Today is Sunday, December 22, 2024 Broadway Baby Birthdays: Ralph Fiennes Andrew Lippa
IN CYBER SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM On the Internet or just IRL, there’s joy in striking back — turning the tables and trolling the bullies. But what’s rotten one way is no b…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:33PMTHE PHANTOM NEVER DIED, BUT SHOULD HAVE Gaston Leroux knew: The original author of The Phantom of the Opera concluded his horror romance with his disfigured serial-killer as dead as Lon Ch…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:20PMA PENNY DREADFUL FOR YOUR THOUGHTS Murder will out, whether in police gazettes or chamber opera. If he hadn’t existed, the still unknown Jack the Ripper could have been invented by penny d…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:38PMIN TASTING YOUR MORTALITY, YOU GET A LOT OLDER WATCHING THIS In the bleak midwinter — appropriately — comes this dour drama. A Chicago premiere from Steppenwolf Theatre Company, this 201…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:05PMMOVEMENTS WITHOUT DEMANDS Modern masters indeed. A splendid showcase for steps and leaps, Joffrey Ballet’s annual winter engagement always brings fresh glory to the state of their art. Mo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:19PMSAVED BY YOUR SERVANT Like manna from the heavens, it comes when we’ve never needed to laugh more: The invaluable comic master P.G. Wodehouse returns from the Roaring Twenties to the rescu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:12PMTHE DIS-ASSEMBLY LINE Some stories can’t stand on their own and for very good reason: They tell so many others. Much as The Wire dealt with Baltimore’s failing institutions and August …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:45PMTHE GIRL OF MY DREAMS “No one will ever love you as much as I do — so shut up and stop looking for more.” A harsher hope-killing “reassurance” should not be imagined. That’s …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:49PMREHABILITATING REAGAN Putting us backstage as history happens, Goodman Theatre’s world premiere Blind Date generously or doggedly tells audiences more than they knew (or perhaps want to)…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:13PMAMERICA’S COARSE ‘CORRECTION’ A huge reason that theater counts is that it can carry a club (or, as the situation warrants, a stiletto). Both an agitprop assault on the 46th President…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:52AMA RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN STYLED MUSICAL THAT ASKS AND TELLS Call it the new nostalgia. In most ways, Yank! A WWII Love Story is an unashamedly conventional book musical, as predictable …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:06PMTHE LOST–AND FOUND–BOY What resonates in each of the 90 minutes of TimeLine Theatre Company’s Boy is the play’s total absence of rage or recrimination. As compassionately t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:25PMMY LITTLE (PARANOID) PONY If you believe The Antelope Party, a Theater Wit two-act world premiere, fascism could soon be coming to a neighborhood near you. The “party” reference is poli…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:07PMYOU STILL CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN Plays about what doesn’t happen feel a lot trickier than the action models: Exhibit A (through Z) is Rachel Bonds’ Five Mile Lake, a group portrait o…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:14PMGET THE LEAD OUT “The majority is always wrong.” Norwegian disrupter Henrik Ibsen practically carved that credo into his 1882 potboiler An Enemy of the People. In his still-seminal prot…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:57PMGOOFBALL GAMBLERS IN SIN CITY A troupe from Fayetteville, Arkansas has come to Chicago’s Theater Wit to showcase a new play about Las Vegas. That’s the download on Flamingo & Decatu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:49PMTERROR IN TRUTH In For the Loyal headlines become humans. A short but stirring piece of theatrical speculation, this new work by topical playwright Lee (A Walk in the Woods) Blessing conde…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:00PMBLKS — IT’S ABOUT WHTS TOO Nowadays it takes very little “disruption” to make a play a provocation. As Steppenwolf Theatre’s press release tersely puts it, “F**ked up sh*t h…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:00PMWHAT KIND OF STAR AM I? Mr. Wonderful, the Rat Packer, Mr. Bojangles, the Candy Man — there was nothing “junior” about Sammy Davis. The latest retro reclamation by Black Ensemble T…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:38PMI SAW TREE SHIPS! Anchors aweigh! Twenty-two years after its advent, this show has become as essential to Chicago’s Christmas as the LEDs on the Magnificent Mile, the parade on State Str…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:53PMBURNT BY THE TRAIL HE BLAZED What in theater is ever off limits? And, above all, who? Besides the probability of the part, are there bounds to the roles an actor can play? Believing that mer…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:27PMMAKING YOUR MUSIC MATTER If notes make joy, these 150 minutes are the elixir of happiness. Spanning only 13 years of its creator’s career (1958-1971), Beautiful: The Carole King Musical b…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:35PMFOLLOW THE BOUNCING BEAT Now in a very brief visit to Chicago’s Broadway Playhouse, Gobsmacked! is a good title for a show that slaps sounds out of seven performers’ fertile heads. It …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:01AMHOLY HARMONIC HORMONES! Praise the Lord and pass the parody! Infernally ingratiating and devilishly disarming, Altar Boyz is also sweetly sardonic and packed with pep. This successful 2005…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:17PMTHE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME If only by virtue of its title, you could call Twelfth Night a holiday love comedy: Epiphany, the twelfth day of Christmas (January 6) is for many in Europe the rig…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:25PMTHE FICTIONS THAT MAKE FACTS This two-act comedy relishes a cruel contradiction: false facts. Rich with rancid exposés, its 150 minutes indict press-agent “puffery,” strategic lies that…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:14PMBLOOD—AND WAR PAINT—WILL OUT Superbly civic, the vast council chamber created by set designer David Zinn reeks of rectitude. With a coffered arched ceiling, it’s festooned with plaques…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:01PMA ‘PERFECT CITY’—AND A MUZZLED PRESS They’re always eager to alert Chicago audiences to dangerous developments here and abroad: Silk Road Rising is a committed company which tell…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:10PMA COUNTRY/CARIBBEAN ROMP AT CLUB JIMMY It’s a jukebox musical that marinates in Gilligan’s Island/South Pacific nostalgia. Plus, it’s got a feel-good love story that’s a creditable e…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:17PMTO THIS WE’VE COME (AGAIN) Playing Chicago t0o briefly at the Studebaker Theatre, historically important and artistically wondrous, this co-production between Chicago and Long Beach Opera …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:59AMPASSIONS OF A PITY PARTY We’re born alone. We die alone. But in between we need people—for love or money. That’s searingly so for Jordan Berman. The gay anti-hero of Significant Other…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:52AM
