FRIENDLY 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…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:56PMLIEBESTOD WAS NEVER DARKER For three performances only, a beloved Chicago movie palace becomes an opera house. Acoustically accurate but with sight lines that worsen toward the back, the Mu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:13PMT&T&T&T&T&T… There’s a reason why Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, newly revived by the original New York producers, was a 16-year Chicago hit. Throughout the last cen…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:36PMBLACKOUT LOVE Winsome and warm-hearted, Fly by Night is an affecting chamber musical which premiered in 2014 at Playwrights Horizon. The two-act labor of love by Will Connolly, Michael Mitni…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:37AMKILLER ROSES AND A HUNCHBACK HORROR As disease follows famine, the 100 Years War succumbed to the War of the Roses. It makes sense that the titles of the two parts of Barbara Gaines’ massi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:31PMLETTING GO, NOT GIVING UP This is a long and leisurely play that generically examines the leaving of life–as in how, when, why and where to say goodbye. Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:00PMFIVE FINGERS, ONE JOKE Unholy rolling, Hand To God is a one-joke coming-of-age comedy, a Twilight Zone episode on steroids. Robert Askins’ two-act 2011 travesty treats demonic possession a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:27PMWHEN YOU WISH UPON A THEME PARK You just know that the title The Happiest Place on Earth is ironic–or, like Ringling Brothers’ “greatest show on earth,” bombastic. How could it n…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:33AMGOODMAN GIVES GOTHAM GLORY Wonderful indeed. Wonderful Town, Leonard Bernstein’s 1952 tribute to the ever juicy Big Apple, has been wrongly overshadowed by the other N.Y.C. musicals he wro…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:58PMLIGHTS OFF BUT LIVING LARGE In The Heights, a two-time Tony-winning 2008 musical, celebrates a place that doesn’t quite reward the torrid devotion of its likable characters. They both deli…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:57PMDEATH BY COMMENTARY Glib, pat, and smug, Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird disrupted and deconstructed Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. Audiences loved it for its bratty, “in-your-face”…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:59PMMAKE ROME GREAT AGAIN Julius Caesar: It’s a strong choice for an election year, a timely reminder of why we prefer peaceful changes of power to assassinations and their inevitable knee-je…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:28PMHELL IS THIS MUSICAL An achingly forgettable world premiere, Helldrivers of Daytona is a nasty piece of art. Flagrantly referencing those dreadful Elvis movie musicals (thus lowering the bar…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:57PMWHITE TRASH DIRTY LAUNDRY Scarcity is a fine title for a play that lacks a lot. Ugly is as ugly does: Lucy Thurber’s bottom-feeding modern melodrama, a Redtwist Theatre Chicago premiere, w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:56PMSELF-RACIAL PROFILING FOR FUN AND PROFIT Reviewing stand-up comedy, as opposed to dramatic monologues or one-man shows, is not my forte. But occasionally a mind-opener like Ultra American: A…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:34PMA PLACE CALLED CARIBOU COFFEE INHABITED BY A HUMAN HERD In Mat Smart’s decisively named Naperville the setting is the story. We’re eavesdroppers, listening in Joe Schermoly’s awesomel…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:02PMTHESE BOOTS ARE MEANT FOR WALKING Oscar Wilde supposedly said, “Be yourself. All the other lives are taken.” That’s defiantly the gospel credo of Kinky Boots, a musical movie spin-off …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:45PMTHE FIRST—AND BEST—NOËL A bravely Noël Coward musical retrospective set in an intimate Art Deco cabaret—what could be more intrinsically suave and sophisticated, equally knowing and …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:41PMTHE PRICE OF EVERYTHING AND THE VALUE OF NOTHING Given the amount of sheer transience in 2016, authenticity (as in a lack of fakery) has never seemed more needed–or endangered. Ever se…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:48PMROSE KENNEDY: A PROFILE IN MOTHER COURAGE A catholic confession (in the larger sense), Laurence Leamer’s Rose portrays the matriarch of America’s most political dynasty—a family as cur…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:33PMTAME MAME STILL GETS ACCLAIM Few nicknames carry the impact of “Mame,” the free-spirited super-aunt. Appearing first in gay author Patrick Dennis’s best-selling 1954 novel,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:45PMDANCERS DO GOOD BY MAKING ART For a quarter century—since 1991—one summer night of nights in Chicago has raised funds to fight HIV, assist the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and 30 other ser…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:40PMTHEATER NOIR EXPOSES A COLLABORATIVE CRIME WAVE Making its U.S. debut at the Greenhouse Theater Center, the solo saga Bloodshot, by Chicago native Douglas Post, feels as world weary and visc…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:21PMBRECHT FORCES YIN ONTO YANG A strong, often infuriating, truth about the protest plays of Bertolt Brecht is how much the socialist playwright pushes the plot beyond the ending: He ends up ac…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:16PMHIS HEART IS CRYING, CRYING The latest rouser in Black Ensemble Theater’s 40th anniversary celebration/season, The Jackie Wilson Story, a retrospective on an R&B Legend, showcases terr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:10PMTHE GLOBE’S STUNNING PRODUCTION HIGHLIGHTS SHAKESPEARE’S PLEA FOR DIGNITY AS MUCH AS MERCY A decade ago a Chicago critic notoriously concluded his review of The Merchant of Venice…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:36PMJAMES CAMERON MEETS CIRQUE DU SOLEIL Cirque du Soleil writes a new chapter in make-believe with Toruk – The First Flight, a not so typical two-hour fantasy inspired (but not based on) Jame…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:56PMA MASON/DIXON CATHARSIS REPRISES ITS SUCCESS Can white trash/peckerwood/country cracker/Dixie doodles rise above their rotten roots? Byhalia, Mississippi is not just a place or a title but a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:35PMAN EX-SLAVE BREAKS NEW CHAINS Eager to be relevant but not quite succeeding, Thomas Klingenstein’s Douglass, a world premiere by the american vicarious at Theater Wit, is nonetheless a val…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:56PMA FAR FROM COSMETIC MUSICAL MAKEOVER In the late James Kirkwood’s Legends!, two feuding divas–played on a 1986 national tour by theatrical goddesses Carol Channing and Mary Martin&#…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:53AMHIPOCRACY BEGINS AT HOME In theater revenge is best served quickly. That’s a virtue in David Alex’s 80-minute family drama, now detonating four times a week at Chicago’s Redtwist Theat…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:18AM
