Wednesday, September 16, 2015
"Come look at the freaks," they sing in "Side Show,"' the 1997 Broadway musical with the cult following and a show inspired by the real-life travails of the conjoined twins Daisy and Violet …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:18PMChicago theater companies tend to make their final exit in one of two very different ways. Some disappear quietly into the night, lingering like ghosts of their former selves. And some - t…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:06PMSunday, September 13, 2015
Some of the arguments made by Kim Davis, the determined Kentucky clerk who refuses to issue marriage licenses to gay couples despite that being the law of the land, are forcefully articulate…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:28PMSome of the arguments made by Kim Clark, the determined Kentucky clerk who refuses to issue marriage licenses to gay couples despite that being the law of the land, are forcefully articulate…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:52PMFriday, September 11, 2015
In the early 1970s, Michael Manley, the head of Jamaica's People's National Party and the newly elected Prime Minister of that Caribbean nation, displayed an admiration for, and developed ti…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:15PMAre you fatigued by mass-produced Facebook clips of the same old late-night shtick? Are you ready for some live laughs? Will you turn off your cellphone? Can you get over the incessant need …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:43PMWhen the late, great Roger Rees, the original co-director of "Peter and the Starcatcher" on Broadway, turned his attentions to the national tour of that hit Peter Pan prequel, he decided to …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:38AMThursday, September 10, 2015
In theory, Frank Galati is retired. He left his position at Northwestern University in 2006 after some three decades of distinguished teaching and creative work. He left his longtime positio…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:20PMCulled from more than a hundred significant openings between now and the winter holidays, here are 10 fall shows that, for one reason or another, promise to be especially interesting.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:20PMDoth the Lord Lloyd Webber need to go back to school? What kind of Tevye will Danny Burstein be? How about Jennifer Hudson as Shug Avery? Will Bruce Willis be miserable on a Broadway stage? …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:00AMWednesday, September 9, 2015
In the American theater, the Iowa-born playwright David Rabe has turned out to be the great dramatic poet of the Vietnam War era.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:18PMTuesday, September 8, 2015
STRATFORD, Ontario - The last hurdle for the Von Trapp family - before they head over the Alps with Mother Abbess' "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" ringing in their ears - involves an encounter with a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:16PMMonday, September 7, 2015
Behold the first production of Green Day's "American Idiot" with Chicago origins and a storefront soul. Herein, the ambitious and experimental theater company known as The Hypocrites offer u…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:22PMThursday, September 3, 2015
For decades, artists have moved into troubled neighborhoods, made them more desirable places to live and thus more valuable for developers, and then have been pushed out as rents rise. From …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:45PMYou might have heard of "Les Miserables," a musical by a pair of French guys that has played now and again in Chicago and has sold a few tickets. But did you know that before "Les Miserables…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:15AMMonday, August 31, 2015
In some two hours of gripping political theater in downtown Chicago, the investigative journalist Hillel Levin, once the editor of Chicago magazine, lays out his potent dramatic case that Pr…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:46PMWith an original score by such incongruous music luminaries as David Bowie, John Legend, Cyndi Lauper, Lady Antebellum, and Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, the animated series "Sp…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:34PMSunday, August 30, 2015
The Mississippi-raised playwright Beth Henley - best known for penning "Crimes of the Heart" - has as much affection for the label "Southern Gothic" as her fellow scribe Sarah Ruhl does for …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:54PMFriday, August 28, 2015
If you've ever tried to sell the possessions of a loved one, you've doubtless encountered the popular game of reducing the seller's expectations. One approaches a dealer with an item - a lov…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:50PMGREAT YARMOUTH, ENGLAND - To pass a day at a cloudy British seaside resort in the waning days of summer is to embrace melancholy. The resorts themselves - conceived as great Victorian towns …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:46PMThursday, August 27, 2015
The news this week that Rich Cotovsky, one of the great unvarnished characters of the Chicago theater, will be hanging it up at Angel Island after 30 years of the Mary-Arrchie Theatre Compan…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:53PMAt one point in "October Sky," the new Marriott Theatre musical based on the biographical 1999 movie about the aerospace engineer Homer H. Hickam, Jr., the principal of Big Creek High School…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:32PMAt one point in "October Sky," the new Marriott Theatre musical based on the biographical 1999 movie about the aerospace engineer Homer H. Hickam, Jr., the principal of Big Creek High School…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:24PMWednesday, August 26, 2015
Chicago venerable, anti-establishment Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company announced Tuesday that its 30th season, which opens Sept. 10, will be its last.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:59PMAugust Strindberg's Miss Julie - a posh, sexually adventurous young woman who goes looking for pleasure in the servant's quarters and who causes a plethora of trouble for the help - is among…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:50AMTuesday, August 25, 2015
TimeLine Theatre Company is a hefty step closer to moving to its own space in the former Trumbull Elementary School in the Chicago neighborhood of Andersonville.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:03PMFriday, August 21, 2015
When the Paramount Theatre in Aurora began producing its own musicals, the Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee deemed the theater ineligible, on the grounds that Aurora was too far from the ci…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMThursday, August 20, 2015
The impresario and performer Hershey Felder is doubling down on his commitment to the Royal George Theatre. He is, of late, the only one who seems to have been able to make the place work. F…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:48PMMonday, August 17, 2015
"The Book of Mormon" is coming back in the summer of 2016 for another seven weeks - its third Chicago engagement in four years - Broadway in Chicago was to announce Monday night at its annua…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:32PMThursday, August 13, 2015
In 2002 at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago, a young actor from Naperville named Chris Herzberger appeared in a bizarre and now-forgotten commercial production of a musical called "Uncle …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:33PMThe Defiant Thomas Brothers are coming back. Why is that a big deal? You might well wonder, especially if you weren't in Chicago before 2006. That was the year the sketch comedy team of Paul…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:40AM 
