about cellphones and emergency exits, an African-American Mississippian climbs up high in the sudden darkness, ins…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:00PMFriday, March 9, 2018
In the mostly barren rehearsal room above 42nd Street, a large bed pulls the eye. What might transpire there, one wonders, as poised and beautiful men and women dance a seductive masquerade …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, March 8, 2018
The podcast is a thing of the moment. If you regularly partake, you likely will know two things. One is that only a very few podcasts are sufficiently well branded to merit the kind of expos…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00PMWednesday, March 7, 2018
What do you with a sold-out hit? This is a question that has bedeviled the nonprofit Chicago theater for decades. Consider the conundrum faced right now by the Windy City Playhouse on Irving…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMTuesday, March 6, 2018
Rough day, Monday? Luckily, by 9 that night, Doctor Patti was in the house. Prescription pad in hand. Or more accurately, in voice. Patti LuPone’s sold-out appearances — two in one night…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:10PMIn this image from Sunday night, the Chicago-raised actor Michael Shannon sits in the Old Town Ale House and watches the movie in which he was a star win the Academy Award for best picture. …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:20PMIt is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Auntie Vi — his Auntie Mame, to all intents and purposes — who inspires the most colorful language in Lloyd Webber’s new autobiography: “clotted bollock…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:20AMMonday, March 5, 2018
The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ayad Akhtar will adapt his autobiographical novel, "American Dervish," into a play. The work, based on Akhtar's experiences growing up in Milwaukee as a fir…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:30PMSunday, March 4, 2018
The premise of Kevin Douglas’s “Plantation,” now at the Lookingglass Theatre in downtown Chicago under the direction of David Schwimmer, is a doozy. A modern-day Texas matriarch comes …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00PMFriday, March 2, 2018
At the Lifeline Theatre, the soon-to-be-departing artistic director Dorothy A. Milne gave the usual little curtain speech about cellphones and emergency exits, winding up to her climax: “A…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:25PMThursday, March 1, 2018
Friedrich Schiller was once a really big deal in Chicago: You still can see his statuesque likeness in Lincoln Park or even live on his street. For a price. But we rarely get to see the dram…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:00PMNorthlight Theatre of Skokie is walking away from a plan to build a new theater inside a larger mixed-use development in the 1700 block of Sherman Avenue in downtown Evanston. In a statement…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:55PMWednesday, February 28, 2018
Steppenwolf Theatre Company will join with the National Theatre of Great Britain to stage a major world premiere by the oft-controversial author Bruce Norris, Steppenwolf announced Wednesday…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PM 
