A SWEET AND SOUR “TWIST” In the month of December, Goodman Theatre simply goes schizoid. On one end of its block-long Dearborn Street lobby is the Albert Theatre, where the sacre…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:25PMDETECTING LOVE At first Christopher John Francis Boone seems a defective detective: A 15-year-old math whiz, this only child has Asperger’s Syndrome. The anomaly is enough to push adolesce…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:51PMCRUMPET COMES CLEAN For 8 boffo holiday seasons at Theater Wit, Mitchell Fain has been better known—and locally famous—as Crumpet, the irascible, impish and subversive Macy’s elf in D…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:36PMTO “MAKE CHRISTMAS GREAT AGAIN” You can’t keep a good elf down. Very loosely based on the 2003 film starring Will Ferrell as a love-seeking non-elf named Buddy, Barney the Elf repurpo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:58PMSHAKESPEARE’S TOTAL SLAUGHTER It’s a daunting statistic: In the 37 plays written by William Shakespeare, there are 74 onstage deaths. (The demises of Ophelia, Cordelia and Lady Macbeth, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:00PMGALATEA GETS HER PLAY The source has finally come into its own: Overshadowed by the thunderous success of My Fair Lady, its musical spinoff, Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw’s superbly penne…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:06PMSCROOGE GETS SAVED WAY TOO SOON AND FAR TOO EASILY Goodman Theater’s holiday happening has now reached the age of 39 (which, of course, is where Jack Benny stayed the rest of his life). A …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:58PMA HIGHLY ORGANIZED ENCHANTMENT Playwright Alan Knee called Sir J. M. Barrie “the man who was Peter Pan.” If so, it was an author’s compensation as much as creativity. James Barrie was …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:10AMA JEALOUS WIFE WITH BAD GUN CONTROL You can’t keep a bad/mad woman down. Not to be confused with A Doll’s House, where Ibsen offers an almost feminist defense of a vastly underestimated …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:37PMSTILL BANGING FOR THE BUCKS The incredibly basic concept behind Stomp, a phenom now in its third decade, remains: “Make a rhythm out of anything we can get our hands on that makes a sound.…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:48PM“RESOURCEFUL, GRACEFUL”—AND RUTHLESS Corporate corruption—it’s not just an oxymoron. We associate it with crimes in the suites–but there’s also a trickle-down contamination…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:11PMLEAPING INTO FALL If dance can define, this recital was its own dynamic dictionary: Running through this weekend, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s 39 Fall Series is a celebration in steps. A…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:39PM“THE VERY BEST WE NEVER HAD” After reviving the Bard’s stirring chronicles in Tug of War, Chicago Shakespeare Theater has mounted another history play. Except this one reveals future h…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:39PMCLOCKS ARE COLD COMFORT Call it the ultimate disruption of sexual security/certainty, a double life lived, as La Cage put it, “at an angle.” As the title suggests, I Am My Own Wife is a …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:19PMSO—JUST EXACTLY WHEN WILL THE SUN COME UP? (Hint: 2020) The first Christmas special came early this year: Martin Charnin and Charles Strouse’s industrial-strength 1977 heart-warmer, Anni…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:40PMTHE LEGEND THAT GOT AWAY No, this show isn’t how fans want to remember Judy Garland at the bittersweet end. End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter’s sardonic salute to a star on the skids, is…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:25PMA MOVING PORTRAIT OF A SMALLER SAINT A show doesn’t—can’t—get truer or richer than this current 140-minute gem at the Athenaeum Theatre. Perfectly concluding an all-Stephen Adly Guir…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:48PMBAROQUE AND BURLESQUE—A TOXIC MIX What happens when a so-called revival needs resuscitation? That’s the D.O.A. problem with this perverse collaboration between Chicago Opera Theater and …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:48PMLEARNING TO LOVE FROM WHAT DAD DIDN’T DO Dedicated memory-mongering, the 2013 chamber musical Fun Home–based on Alison Bechdel’s 2006 semiautobiographical graphic novel–is a …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:07PMPERFECT PRECIPITATION Of all the legendary Oscar-winning films destined to become stage musicals (42nd Street, Grand Hotel, Fame), Singin’ in the Rain, the 1952 MGM movie musical starring …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:37PMADDING DEATH TO LIFE, CHICAGO SINFONIETTA CREATES A GREATER WHOLE Halloween night at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall: This year it meant alternately sinister or soaring sounds worthy of its title…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:36PMA TILT-A-WHIRL AT THE HARRIS THEATER FUNHOUSE The big news from this weekend’s two-night showcase for the jazz-stepping Giordano Dance Chicago is the world premiere of Peter Chu’s roilin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:53PMCOMMUTING TO KILL In The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe described a huge “sea change” when the space race went from fighter test pilots to astronauts. In the 1920s through 1950s, high-altitude re…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:57PMOUR FUNKY FOUNDING FATHERS A hip-hop Alexander Hamilton? A beat-box Father of His Country? A jumping James Madison and a jiveass Jefferson who disses bigtime in a poetry slam? The ten-dollar…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:19PMA POLITICAL PROKOFIEV BRINGS R & J CLOSER TO HOME It’s been over two years since its Joffrey Ballet—and U.S.–premiere. The Chicago troupe’s updated version of Prokofiev’s …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:33PMTHE MONARCH OF MAKE BELIEVE The Truman Show or The Matrix have nothing on Luigi Pirandello’s puzzle play Henry IV, a double-edged blast from the past (both 1921, its inception, and the 11t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:06PMGUMSHOE GLORY It’s not as original a burlesque of film noir as City of Angels, but in less than 90 minutes Wicked City, a musical parody by bookwriter/lyricist Chad Beauelin and compose…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:55PMTHE PARTY IS NOT OVER Whether the words flowed from the terrific team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the prolific and dynamic Sammy Cahn, or a very young Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne was …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:31PMTHE PAUSES THAT DON’T REFRESH Presaging more darkness to follow, The Room, the first play by the late Harold Pinter, is an hour-long psychological thriller from 1957. Full of dour portent,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:16PMTHREE CATHERINES, YOU’RE OUT If you were one of his sextet of spouses, outlasting Henry VIII wasn’t just a feat of survival—it became a political statement. The last and possibly least…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:16PMFRIENDLY FOOLING Is stuff magical only because it can’t be explained? Perhaps it’s more than just the absence of logic, probability, or reason. There’s a presence too: Magic evokes a c…
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