Friday, February 15, 2013
There is a compulsion today to jam a play’s relevance down the audience’s throat—spicing up classical texts with easily digestible contemporary settings. Too often though, what…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:10PMTuesday, February 12, 2013
Glancing above and around the stage at Lookingglass Theatre Company on Saturday night, one could spy a handful of animal topiaries of varying size and species—giraffe, rhino, bird—a kind…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:59AMSunday, February 10, 2013
By Dennis Polkow The gargantuan music dramas of Richard Wagner are by and large a world inhabited by gods and heroes ruled by magic and fantasy. The one exception is “Die Meistersinger von…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:57PMThursday, February 7, 2013
RECOMMENDED When the cable goes out and you begrudgingly dial your service provider’s help line, who do you imagine is idling on the other end? My mind conjures up a grimy McCormick Pl…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:00PMWednesday, February 6, 2013
By Johnny Oleksinski “I never thought I’d go back to this play. Ever, ever,” emphatically states PJ Paparelli, artistic director of American Theater Company. He’s tal…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00AMMonday, February 4, 2013
Throughout Reginald Edmund’s “Southbridge,” which opened in a world premiere on Saturday night at Chicago Dramatists, my mind repeatedly wandered to author Toni Morrison. M…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:04PMRECOMMENDED With “Phantom of the Opera” having celebrated the all-time record of twenty-five years on Broadway last week and two local venues going head-to-head with Andrew Lloyd Webber …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:03PMSaturday, February 2, 2013
Even the best political satire has its limits. A constantly shifting Second City revue or a four-minute cold open on “Saturday Night Live” hits the spot like little else. But bri…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:24PMRECOMMENDED “Sweet Charity” is the pet name neurotic accountant Oscar Lindquist (Jarrod Zimmerman) gives Charity Hope Valentine (Tiffany Topol), a dance-hall hostess he’s f…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:43AMThursday, January 31, 2013
RECOMMENDED “You can’t put your hands together in Minsk. You can’t drum.” How can that be true? The element that most bores into the audience at Chicago Shakespeare T…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:24PMPlaywright Ruth Margraff’s “Stadium Devildare” is a caffeinated dystopian fiction wherein politics, sport and theater have become indistinguishable from one another. Corpor…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:48AMTuesday, January 29, 2013
How we relay history has been forever changed by photography and video. Walk into any American classroom today, collegiate or otherwise, and you’ll doubtlessly find projected YouTube c…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:33PMBy Johnny Oleksinski “It’s both sides of the spectrum: drunk college kids and very serious politicians, all mixing together on the streets,” says Paloma Nozicka, a recent graduate …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00AMMonday, January 28, 2013
RECOMMENDED Given that it was 1972 when Pier Luigi Pizzi’s sumptuous production of Puccini’s “La bohème” was first presented at Lyric Opera, few would argue that, after countless re…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:33PMSaturday, January 26, 2013
RECOMMENDED An onstage door left ajar has an unusual way of commanding an audience’s attention. Unspoken judgement accompanies gawking at the unattended entranceway as though a charact…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:20PMTuesday, January 22, 2013
RECOMMENDED No one ever told Deanna Dunagan “those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” Just examine some of the actress’ most recent characters. At the weak…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00PMSunday, January 20, 2013
A night of tumult and passion or an average evening at home, lounging on the settee? In the case of “Skylight,” which opened at Court Theatre on Saturday night, the jury’s …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMThursday, January 17, 2013
Do not go into “Lady M.” expecting a dramatically re-imagined “Macbeth.” “Lady M.” is, as a script, a rearrangement of the original text, a reprise without many new chords. D…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:00AMWednesday, January 16, 2013
RECOMMENDED Nearly a year after the controversy surrounding monologuist Mike Daisey’s “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” reached its pinnacle—a stormy timeline inc…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PMTuesday, January 15, 2013
There comes a moment in a treasure trove of films starring the likes of Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts when a depressed, frazzled character wallowing in her own complacency, willingly or by …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:00PMMonday, January 7, 2013
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” not to mention the much less holy head that governs in the name of the crown. I believe that little piece of Shakespearean wisdom sits …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00PMFresh 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 04:00PM 
