What’s your favorite scene in “Jersey Boys”? If you saw the show on Broadway or one of its earlier visits to Chicago, dollars to donuts it’s the moment when the horns come out for �…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:00PMFew wise heads would choose a candidate for the Mayor of the City of Chicago entirely on the basis of their arts policy — without job growth, high-quality public education, safe streets, s…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:15PMIn 2015, an entertainment publication conducted a poll among actors, asking them for the best movie ever made. You'd expect "The Godfather" or "Chinatown," but the winner was "Tootsie," the …
SOURCE: New York Daily News at 03:15PMSo how will history judge Rupert Murdoch, of Fox News and New York Post fame? As a devil from Down Under who trashed august journalistic institutions, made a mockery of the phrase "fair and …
SOURCE: New York Daily News at 03:15PMWhat's the difference between a clown and a fool? You might think the question moot, given the ample prevalence of both types in and around the White House. But it's the central issue in "Ga…
SOURCE: New York Daily News at 03:10PMJoe Keller, the tragic antihero of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” and a man who shipped out cracked cylinder heads to World War II fighter pilots, generally is played as a folksy sort o…
SOURCE: New York Daily News at 03:10PMAmerica's on the road to hell — better jump right off, my children. Too dangerous to look back. Instead, try and find the cracks in that famous wall we're building. That's pretty much the …
SOURCE: New York Daily News at 03:05PMQuestion. What do Harry Potter, the Ramones and the magician Jamie Allan all have in common? Canada. And trash cans. If there’s one common denominator to the marketing plan of the young Ca…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:30AMA problem with writing dystopian dramas, be they in the theater or on TV, is that the sources of societal anxiety change fast. That is not to say that we get any less anxious overall, merely…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:00PMMost Broadway shows stick with playbills. Heidi Schreck hands out take-home copies of the Constitution of the United States of America. Or, as her 15-year-old self puts it in her mostly one-…
SOURCE: New York Daily News at 09:00PMIn Anna Jordan’s “Yen,” a British drama first seen at Manchester’s awesome Royal Exchange Theatre in 2015 and enough to give nightmares to anyone who lives with young teenagers, two …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMWhen I first saw the family-oriented musical "Anastasia" on Broadway in 2017, I thought to myself that the show would have to suffer its share of mockery. Replete with a tortured villain cha…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:30PMTwo prominent Chicago theaters have announced their 2019-20 seasons. Lookingglass Theatre will stage a timely new play about the former Chicago mayor Jane Byrne, while the Goodman Theatre's …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMYou catch the 7 Line train from New York’s Times Square — a chaotic urban carnival of commerce, musicals, plays, comedy and gawking, technology laying atop the grime of urban history, it…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:15PMBack from spring break? Still got a week of rest ahead? Either way, the sun is shining as I write (not that it’s warm or anything) and Chicago theaters are planting bulbs. Let’s take a l…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:10PMThe ladies in yellow, purple, blue, green, brown, orange, red, women of color all, step out on the stage of the Court Theatre into what feels like an agora, a place of assembly, of confessio…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:30PMChristine, the central character in the world premiere Northlight Theatre play “Landladies,” badly needs an apartment. She has a minimum-wage job at a taco joint, a young daughter, a tro…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:30PMA new production of the much-admired Adam Guettel musical “The Light in the Piazza” is coming to Chicago’s Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive, next winter, starring the famed opera …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PM“Ain’t Too Proud,” the frustrating biographical Broadway musical about Motown’s hit-machine the Temptations, takes its title from a 1966 record, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” But i…
SOURCE: New York Daily News at 10:00PMDespite twice hosting "Saturday Night Live" — appearances in 2004 and 2015 that surely were helpful to his rise — the President of the United States is no longer a fan of the late-night …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMShe tells her mom she's leaving her husband. And her kids. And the boring Midwest. Being older and wiser about life, this Midwest mother immediately senses that her grown-but-troubled daught…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:30PMA working Chicago actor at the age of 95, Mike Nussbaum gets a lot of deserved attention. He’s not slowing down, either. America’s oldest professional actor is slated to appear as the gr…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00PMCan a play be sympathetic to the plight of the displaced white, working-class workers of America while also holding that same group fully accountable for its defensiveness, myopia and well-d…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:30PM“Hands on a Hardbody” opened on Broadway in a crush of shows in the spring of 2013. I remember thinking (a) that the show would never get the attention it needed to survive (b), that it …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:30PMThe Loop theater presenter Broadway in Chicago announced its upcoming subscription season Monday. New shows headed to Chicago include the national tours of "Once On This Island," the disco-e…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:30PMChatting with a friend in another row Wednesday night, I inadvertently blocked the aisle of the James M. Nederlander Theatre, briefly impeding a heavyset man heading to his seat for “A Bro…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMScott Ellis, whose body of work reveals him to be a softie, knows better than any other Broadway director how to key into the inner emotional lives of theater people. And he’s also keenly …
SOURCE: New York Daily News at 10:00PM“I’m with the musicians,” said Riccardo Muti on Tuesday, delighting the striking musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for whom he was offering unequivocal support. Wait a minut…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMGot a bachelorette party in your near future? Planning a girls’ (or boys’) night out? Looking for a full-throated, multi-generational, warm-spirited night on the town? “The Choir of Me…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:10PMI kept thinking Monday night that it is mere happenstance — likely combined with some clear-eyed life choices — that you can find Kelli Harrington, a name unknown to most Chicagoans, per…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:10PMCalogero Lorenzo Palminteri — a son of the outer boroughs of New York City, otherwise known as Chazz and now 66 years old — visited Chicago recently to talk about his life, times, and �…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:45AM
