Tuesday, September 27, 2016
With another six hours of stage traffic — cascading through "Henry VI, Parts 2 and 3" and "Richard III" — adapter and director Barbara Gaines has concluded her fervently anti-war take on…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:41PMMonday, September 26, 2016
On March 24, 1962, at Madison Square Garden in New York, welterweight boxer Emile Griffith killed a man in the ring. If you were around back then and a boxing fan, you likely watched the dea…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:19PMSunday, September 25, 2016
Although David Rabe's deeply disturbing new play — a howl of authorial anguish, really — is fundamentally about an ordinary American mother and her equally quotidian son, the distinguish…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00PMFriday, September 23, 2016
At some point, in the dim and distant past of Washington, D.C., the profession of politics could be pursued without resorting to personal destruction. Or — to put that another way — sena…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:00PMDo the great James Burrows and the scribes behind the NBC sitcom "Cheers" ever question whether their professional lives had lasting meaning? Twenty-three years after America stopped cold fo…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, September 22, 2016
Barack and Michelle Obama wave goodbye to their guests, smile at each other, put on their pajamas and yawn. The first lady heads toward bed. But first, the president of the United States pau…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:26PMOn the day that the Chicago production of "Hamilton" opens for preview business, a new six-month block of tickets will go on sale. The producers of the hit Broadway musical announced Thursda…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:57AMWednesday, September 21, 2016
At the age of 42 — and despite days that include both stage performances and radiation treatments — Donica Lynn is having a moment. She's starring in the superb revival of "Smokey Joe's …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:11PMTuesday, September 20, 2016
"Wonderful Town," the highly enjoyable new Goodman revival of the challenging 1953 Broadway musical with a book by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Gre…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMSunday, September 18, 2016
"Do you think people in a hundred years will care how hard we worked?" asks one of the characters in the very smart and self-aware Aaron Posner play at the Lookingglass Theatre, "Life Sucks.…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00PMSaturday, September 17, 2016
The death of Edward Albee — at home on Long Island on Friday — surely came as no surprise to Edward Albee. That may sound like a callous way to begin an appreciation of one of the greate…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:49PMFriday, September 16, 2016
Edward Albee, an acerbic, absurdist and biting dramatist who won the Pulitzer Prize for drama three times, and who harnessed the techniques of the great European absurdists to examine Ameri…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:30PMLittle more than a week before the opening of its high-profile world premiere of David Rabe's "Visiting Edna," the Steppenwolf Theater Company has parted company with one of the show's actor…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:46PMYou might think of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as a proving ground for edgy parodies and stand-up comedians. But the critical hit of the 2012 festival — euphoric reviews, we're talking �…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:45AM"Business is the new arts," declared a business-savvy, artistically inclined pal of mine this week. I laughed. And then thought more about it. And shivered some. Consider: Once derided by MB…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, September 15, 2016
Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" needed only a room and a table. Stephen Sondheim's "Company" was fine with a New York apartment. It has taken until now for the extraordinary production capabilities…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:15PMWednesday, September 14, 2016
Tears were dampening the face of actress Michelle Lauto during the opening-night bows Tuesday night of "In the Heights," as produced by the Porchlight Music Theatre in Chicago and featuring …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:01PMOn Monday, the Chicago cast members of "Hamilton" officially arrived in town from their New York rehearsals and began settling into their apartments. On Tuesday morning, they all stood in th…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:22PMTuesday, September 13, 2016
If you were to set out to write a series of the most offensive lyrics imaginable, you could do worse than to study the song suite of the prurient new musical, "Helldrivers of Daytona," which…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:55PMMention "Chicago-style" theater to an aging member of the cultural cognoscenti in New York or Los Angeles, and your listener's head likely goes first to Steppenwolf Theatre, then to the play…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:35PMMonday, September 12, 2016
Mister Punch — the Anglicized, swazzle-voiced derivative of the Pulcinella character of the Italian commedia dell'arte — has been a fixture at the British seaside since before there was …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:30PMMore than 22 years after I saw the world premiere of "Smokey Joe's Cafe" — then known as "Baby That's Rock 'n' Roll" — I did not expect this proven celebration of the jaw-dropping song c…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:49PMLooking for tickets to the Chicago run of "Hamilton" and seeing only sold-out houses? Look again Monday and over the next couple of days, says Jeffrey Seller, the hit musical's lead producer…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:00AMSunday, September 11, 2016
Lighten up, Paramount Theatre in Aurora. You're doing "Mamma Mia!" I'm all for truth in storytelling — even with a song whose musical treats, and I mean that sincerely, includes the immort…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:53PMSaturday, September 10, 2016
Michael Cristofer is a handsome theatrical man of the old school — the kind of ageless gentleman you'd imagine in a Hennessy Cognac commercial, or sitting behind a Cadillac, or maybe pushi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:48AMThursday, September 8, 2016
So what if you want to go the theater in Chicago this fall with one simple aim in mind — having a great, relaxing, laugh-encrusted, superfun time? No brain power required. Far be it from m…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMWednesday, September 7, 2016
Here, on a sweaty August Monday at the Edison Ballroom in Midtown, Lin-Manuel Miranda, now one of the most sought-after celebrities in America, is doing something he absolutely no longer nee…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:51PMYou could be forgiven for not realizing, but "Hamilton" is not the only show opening in Chicago this fall. And every other theater ticket is cheaper and easier to snag.Here are 10 especially…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:44PMWith the dominance of "Hamilton" receding (a little), the U.S. Open reaching its climax and the thick early September air demanding relief, Broadway is firing up for the fall season. Here �…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:19PMChicago has Nelson Algren. New Orleans has Tennessee Williams. Los Angeles has Raymond Chandler. But what of Naperville? What literary giant has immortalized the fifth-largest city in the gr…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:15PMSunday, September 4, 2016
Amiri Baraka died in 2014 at the age of 79; his best known drama, "Dutchman" remains one of the great plays of the 20th century. Just how formidable this play is courses through my mind as I…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:57PM 
