Thursday, November 2, 2017
“Without ‘Newsies,’ nobody knows nothing.” Darn right, Jack Kelly. More power to ya’, and to all the boys of the only Disney musical in the history of the world to venerate collect…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00AMWednesday, November 1, 2017
So William Petersen, once William L. Petersen, venerable Chicago actor, maestro of the Remains Theatre, bon vivant, actor’s actor, decadelong star of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:15PM“Medea: The Musical” sounds more like a “Forbidden Broadway” parody than a serious endeavor. Murderous moms — even ones that killed their brother for their husbands, forsook their …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:25PMWhen we first meet Sam, one half of the potential love match at the heart of Rohina Malik’s “Yasmina’s Necklace,” he’s arguing with his parents over his name. He has changed it for…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMTuesday, October 31, 2017
Did you vote for John B. Anderson in 1980? If you were of age and followed the advice of this newspaper, which endorsed the moderate congressman from Illinois in the Republican primary over …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:50PMMonday, October 30, 2017
The enthusiastic manifestation of unexpected ecstasy occurs often in playwright Sarah Ruhl’s “In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play,” a droll exploration of the early days of electrif…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:40PMFriday, October 27, 2017
A sleep-deprived woman heads into a Brookstone. “What about a demo of this white noise machine?” says the African-American salesman, miming turning it on. “I don’t have one black fri…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:45PM“All artists,” says Andrew Lloyd Webber, in the middle of a long and frank chat with the Tribune, "are insecure about everything." Interesting, coming from the most commercially successf…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, October 26, 2017
When David Henry Hwang penned the damning and beguiling "M. Butterfly" in 1988, meaningful explorations of the issues of gender assignment and identification were as invisible on Broadway as…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMDoes the financial compensation received by an actor affect the quality of the show you are seeing? That’s a fascinating question — with many minefields waiting for anyone who tries to c…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMSunday, October 22, 2017
A former Julliard fellow, the New York-based writer Janine Nabers clearly is well acquainted with the years when former students of prestigious schools hit New York City and find out a few h…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:15PMFriday, October 20, 2017
No “Dracula,” no “True Blood.” But Bram Stoker’s uber-vampire yarn still is centered on a creepy, fanged stalker who likes nothing more than to recruit an exposed female neck. How …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:40AM“The thrill is gone?” read the headline on a Tribune story about playoff tickets at Wrigley Field going for “under face value.” True. Thanks to the Chicago Cubs’ poor performance i…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, October 19, 2017
The Chicago Loop Alliance has commissioned what it describes as Chicago's "first-ever study calculating the estimated economic impact of all arts and culture institutions" located in the Loo…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:40PMThe creative team behind “Trevor” — the new musical about a lovable young teen with a tough road but a passion for Diana Ross — was gathered in the Times Square offices of U Rock The…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:15AMWednesday, October 18, 2017
“What are you staring at?” asks a woman from the stage in “Amarillo,” a reflective, experiential production from Mexico City’s distinguished, 24-year-old theater company Teatro Lin…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:25PMTuesday, October 17, 2017
Top Broadway talent who are all excellent! Tara Rubin casts this show and she knows what she is doing. Chicago run mostly sold out. 3 1/2 Stars last time. FOUR (4) **** NOW!
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:43AMMonday, October 16, 2017
The Porchlight Music Theatre production of “Billy Elliot,” through which I sat Sunday night with misty eyes, is to a great extent what I always hoped this piece would become in Chicago: …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:00PM“People must be amused, squire, somehow,” observes Mr. Sleary in Charles Dickens’ “Hard Times.” “They can’t be always a-working, nor yet they can’t be always a-learning.” E…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:35PMSunday, October 15, 2017
Across the years, like a low-rent Javert, I've felt the need to protect Chicago audiences from even a moment in a "Les Miserables" that dared to be less than emotionally devastating. Friday …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:25PMFriday, October 13, 2017
The title of Ayad Akhtar’s 2014 play, “The Invisible Hand,” now in its Chicago premiere at the Steep Theatre, pays homage to Adam Smith. The great economist coined the metaphor in the …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:50PMRichard Thaler, the University of Chicago economist from the Booth School of Business who won the Nobel Prize on Monday, is an economist we cultural pontificates can love. Why? Simple. His w…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, October 12, 2017
Some baby boomer men manage to stand tall and lean, rock solid with sensual certitude in their seventh or eighth decade — their masculinity reconstructed with new sensitivities but in no w…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:45PMAs part of his 2018 budget proposal, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will propose major changes in the city amusement tax that will newly exempt midsize entertainment venues such as Thalia Hall a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:33PMAt Monday’s moving memorial for former Steppenwolf Theatre artistic director Martha Lavey, many beautiful pictures of the late actress and cultural leader were displayed. One especially ha…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMMonday, October 9, 2017
If there was one thing that the great American playwright Arthur Miller hated above all else, it was sanctimonious moral absolutism. “This is a sharp time, now, a precise time,” says the…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PMSunday, October 8, 2017
As the empire of the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein seemed to collapse this weekend amid a barrage of published allegations of sexual misconduct, there was quiet uneasiness among New York's li…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:20PMFriday, October 6, 2017
Is Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” the most important novel ever written? Probably. Dostoevsky and Harold Bloom both thought so. No “Don Quixote,” no Dickens. Maybe no Netflix, …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:10PMDisaster plans are an excellent idea for families — does yours have one? — and, of course, for media organizations that must stand ready for the periodic all-American horror shows like t…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, October 5, 2017
At one point in "Motown the Musical,” which you might reasonably define as the authorized and sanitized version of “Dreamgirls,” Diana Ross (well, not the real Ross, but the character)…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:50PMWednesday, October 4, 2017
“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which knocked me for six in London, is about to make profound and lasting changes to the commercial theater industry on this side of the Atlantic. Ev…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PM 
