Wednesday, January 28, 2015
There are dramatic plays — a few thousand years of them have unfurled to date — and there are story plays. The two categories overlap in that all great drama tells a story, of course, an…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMMonday, January 26, 2015
Feminism carried the promise of equality in marriage — a union between two equally empowered individuals, dividing up power, opportunity and responsibility; raising kids together; climbing…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMWhen Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" had its 1956 North American premiere — improbably at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida — a good portion of the audience who'd shown up to s…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:55PMSean Graney will return to be the artistic director of The Hypocrites, the Chicago theater company he founded 18 years ago. The Hypocrites has been under the leadership of Halena Kays, who i…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:57AMSunday, January 25, 2015
Probably the single most infuriating and limiting thing about the American theater is its lack of immediacy when it comes to political and social commentary, mostly due to the absurd rigmaro…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:13PMFriday, January 23, 2015
"West Side Story," that ever-astonishing work of musical theater, is justly famous for the gangland rumblings between the Jets and the Sharks, stunning Jerome Robbins feats of 1950s choreogr…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:18PMImprobably this week, Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, said she and her city intend to sue Fox News on the grounds that the famously opinionated cable news channel had claimed that certain …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMThursday, January 22, 2015
When, in 1975, the movie director Ken Russell turned "Tommy," an album by The Who, into a film, catapulting the Pinball Wizard to further glory, he made one particularly notable change: He s…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00AMWednesday, January 21, 2015
Around 1950, a woman named Brownie Wise came to the attention of Earl Tupper, the inventor of a brand of airtight plastic containers designed to keep leftovers fresh. Wise (reportedly to be …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:01PMTuesday, January 20, 2015
"Cape Fear," the 1991 thriller by Martin Scorsese, is perhaps best remembered, if it is remembered at all, for a creepy, finger-sucking seduction scene involving Juliette Lewis and Robert De…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:50PMFor a quick lesson in how much the widespread expansion and acceptance of gay marriage has changed the culture of America, one need only stop in at A Red Orchid Theatre for "Accidentally, Li…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:00PMMonday, January 19, 2015
Penny Penniston has been writing plays in Chicago for two decades now. She's not wildly prolific, and most of her works have premiered — like her latest, "Keys of the Kingdom," now in its …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:58PMSunday, January 18, 2015
In the summer of 1968, Pete Townshend gave a lengthy interview to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone about the future direction of The Who, Townshend's rock band. "We've been talking about doing a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:06PMIn the summer of 1968, Pete Townshend gave a lengthy interview to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone about the future direction of The Who, Townshend's rock band. "We've been talking about doing a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:06PMFriday, January 16, 2015
Never — surely — has the world come so powerfully to the defense of outre satirists as it did last Sunday in Paris.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMNever — surely — has the world come so powerfully to the defense of outre satirists as it did last Sunday in Paris. The march in defiance of those who, on Jan. 7, murdered writers and ca…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMThursday, January 15, 2015
NEW YORK — Were you to honeymoon in today's Las Vegas, you'd find hip European DJs have replaced crooners and Elvis, and showgirls about as rare on the Strip as a winning hand. But “Hone…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMWednesday, January 14, 2015
In the business of commercial theater, there is no better week than the one roughly between Christmas and New Year. Just ask Disney. In that week in Chicago, the tour of "Newsies" pulled in …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:01PMIn the business of commercial theater, there is no better week than the one roughly between Christmas and New Year. Just ask Disney. In that week in Chicago, the tour of "Newsies" pulled in …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:01PMNEW YORK — "Before people had faith," remarks one of the two characters in Nick Payne's head-spinning new Broadway play "Constellations," "people's lives were their own."
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:41PMLast year's Tony Award-winning best musical, "A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder," is to kick off its first national tour in Chicago in September, it was announced Wednesday.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:00AMMonday, January 12, 2015
Even after 14 years, Chicago's Sketch Comedy Festival hovers below a lot of cultural radars. This is partly due to the glut of small festivals in early January; SketchFest competes both with…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:33PMThursday, January 8, 2015
The Disney musical "Newsies" had a front-page week in Chicago over the holidays. The nine performances at the Oriental Theatre in the week ending Jan. 4 grossed a whopping $2,012,723; Disney…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:43PMSocial media, especially Facebook, profoundly has changed the way we announce death and/or its imminence, the way we find out about loss, the way we mourn, the language we use to comfort the…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:21PMWednesday, January 7, 2015
A battle is brewing in the red-hot Southport Avenue corridor between a planned performance venue in the mode of New York's 54 Below cabaret, and a much-loved Irish bar of the old Chicago tra…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:27PM"Churchill," Ronald Keaton's hit, self-penned, one-man show about the iconic British wartime leader, is headed off-Broadway. Opening night at New World Stages in New York, 340 W. 50th St., i…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:36PMTuesday, January 6, 2015
A multi-media, concert-style show designed to celebrate the movies of the late John Hughes — including such nostalgic titles as “Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Weird Sc…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:06PM"The Last Ship," the Broadway musical composed by (and based on the life of) Sting, is to close on Jan. 24, the show's producers announced Tuesday morning.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:50AMSaturday, January 3, 2015
Julia Neary, an ebullient, energetic, ensemble-loving actress, a sought-after movement specialist and a dedicated educator with 25 years of distinguished work on the neighborhood stages of C…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:53PMWednesday, December 31, 2014
The winter season in Chicago theater features festivals, large-cast epics and revivals with a twist. Out of the scores of shows opening in the next few weeks at Chicago theaters, here are 10…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:19PMTuesday, December 30, 2014
In 2014 ... Chicago's Jessie Mueller snagged the role of Carole King in "Beautiful" on Broadway. By June, she had a Tony Award and the Mueller family was on its way to becoming a national th…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:38PM 
