Tuesday, October 14, 2014
In the first moments of "Luce" at the Next Theatre on Sunday afternoon, I had a distinct sense of deja vu. There was actress Amy J. Carle, playing a defensive parent and confronting her son'…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:38PMMonday, October 13, 2014
On Monday night in Oakbrook Terrace, the Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee displayed a deep love for the intimate. Writers Theatre's production of August Strindberg's "The Dance of Death," a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00AMFriday, October 10, 2014
One of the happier consequences of the recent uptick in the quantity and quality of off-Loop musical theater is that a very capable but often pigeonholed director and choreographer like Bren…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:38PMThursday, October 9, 2014
The board of directors at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company engaged earlier this month in the kind of image management one associates more with politicians and major corporations than a nonpro…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:34PMNEW YORK - "Without the theater, New York is Newark," declares one of the characters in "It's Only a Play." Part sentimental confessional, part caustic farce rooted in bitterness and wholly …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:58PMWednesday, October 8, 2014
Like those with the misfortune to bare their necks to the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the Porchlight Music Theatre production of "Sweeney Todd" has its good and bad moments. But, to paraph…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:34PMTuesday, October 7, 2014
The Profiles Theatre production of "The Cryptogram" features a really great performance from Aaron Lamm, a seventh-grader at Wilmette Junior High School. People tend not to believe critics w…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:36PMIn 1933, the playwright Maxwell Anderson wrote a very lively drama all about Congress and pork, a drama that would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize and that now opens the season for Remy Bump…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:58PMMonday, October 6, 2014
Jackie Taylor, the maestro of the Black Ensemble Theater, has penned countless affectionate biographical tributes to recording artists. Whether it was Marvin Gaye or Dionne Warwick or Jackie…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:08PMSunday, October 5, 2014
NEW YORK — As inciting incidents go, the unsettling event as lights rise on "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" is a doozy. A dog named Wellington lies dead in the garden o…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:11PMAnyone who has suffered the ignominy of a fire pit, a backyard full of guests and a pile of soggy wood could only empathize with Redmoon on Saturday night.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:44AMFriday, October 3, 2014
Despite its bucolic name, the quiet hamlet of Sandy Point Town, St. Kitts, on a friendly island in the West Indies, has a history written in blood.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:07PMThursday, October 2, 2014
In the great flurry of Chicago theater openings this last three weeks, two must-see shows have emerged. They are "Smokefall" at the Goodman Theatre and "Native Son" at the Court Theatre.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:23PMAt an on-site press conference Thursday morning, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company announced both a major expansion project and an artistic succession.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:18AMOn Aug. 10, 1991, a 44-year-old freelance journalist named Danny Casolaro was found dead in a West Virginia hotel room. His wrists were slashed. His death was officially a suicide.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:16AMTuesday, September 30, 2014
The birth of Sunny, the central character in Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's unstinting and sardonic new play, "The World of Extreme Happiness," is celebrated by her moments-old self being stuffed i…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:49PMPerhaps the biggest change in American society over the last 10 years is the amount of grease now to be found on the long-standing ladder leading toward middle-class stability, even as the r…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:56PMMonday, September 29, 2014
In Noah Haidle's quixotic, gorgeous "Smokefall," the narrative begins with a young couple who have fallen in love. They get advice from someone much older — this romance will end in traged…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:06PMThe question of what you will feel like when you die — and, more specifically, whether you will actually feel like you are dead — suffuses Conor McPherson's "The Night Alive." The season…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:04AMFriday, September 26, 2014
The Isango Ensemble's touring production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1791 opera "The Magic Flute" (or "Impempe Yomlingo") has been a hit in London and many other parts of the world. One und…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:55PMThursday, September 25, 2014
The Hypocrites said Thursday that their hit, 12-hour production of Sean Graney's “All Our Tragic” will return in the summer of 2015 for an encore engagement at the Den Theatre, 1333 N. M…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:28PMCanada has so much to like: an excellent business climate; a compassionate health care system; some of the finest classical theater in North America; the Maple Leaf cookies they used to sell…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:01AMCanada has so much to like: an excellent business climate; a compassionate health care system; some of the finest classical theater in North America; the Maple Leaf cookies they used to sell…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:01AMWednesday, September 24, 2014
What the cult Canadian TV show "Slings & Arrows" did for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival — and for resident classical theaters in general — so Shawn Pfautsch's "Season on the Line" ai…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:53PMOn Monday, Noah Haidle's "Smokefall" opens on the main stage of the Goodman Theatre. If you follow theater in Chicago, you might have read something about this remarkable play about a Grand …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:22PMTuesday, September 23, 2014
A potential Bernie Madoff does not lurk behind every financial planner's desk. This is just as well. Most of us working stiffs struggle enough to save rather than spend without watching our …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:39PMFor a snapshot of what Chicago theater loves most about its new Broadway star, Jessie Mueller, you need only have been at the City Winery Monday night, when the self-effacing lead of "Beauti…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:32AMMonday, September 22, 2014
The Idaho retirement community at the heart of "Rest," the new play by Samuel D. Hunter, who received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" last week , is no place you want to spend your gol…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:04PMSunday, September 21, 2014
Sheldon Patinkin, a crucial figure in the development of improvisational comedy in Chicago and a mentor to numerous generations of American and Canadian comedians and aspiring theatrical dir…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:42AM 
