Tuesday, April 26, 2016
The Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee loves the work of the little cabaret theater known for its excellence in the heart of Rogers Park: Theo Ubique Theatre emerged Tuesday night as the Chic…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:10PMThe new Broadway musical version of "Tuck Everlasting" — a young person's novel by Natalie Babbitt that has justly been loved by at least three generations of kids, including mine — is d…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMSunday, April 24, 2016
All great bakers put a part of their souls in the mixing bowl, but Jenna, the small-town star of "Waitress," narrates her tough life using the titles of her daily specials: the Key Lime to H…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMMatt Crowle may just be the definitive Leo Bloom, the very, very, very unhappy accountant whose life is transformed by shenanigans with Max Bialystock, regular sex at 11 with Ulla Inga Hanse…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:56PMFriday, April 22, 2016
Alexander Hamilton might have survived on the $10 bill, but the news here last week that the original “Hamilton” cast is to get a piece of the currency generated by the hit Broadway show…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:25PMThursday, April 21, 2016
It has — pinch me, Che Guevara — been 40 years since two pimply, pasty Brits, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, penned the songs to "Evita," which first emerged as a concept album that w…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:46PMAn unreliable narrator clad in Ermenegildo Zegna, Patrick Bateman (Exeter, Harvard) emerged from the pages of Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 shocker "American Psycho" as hot, pure, crystallized exc…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:31PMWednesday, April 20, 2016
Some of Broadway's flops are riddled with bullets from birth. The premature deaths of others are more of a surprise. I'd put "Bullets Over Broadway," the 2014 Broadway musical version of the…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:34PMAt an event last week in front of its supporters, the venerable Light Opera Works of Evanston announced it will be ditching its longtime moniker and renaming itself Music Theater Works. I'd …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:23PMTuesday, April 19, 2016
An existential crisis for an arts-graduate hipster can arrive at 7:45 of a Chicago morning, just as the nocturnal grasping at all kinds of complex intimacies gives way to the cold realities …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:12PMMonday, April 18, 2016
When "Hamilton" begins performances in Chicago on Sept. 27, it will do so as the winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The coronation of the hit Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:02PMFriday, April 15, 2016
Feeling creative today? Ready to pen something really smart and witty on Facebook?
A poem based on your evening? A political essay or a literary rant? A saucy gossip column? A little play? …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:27PMFeeling creative today? Ready to pen something really smart and witty on Facebook? A poem based on your evening? A political essay or a literary rant? A saucy gossip column? A little play? "…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:39AMThursday, April 14, 2016
When news came last week that the Steppenwolf Theatre Company had decided not to use real babies in its production of "Mary Page Marlowe," some headlines danced in my head.
"A crying shame:…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:07PMWhen news came last week that the Steppenwolf Theatre Company had decided not to use real babies in its production of "Mary Page Marlowe," some headlines danced in my head. "A crying shame: …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:44PMWednesday, April 13, 2016
The role of Effie Melody White — she who tells you she's not going — already transformed the life of one woman from Chicago. It's hard to imagine the Porchlight Music Theatre production …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:18PMThe titular, 11-year-old hero of "Jabari Dreams of Freedom," the frank and compassionate new children's play from Nambi E. Kelley, goes to school in Chicago. Like too many of the real-life k…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:16PMThe titular, 11-year-old hero of "Jabari Dreams of Freedom," the frank and compassionate new children's play from Nambi E. Kelley, goes to school in Chicago. Like too many of the real-life k…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:56AMTuesday, April 12, 2016
To many who hold to liberal orthodoxies, Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain, J.C. Watts, Alan Keyes and Condoleezza Rice are all examples of a paradoxical absurdity: the African-American Republica…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:02PMMonday, April 11, 2016
Somewhere, deep in your political memory — now trumped by another contest, I know — you may recall the Democratic primaries of 2008 when a woman named Hillary fought a young man named Ba…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:19PMChristopher Wheeldon’s all new production of “The Nutcracker” for the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago is shaping up to be quite a Broadway-style extravaganza. Plans include a new narrative b…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:31PMChristopher Wheeldon's all new production of "The Nutcracker" for the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago is shaping up to be quite a Broadway-style extravaganza. Plans include a new narrative by the …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:10PMWhat is the measure of a great piece of dramatic writing? I've found, over the years, that one decent yardstick is the presence of a swelling feeling of anxiety over the work before you comi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:00AMSunday, April 10, 2016
What is the measure of a great piece of dramatic writing? I've found, over the years, that one decent yardstick is the presence of a swelling feeling of anxiety over the work before you comi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:21PMFriday, April 8, 2016
On Wednesday Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders showed some teeth, grabbed some headlines and declared his rival, Hillary Clinton, "not qualified" for the office of president o…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:31AMOn Wednesday Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders showed some teeth, grabbed some headlines and declared his rival, Hillary Clinton, "not qualified" for the office of president o…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:00AMThursday, April 7, 2016
"Everybody ought to have a maid," wrote Stephen Sondheim in 1962, pondering the indisputable convenience of a consistently congenial menial. That brilliant titular lyric within "A Funny Thin…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:22PMWednesday, April 6, 2016
Here at the World's Greatest Newspaper, we're making a valiant and expanded effort to cover stand-up comedy — an ascendant phenomenon that, in its upper reaches, has moved out of the arche…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:16PMMonday, April 4, 2016
In 2007 in Evanston, the late, lamented Next Theatre Company staged the premiere of a musical adaptation of "The Adding Machine," the 1923 expressionistic masterpiece by Elmer Rice all about…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:33PMSunday, April 3, 2016
In 2010, a proposal to build a mosque and community center just a couple of blocks from ground zero in New York touched off a furor. Proponents said that the development, originally dubbed C…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:48PMFriday, April 1, 2016
At one point in "Kill Floor," the melancholy and moving new play by Abe Koogler at American Theater Company, the central character of Andy, played with rich empathy by Audrey Francis, confro…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:56PM 
