I met an out-of-town friend for a drink after the Porchlight Music Theatre production of “Merrily We Roll Along” on Tuesday night. “Where would you like to go?” he asked, meeting me …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:05PMWill Davis, the artistic director of the American Theater Company, does not shy away from a challenge. Take, for example, what he attempts with the Chicago premiere of Basil Kreimendahl’s …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:05PMIn the summer of 1984, President Ronald Reagan made a little joke. “My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever,” he s…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:35PMThe House Theatre of Chicago has pursued a 12-year love affair with the famously warring Hatfields of West Virginia and McCoys of Kentucky. This Chicago theater, known for its innovative ori…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:10PMThe German equivalent of the crime of the century took place on March 31, 1922, on a small farm in rural Bavaria. On that night at the Hinterkaifeck farmstead, the farmer, his wife, their wi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:30PMThere’s a Broadway story about “The Lion King.” Julie Taymor, the conceptualist genuis, first wanted, in Act 2, to take Simba and his crew to Las Vegas. After they picked their chins u…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:05PMIn Dee Rees’ superb movie “Mudbound,” which scored four Academy Award nominations on Tuesday but not its deserved best picture berth, there is a flashback sequence wherein a young Unit…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:20PM“Do you remember the Mariel boatlift?” asks playwright Rogelio Martinez over a bowl of tomato bisque on a damp Tuesday. “That was me.” At the time of the mass exodus of Cubans from t…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00AMA new Broadway musical will be based on "Tootsie," the 1982 Hollywood hit from Columbia Pictures about a struggling actor who disguises himself as a woman to secure a role on a soap opera, o…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:15PMNot only was every seat taken at the Pride Arts Center Sunday afternoon, but also so many tardy people were trying to squeeze into the former North Broadway speakeasy that a couple of gentle…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:05PM“Cal in Camo” at the intimate Rivendell Theatre begins with a new mother, Cal, sitting in a kitchen and desperately trying to overcome a loathed and invasive device and pump milk from he…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:05PMIf you like the films of Noah Baumbach or the plays of Annie Baker, and if your favorite movie of 2016 was “Manchester by the Sea,” I suspect you’ll really appreciate “Five Mile Lake…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:10PMAttention broken-hearted lovers of Elvis! A new live show, co-produced by Authentic Brands Group and Elvis Presley Enterprises and penned by one of the creators of “Million Dollar Quartet,…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:00AM“I’ve just come from the Women’s March,” said an Arthur Miller-loving friend whom I’d run into in the lobby of the Court Theatre on Saturday night. “And now, look, here I am at �…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:20PM“She the People,” a new revue featuring five women, with the subtitle “A Girlfriends’ Guide to Sisters Doing It For Themselves,” arrives at Second City even as the unfettered new m…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:20PMDavid Peter Reimer, who shot himself in 2004, was a Canadian man whose penis was damaged beyond repair when he was a baby during a medically necessary circumcision gone terribly wrong. A psy…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:30PMGiven the name of the company, Black Button Eyes Productions probably had a date from the beginning with Edgar Allan Poe. You know, that gent poetical who enjoyed the company of ravens and q…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:20PMOn the day celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago said farewell to Lew Manilow, one of the more formidable Chicagoans of his generation. Manilow, who died Dec. 9 at the age of 90, was …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:40PM“My name is Lorraine Hansberry. I am a writer. I was born on the South Side of Chicago. I was born black and a female. I was born in a Depression after one World War and came into my adole…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMOf all the Founding Fathers of these United States, Benjamin Franklin probably did more than any other to articulate the enlightened idea of America, to explicitly link his yoked but emergin…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:05PMRobert O’Hara wrote “Insurrection: Holding History” in 1996 when he was just 26 years old. At the time, the play was billed as “Roots” meets “The Wizard of Oz” — they did wha…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00AMWhen the Minnesota Vikings took a knee and declined to attempt the extra point Sunday, you likely were unmoved by the decision, since the Vikings already had won their game by five points an…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:50PMAfter 19 years in the job, Dorothy Milne is calling it quits as artistic director of the Lifeline Theatre in Rogers Park. In an interview with the Tribune, Milne, 60, expressed a desire "not…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMA generation from now, cultural historians will look back on this moment in Chicago theater and marvel at all the plays about small-town Americans tearing each other apart. Hot on the heels …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMThe antagonist of Loy Webb’s intense new drama from the New Colony, “The Light,” is seen only in conversation. He’s a Chicago music artist, known only as Kashif, the kind that this c…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:00PMOn Wednesday, the Marcus Center in Milwaukee, the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison and the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center in Appleton, Wis., all said they would host the hit musica…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:15PMOn March 10, 1985, Tribune columnists Michael Sneed and Cheryl Lavin announced that an actress named Molly Regan had joined the ensemble of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Regan’s calling…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMMercury, meet your new sister, Venus. The long-anticipated new theater-cabaret space carved out of the shell of the old Cullen’s Bar on Southport Avenue in Lakeview, and named after the pl…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:10PMWhen August Wilson wrote “Jitney,” a play that now is 35 years old and predates Lyft, Uber and all of Wilson’s other major works, the idea of penning a cycle that reflected the African…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:45PMWhat is the responsibility of an arts organization to its local community? The answer to that question is far more complicated than you might think. And it is a key part of the legacy of Ste…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMChicago's Lookingglass Theatre Company announced a new executive director on Thursday: Rachel L. Fink. Fink, most recently managing director of the Theatre Bay Area service organization, pre…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:40PM
