Friday, July 22, 2016
A 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 06:53AM[SHARE]Friday, July 15, 2016
HIPOCRACY 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 Theatre. A …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:18AM[SHARE]Sunday, July 10, 2016
COLORFUL CHARACTERS AIN'T ENOUGH Between Riverside and Crazy is a 2015 slice of strife from Stephen Adley Guirgis (perpetrator of The Motherf**ker with the Hat and Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:44PM[SHARE]A JEWÂ WALKS INTO A COMMUNIST MEETING… Sometimes whistle-blowing can echo from the past. It's never too late for a timely reminder that ignorance is no excuse. A 95-minute solo show …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:03PM[SHARE]Saturday, July 2, 2016
THE LIES THAT PASS FOR LOVE Many years ago, a half hour into the Body Politic Theatre's revival of The Importance of Being Earnest a woman behind me very softly threw up. It was done so effi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:50PM[SHARE]Thursday, June 30, 2016
FREEDOM BEHIND BARS: THE UNREACHABLE STAR JUST GOT REACHED A skeptic might argue that Man of La Mancha succeeds because it lifts the guilt of anyone who never read Don Quixote. (Two hours in…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:40PM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 28, 2016
KEEPING COMPANY–SONDHEIM'S BITTERSWEET BEST It's the first musical in Writers Theatre's sumptuous new $30 million-dollar home in Glencoe, a light-loving complex with a more spacious lo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:52PM[SHARE]Monday, June 20, 2016
BIKINI BOTTOM HITS THE HEIGHTS Upfront confession: I've never seen Nickelodeon's 17-year-old SpongeBob SquarePants animation series. But my ignorance of this aquatic Sesame Street and its fi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:55PM[SHARE]Sunday, June 19, 2016
THE CANDY COUPLE "The world belongs to the fools who dare to dream": Reprising the crowd pleasure of music-hall euphoria and pantomime cut-ups with a charming quintet of Cockney buskers, An …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:32PM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 14, 2016
OUT OF CONTEXT BUT EASY TO ADMIRE William Finn, a gay songwriter with wit and warmth (and second only to Sondheim), writes story ballads and situational numbers that teach as much as touch. …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:02PM[SHARE]Sunday, June 12, 2016
CORKING UP OR SELLING OUT? Living up to its title billing, Lookingglass Theatre Company's world premiere Thaddeus and Slocum: A Vaudeville Adventure is a rampage down Memory Lane. Their 135-…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:56PM[SHARE]Friday, June 10, 2016
SO BEYOND BAD THAT YOU’LL BE TAPPED OUT Half-baked, heavy-handed, overlong, poorly plotted, wretchedly sung, scenically sterile, contrived and clichéd, witless and mindless, and minus…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:37PM[SHARE]EV’RY MOUNTAIN GETS CLIMBED AGAIN It's fitting that Rodgers and Hammerstein's final collaboration is a tribute to the art and craft they served so well"music and singing. Like Mary Pop…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:46AM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 8, 2016
THE LONE EAGLE VERSUS THE LONE WOLF 81 years ago, everything conspired to make the "trial of the century" engrossing entertainment. (Actually, it was the second trial of the century–af…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:42PM[SHARE]Monday, June 6, 2016
LOVERLY The most insidiously satirical moment in Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore comes when a lowly sailor and his captain must instantly switch places when we learn that the latter w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:42PM[SHARE]Friday, June 3, 2016
SUBVERSION, DISRUPTION"AND PRETENSION Caught is just what Gertrude Stein said of Oakland: "When you get there, there's no there there." A series of metaphysical jokes played on the audience,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:04PM[SHARE]Thursday, June 2, 2016
CAPTIVATING VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF LOVE What a feat happens seven times a week in Steppenwolf's upstairs theater! Usually critics tell you to take their words for what they saw–but t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:42PM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 1, 2016
A RECIPE FOR BETTERÂ THEATER It's no accident that this bold play, the latest offering from Northwestern University professor Rebecca Gilman, happens in Wisconsin circa 1976. The story of …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:33PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 31, 2016
INTERROGATING AN AUDIENCE It's the afterschool special from hell: The North Pool is that rare you-can-hear-a-pin-drop play. In a mere 80 minutes, playwright Rajiv Joseph shrewdly and sharply…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:47AM[SHARE]Monday, May 23, 2016
BINGEWATCHING THE BARD “Tug of war”–a child's game that mutates into an adult's nightmare; it's an apt title for Chicago Shakespeare Theater's marathon of Bard history p…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:31PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 22, 2016
AN UNCRITICAL MATING COMEDY Familiar gay fare, The Boys Upstairs, a 2009 rouser by Jason Mitchell, revels in industrial-strength crowd-pleasing. Pride Films and Plays' two-hour funfest is cr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:38PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 19, 2016
A DOCUMENTARY DRAMA DELIVERS Chicago is currently witnessing two productions about photojournalists haunted by their work. TimeLine Theatre's Chimerica offers a flawed but fascinating 180-mi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:48PM[SHARE]Monday, May 16, 2016
GIRL-POWER PRINCESSES TAKE ON TROPES, BUT THIS REVUE COULD USE MORE WIT AND MAGIC If you were a mean girl, you might call Disenchanted! a feel-good pity party. More compassionate souls will …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:18PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 15, 2016
A SEARCH FOR DOUBT BOTH TANTALIZES AND ENERVATES Speculation is just as tricky on the stage as on the stock market. Winner of the 2014 Laurence Olivier Award, Chimerica (its title suggesting…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:09PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 12, 2016
A FAIRY TALE LEAPS INTO LOVE Rossini, Walt Disney, Rodgers and Hammerstein"they all wanted a piece of Perrault's fairy tale. Cinderella has become Cendrillon, Cenerentola, and, by Jerry Lewi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:15PM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 11, 2016
CORRUPTION: MORE FUN WHEN CHOREOGRAPHED Now in its twentieth year, this slimmed-down, near-concert version of Kander and Ebb's cynical and enthralling musical features, as the smoothly lying…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:31PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 10, 2016
LORRAINE HANSBERRY'S OTHER PLAY Written five years after Raisin in the Sun and just before her early death at 34, Lorraine Hansberry's last work is a challenging"as in problematic"play. The …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:41PM[SHARE]Monday, May 9, 2016
LET'S NOT CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF George Gershwin died no older than the equally immortal Mozart"and, well, we can't make or get enough of a Broadway blessing's too-brief talent for tunes. …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:46PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 8, 2016
 A HUGE HIT IN AMERICAN BLUE’S LITTLE SHOP American Blues Theatre seldom does musicals (the last was the wonderful Hank Williams: Lost Highway). Happily, their current triumphLittle…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:55AM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 3, 2016
A CRASH COUSE IN 'LA LA LAND' LUNACY Once in a Lifetime, the first triumph of George S Kaufman and Moss Hart (You Can't Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Royal Family), is a …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:23PM[SHARE]Saturday, April 30, 2016
SCATTERSHOT SPOOFERY THROWS A LARGE NETÂ OVER A LITTLE SATIRE Alluding to the elevated Chicago subway that courses through the North Side, A Red Line Runs Through It proves a theme as much…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:56PM[SHARE] 
