Monday, January 7, 2013
Fresh on the heels of the positively seismic “Good People,” a masterfully rendered class commentary that took a company on Halsted back to its gritty roots, Steppenwolf Theatre e…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMSunday, December 30, 2012
RECOMMENDED TurnAround Theatre’s acclaimed production of Brian Friel’s “Faith Healer” has been remounted by The Den Theatre—that is, if you can call this somber, in…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:13PMTuesday, December 25, 2012
Has ever a writer loved a character quite so much as Tennessee Williams loved Laura Wingfield? Love is an impossible quality to quantify, try though eHarmony might, but as anyone who’s…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:01AMWednesday, December 19, 2012
The stage version of author Michael Morpurgo’s children’s novel, “War Horse,” was met with mostly yawns and complaints about the show’s length on Tuesday night …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:30PMMonday, December 17, 2012
RECOMMENDED Near the end of American Blues Theater’s “It’s A Wonderful Life: Live at The Biograph!” one of two annual radio-play renditions of the Frank Capra film cu…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00AMThursday, December 13, 2012
RECOMMENDED “Society’s nothing but a school for lies. This city’s built on them. And may it wilt on them.” You’ve got to hand it to playwright David Ives. For h…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:20PMMonday, December 10, 2012
RECOMMENDED The holidays in Chicago are rife with theater traditions. Scrooges, Pirates, Klingons, George Baileys: creative clashes of humor, popular culture and nostalgia that pack in the c…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:00PMMonday, December 3, 2012
RECOMMENDED “It’s Liza!” sings, who else, but the unshakable Ms. Liza Minnelli, the irreverent Broadway songstress whose status as a gay icon, by now, may very well have su…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:45PMTuesday, November 27, 2012
So many people die in “Failure: A Love Story,” a new play by Philip Dawkins that opened on Monday night at Victory Gardens Theater. In 1928, the three Fail sisters, Nelly (Baize …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PMMonday, November 26, 2012
Author O. Henry’s Christmastime short story, “The Gifts of the Magi,” gets its power from an abbreviated length. The modern parable about a strapped-for-cash married couple…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMSunday, November 25, 2012
Is Bollywood just another performance style or a integral part of India’s cultural identity? If Circle Theatre’s new revival of Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson’s ̶…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:00PMMonday, November 19, 2012
By Johnny Oleksinski I arrived in New York City to an unexpectedly premature November blizzard, the biggest effect of an ill-timed nor’easter. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t compl…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00AMSunday, November 18, 2012
RECOMMENDED The holidays are for many the most miserable time of the year, in contrast with their expressed wonderfulness. As family gathers together, so too do our painful memories and sham…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMSaturday, November 17, 2012
The swarm of musicals coal-mining the depths of folk Americana flys ever onward with “The Burnt Part Boys,” a blue collar comedy tour de bluegrass, receiving its Midwest premiere…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:00AMThursday, November 15, 2012
While Michigan Avenue shops exchange the jack-o-lanterns and ghoulish cutouts of their window displays for fluffy cotton balls and cinnamon yuletide ornament, a far more pessimistic and unab…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:00PMWednesday, November 14, 2012
By Johnny Oleksinski The past few months have been mighty eventful for Theatre Seven of Chicago, to say the least. The six-year-old storefront company became this year’s recipient of B…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00AMMonday, November 12, 2012
By Johnny Oleksinski Werther who? Don’t be ashamed if that is what you’re thinking. Jules Massenet’s 1892 French opera based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Di…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:30PMMonday, November 5, 2012
RECOMMENDED Little boxes made of ticky tacky, meet mid-sized yurt made of treated wool. In Jane Anderson’s relatively new play, “The Quality of Life,” receiving an intensely moving and…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:00AMRECOMMENDED “This is not the story of Frankenstein!” dejectedly screams the Storyteller of 500 Clown’s “500 Clown Frankenstein,” which opened in an exhilarating…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00AMSunday, November 4, 2012
RECOMMENDED Occasionally I am reminded that closely (or loosely) held beliefs are essential to criticizing a work of art. Sure, that “Ah-ha!” lightbulb might come across as gener…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:33AMWednesday, October 31, 2012
By Johnny Oleksinski Ike Holter is the Monarch of social butterflies. We met up on a Monday night at Beauty Bar, a sugary confection of a pub, where the playwright was to perform onstage in…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00AMMonday, October 29, 2012
Restoration Comedy is a gleeful, frivolous genre blending a unique crude low-country attitude with the lightness of step and speech that would later come to define Comedy of Manners. And it&…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMRECOMMENDED Ask anyone who their favorite teacher was, and they will always offer an insanely vivid recollection. Usually a cocky but warm blend of personality, intelligence and academic reb…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:30PMWhenever a couple’s quarrel unexpectedly crashes its way onto my television screen, I fast-forward. Perhaps I do it because watching lovers fight is awkward. Or perhaps I do it because…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:30AMFriday, October 26, 2012
By Johnny Oleksinski In an bold move to engage with a broader constituency than the usual operagoing public, Lyric Opera will present the Midwest premiere of José “Pepe” Martí…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:14AMTuesday, October 23, 2012
RECOMMENDED Unlike so many klutzy plays that offer a “For Dummies” guide to the basics of unartistic disciplines—math, science, football—”The Opponent,” an unapol…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PMMonday, October 22, 2012
RECOMMENDED He’s back! Honeybuns, that gap-toothed, canary-yellow bouffon with a demented sense of humor and an insidious libido has triumphantly returned to his rightful place on the…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:00PMRECOMMENDED The fall 2012 selection for One Book, One Chicago, “The Book Thief,” is a terribly challenging story to adapt for the stage, and yet an unusually logical choice for a…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00AMThursday, October 18, 2012
“Kinky Boots,” the new musical that opened on Wednesday night at the Bank of America Theatre, is a tryout in every sense of the word. While solidified plans have been made to tra…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:33AMSunday, October 14, 2012
If a play’s quality was determined solely by the purity of its creative team’s intent, few pieces of theater would soar to the heights of “Night Over Erzinga.” But, o…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:34PMStephen Sondheim’s musical “Assassins” walks a mighty fine line between parody and serious drama. That’s where it gets its edge. The tension of that invisible circus …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:25PM 
