Tuesday, April 7, 2015
NEW YORK — In January 2002, the Chicago-based theatrical producer Stuart Oken found himself at a party. The ill-fated Broadway musical “Sweet Smell of Success” had opened its Chicago t…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:34PM“The Upstairs Concierge,” the bewilderingly meandering, endlessly indulgent and thoroughly disappointing new show at the Goodman Theatre from the gifted writer Kristoffer Diaz, sets itse…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:27PMThursday, April 2, 2015
"I am not trying to write weird, prickly little plays and I am not trying to write boffo box office," the playwright Will Eno observed over lunch recently, "but if you keep it lean then ther…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMMonday, March 30, 2015
The Bible, it is rigorously and rightly observed in "The Good Book," flows through American culture like blood. No question. If you wanted to simplify the nation's most persistent schism, yo…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:42PMSunday, March 29, 2015
"We all come from blood and saltwater and a screaming mother begging us to leave." Given what we know about the origins of the species, and the rarity of even the most enthusiastic birthing…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:24PMFriday, March 27, 2015
NEW YORK — Old-school bars are now a rarity around Times Square, squeezed out by chain hotels and video boards. But Jimmy's Corner, a boxing-themed dive bar on West 44th Street, has someho…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMThursday, March 26, 2015
In the Chicago theater, a paucity of financial resources is often a point of pride, even part of the town's aesthetic. But it's also a reason to complain. In the minds of some theater artist…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMWednesday, March 25, 2015
NEW YORK — You can't get from New York to Chicago by train in 16 hours anymore. And you could argue that musical theater has been similarly immune from progress since the 1930s, when the p…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:19PMTuesday, March 24, 2015
Champagne corks popped Monday night at the Windy City Playhouse, the plush new venue for live performance at 3014 W. Irving Park Road, in an area of Chicago with many arts workers and arts l…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:25PMA drunk — maybe also a stoner, maybe not — was wandering down Milwaukee Avenue on Sunday night in the environs of the Den Theatre. Another amped-up dude could be found staggering in the …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMMonday, March 23, 2015
Since the musical "Les Miserables" has been in the public consciousness for 30 years, it is hard to imagine that you don't know something about this epic Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Scho…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:55PMSince the musical "Les Miserables" has been in the public consciousness for 30 years, it is hard to imagine that you don't know something about this epic Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Scho…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:55PMSunday, March 22, 2015
"Outside Mullingar," a recent play by John Patrick Shanley ("Doubt") and the newest attraction from the Northlight Theatre in Skokie, starts out in a manner familiar to anyone with affection…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:43PMFriday, March 20, 2015
The "Genius" that makes up the one-word title of the potentially provocative play by Kate Walbert, now at the Profiles Theatre, does not refer to God-given talents but to a designation by a …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:03PMNEW YORK - Last June, a man named Roy Cockrum walked into a Kroger supermarket to buy a Powerball ticket. He won the largest lottery jackpot in the history of Tennessee: $259 million, which …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMNEW YORK - Last June, a man named Roy Cockrum walked into a Kroger supermarket to buy a Powerball ticket. He won the largest lottery jackpot in the history of Tennessee: $259 million, which …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMThursday, March 19, 2015
NEW YORK — Baby boomer Heidi Holland, the angst-ridden, art historian heroine of the justly beloved Wendy Wasserstein play from 1988 that bears her name, would now be about 66 years old if…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:00PMNEW YORK — Baby boomer Heidi Holland, the angst-ridden, art historian heroine of the justly beloved Wendy Wasserstein play from 1988 that bears her name, would now be about 66 years old if…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:00PMNext week, a new theater that will surprise a lot of people will open in Chicago: the Windy City Playhouse, at 3014 W. Irving Park Road, at the western reaches of Chicago's North Center neig…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:21PMTuesday, March 17, 2015
The flourishing Belmont Theater District is to get a new venue, located just east of Stage 773 and Theater Wit. Dubbed Chicago Theater Works, the new space at 1113 W. Belmont Ave. (formerly…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:08PMLongtime Steppenwolf Theatre Company casting and associate artistic director Erica Daniels is to join Second City Theatricals as a vice president. Second City Theatricals is a company within…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:51AMMonday, March 16, 2015
Although set in 1969 — the height of militant social action, you might think — August Wilson's "Two Trains Running" is actually a portrait of Pittsburgh folks stuck in a siding. Everyone…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:30PMSunday, March 15, 2015
MILWAUKEE — When former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush joined the incumbent president, Bill Clinton, at the 1994 funeral of former president Rich…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:40PMFriday, March 13, 2015
Even for the likes of David Copperfield, Criss Angel and Nik Wallenda, it's never easy for an illusionist to sell out a big theater or sustain a national movement. They all need personal bra…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:12PMThursday, March 12, 2015
In 1995, Doug Zook was a business agent for Local 1 of the Service Employees International Union. Many of the employees at Chicago cemeteries were represented by that union, including Homewo…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:47PMAs old Willy Shakes well knew, revenge is a tricky emotion to sell on the rialto. Buried in our Judeo-Christian consciousness is the nagging feeling that forgiveness is a preferable emotion.…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:26PMWednesday, March 11, 2015
The new season at the Goodman Theatre, announced Wednesday, includes new plays from Jose Rivera and Rebecca Gilman, revivals of works by Lorraine Hansberry and Thornton Wilder, a new adaptat…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:56PMWhen you play a prostitute (Betty) in a popular Showtime television series ("Masters of Sex"), you should probably expect a few stares when you visit Walt Disney World with your husband. Ann…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:47PMTuesday, March 10, 2015
I first heard the score of "Jesus Christ Superstar" in about 1975, when my childish self (for I was but a babe) gave the original concept album a whirl on the old turntable. Ian Gillan, the …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:37PMMonday, March 9, 2015
Between July 13 and July 20, 1995, when temperatures lingered at 106 degrees and the heat index reached 125 degrees, more than 700 Chicagoans died. A preponderance of those deaths were of mi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:57PM 
