PASSIONS 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 02:52AMDEATH DANCES TO LIFE’S BEATS It took us from Mozart to Mexico. Now, alas, it’s over for another year—Chicago Sinfonietta’s much anticipated, annual A Día de los Muertos Celebra…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:00PMTHE ULTIMATE ‘PROOF OF PAIN’ “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” He certainly doth in the Book of Job. In this brief but telling chronicle, a catalogue of catastrophes is vis…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:44PMWEBBER RETURNS TO HIS ROCKIN’ ROOTS “Out of the guitars of babes”: The 2003 film was a four-star charmer: Jack Black, a screen actor with the chops to be richly ordinary, depicte…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:27PMSTART THE PRESSES! Imagine the Hardy Boys times ten or Nancy Drew’s crew times five and you’re still not close to Newsies, perpetual motion in a blast from the past. Never before witnes…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:02PMHOME HEALING FOR BROKEN DREAMERS How much “home” can first-generation Americans abandon in order to make a new one? Acculturation, assimilation, adjustment—they’re not necessary evil…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:45PMVENGEANCE STALKS THE CENTURIES, OR DO DO THAT VOODOO It’s a (forced) marriage made in musicals. You don’t immediately think of Marie Laveau and Medea as soul sisters with a common cause…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:27PMTHE SPARK OF LOVE, OR CURRENT EVENTS Sarah Ruhl’s 2006 drama In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play ruefully wonders whether sex can be turned on like a light bulb. Or is love the best t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:49PMA SEX STRIKE FOR SMALL STAKES, OR JONESING FOR LESS Maybe—dammit!—we get the comedy we deserve, cut to fit and ready to wear. Take Lysistrata Jones (please). Aristophanes’ mo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:03PMHIS FALL FROM GREATNESS By 1980 Tom “Tennessee” Williams was on a constant skid: His last great play, The Night of the Iguana, had premiered two decades before. Ever since, the once-sup…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:07PMDANCES OF THE DEAD Both classic ballet and romantic fantasy, Adolphe Adam’s 1841 masterwork is for a rightly renewed reason a worthy offering by Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet. Playing the gor…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:26PMDANCING OUT A DREAM Billy Elliot was born to dance; likewise his cinematic tale just had to become a musical. But it’s a case of apples and oranges: If you loved the Universal Pictures f…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:16PMCHARLES DICKENS, RINGMASTER EXTRAORDINAIRE This exuberant offering first appeared 16 years ago: Lookingglass Theatre Company reinvented Charles Dickens’ tough-loving and always topical Ha…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:58PMLOST IN TRANSFUSION Halloween is dangling out in the future, which means that Washington D.C. is finally getting competition in the terror market. The indefatigable Sean Graney, disruptive d…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:35PMA TWENTY-YEAR ALIEN INVASION The azure takeover began in 1991. Six years later, Blue Man Group—the company that is a show—debuted in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. 20 year…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:48PMTHORNTON WILDER’S SURVIVAL SAGA It’s a play for all seasons and all sorrows: Writing during the uncertainty of a world war, Thornton Wilder intended The Skin of Our Teeth to be a three…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:50PMTHE ULTIMATE FRENCH KISS It was a one-off last night at the Athenaeum Theatre. But a long run on the road continues to beckon to Awesome Company’s bravura showcase Piaf! The Show (which …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:14PMFEAR FACTOR: 1692 = 2017 325 years ago, a witchhunt gave this continent one of its most chilling and cautionary cases of panic-peddling and persecution: In assorted “witch trials” the su…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:02AMHE STILL GOT THAT SWING In his 75 years of marvelous music-making, Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington really was American nobility if not royalty. The sultan of swing was alsoy the jazz kin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:54PMSINGING, SURVIVING, AND SPIRIT It’s a fine fit: As much as molding character is the goal of the imaginary Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys in Choir Boy, it’s also the purpose of Chi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:20PMMORE “FUN” THAN THE FIRST TIME AROUND Wise and warm, the 100-minute family memoir Fun Home charts the twisted courses of two generations of the Bechdels—a self-shaming ga…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:55PMMORE PLAYS ON THE PIER Tuesday night’s “consecration of the house,” attended by Chicago’s Mayor Emmanuel, was a celebration that this care-ridden city badly needed. The big news is …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:46PMUNSTOPPABLE AND UNSPARING This week Goodman Theater’s season-opener, a landmark drama from 1955, exploded into relevance. A rarity worth a return, Arthur Miller’s original 120-minute, on…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:44PMA PAINTING IS A PORTAL Art is never still, not just still lifes but landscapes, genre scenes, even abstract configurations and, especially, portraits. Every painting is a time capsule that a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:43PMORWELLIAN OR TRUMPIAN?: 1984 MEETS 2017 Everything evil is new again: What George Orwell wrote 69 years ago still remains ahead of our time—but, with a President in power who purveys…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:28PMA THUG BECOMES A MUSE “Fish out of water” humor meets showbiz stereotypes—that’s the gag-winning formula in the 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway, starring John Cusack, Jennifer T…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:29PMFACING FATALITY It’s the last play written by John Millington Synge. This Irish minstrel-playwright died in 1909 at only 37 after penning stunning beauties—Riders to the Sea and his…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:21PMA STUNNING RECLAMATION OF OUR 16th —AND BEST—PRESIDENT Right now—bar none—the most stirring chronicle on a Chicago stage is Shattered Globe Theatre’s enthralling 155-minute…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:42AMWHEN MEDICINE GETS SICK “First, do no harm.” A no-brainer, this unarguable warning in the Hippocratic Oath apparently defies and defines the medical profession in 2017. Mercy Killings …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:48AMBECOMING A “MAN” A brand-new musical about the past intersects the present with a vengeance. A world premiere from Permoveo Productions and Pride Films & Plays, The CiviliTy of Albe…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:22PMSYMPATHY FOR SCUMBAGS How can two white-trash lovers—“small town nobodies,” as the press release puts it—“search for meaning at the height of the Great Depression”? Patro…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:31PM