Tuesday, February 23, 2016
THIS LOSS IS OUR GAIN William Inge knew the human heart better than a surgeon. In Bus Stop, Picnic, Come Back, Little Sheba, and Dark at the Top of the Stairs, this closeted author exposes o…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:42PM[SHARE]Monday, February 22, 2016
MEETING IN MUSIC In the basement of the Chicago Temple, playwright/actor/musician Ronnie Malley displays his electric affinity for and considerable fluency in a dozen musical tongues. In 75 …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:20PM[SHARE]Saturday, February 20, 2016
PLAY CONTROL A clumsy comedy about our gun-crazed nation, Cocked packs heat but no warmth. Glib, slick and slippery, Sarah Gubbins' world premiere from Victory Gardens Theater proves there a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:28PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 18, 2016
LIFE IS TOO SHORT WHEN ART IS THIS LONG A dozen years ago, dying at 50, Roberto Bolano left his unfinished 2666 as his valedictory. It was, quite simply, the swan song of a spellbinding crea…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:38PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 16, 2016
THE LOSSES THAT GROW Only 75 minutes long, this slice of loss by Lauren Yee–a "rolling world premiere" from the National New Plays Network–charts one mother's tailspin after the …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:13PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 14, 2016
THE SILVER SCREEN IS NOT A MIRROR At three hours long, The Flick takes its"and our"time to not tell a story. Almost all atmosphere (more specifically, totally character), Annie Baker's 2014 …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:55PM[SHARE]Saturday, February 13, 2016
THE HEART KEEPS ITS REASONS Starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, Todd Haynes' 2002 film Far From Heaven told a tale timeless as Romeo and Juliet. But its glimpse of hearts out of sync w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:12PM[SHARE]PRESIDING OVER HISTORY This is a discovery-rich, impeccably presented journey through our political past: American Blues Theater's Looking Over the President's Shoulder takes audiences on an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:49AM[SHARE]Thursday, February 11, 2016
FRENZY IN FEBRUARY Detonating across the Auditorium Theatre's vast stage through February 21, Joffrey Ballet's Bold Moves has more of the latter than the former stuff. But this kinetic winte…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:11PM[SHARE]TALLY LOW Doggedly determined to fight yesterday's battles, Nell Benjamin's chronic farce The Explorers Club manically mocks the heyday of male British explorers. Fuddy-duddy adventure seeke…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:37AM[SHARE]Thursday, January 28, 2016
TO BAKER STREET AND BEYOND! Not to give anything away but the title character in The Man Who Murdered Sherlock Holmes is not Professor Moriarty, "the Napoleon of crime." In this life-imitate…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:24PM[SHARE]Sunday, January 24, 2016
THE DESCENT OF MAN AS DRAMA Another incendiary offering from Oracle Productions, Monty Cole's bold take on Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape is pugilistic and powerful. In his athletic tour-de-…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:34PM[SHARE]Saturday, January 23, 2016
COMMITMENT CRISES FUEL A CRACKLING COMEDY Many, many gay plays since Stonewall have pitted fidelity against promiscuity, love against sex, and, nowadays, marriage against friendship. Same-se…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:51PM[SHARE]Friday, January 22, 2016
EVERYTHING'S FINE IN '59 It's as welcome as flowers that bloom in the spring: A cascading, minute-by-minute hit, Bye Bye Birdie is a showcase for happiness even as it merrily mocks the…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:49PM[SHARE]LEARNING TO BE LOVED The past clashes with the future in Dominique Morisseau's Sunset Baby, a drama more of reckoning than reconciliation. Despite her rage at the father she thinks desert…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:39PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 19, 2016
ANOTHER WALTZ WITH TENNESSEE Tom "Tennessee" Williams never buried his treasures. The ultimate, unashamed "bleeding heart," this passionate playwright put his soul and guts into every show h…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:44PM[SHARE]Monday, January 18, 2016
TOO TRUE TO BE NEW Subtitled "A Tale of Today," Mark Twain's early novel The Gilded Age was written in (and from) 1873, a dozen years before Huckleberry Finn rafted down the Mississipp…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:03PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 14, 2016
A SERIOUSLY STUPID SCREAMFEST Premiering in politically correct San Francisco in 2014, Christopher Chen's cartoon drama purports to address multi-culturalism in politics. This two-act trifle…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:40PM[SHARE]Monday, January 11, 2016
BAGGAGE HANDLING Unprocessed pain can supply grist enough for a playwright's mill. But an unprocessed play is a lot less. Alas, there's little design for loving in William Donnelly's No W…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:00PM[SHARE]Tuesday, December 29, 2015
SENIOR RUSH No, despite the title, Gotta Dance, a world premiere at Chicago's Bank of America Theatre, is no musical homage to Gene Kelly or MGM's musicals. It's a true-life, feel-good sa…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:21PM[SHARE]Monday, December 21, 2015
A SOUL STORM SUNG TO THE SKIES A tribute to women of soul, Dynamite Divas, despite the title, is not about terrorists with tonsils. A remake and update of a 2001 hit at the Black Ensemble…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:58PM[SHARE]Monday, December 14, 2015
A VOICE GETS ITS OWN SHOW Despite the name, Baritones UnBound is no comedy about musical kinkiness. A kind of theatrical rebuttal to The Three Tenors (and its many spinoffs), it …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:13PM[SHARE]A POUND OF LOVE EXPLODES INTO A TON OF HATE Short of screaming "Fire!" in the theatrical darkness, you can't imagine a more polemical provocation than Domesticated. As with Grand Conco…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:33AM[SHARE]Saturday, December 12, 2015
LEAPING TO THE SOLSTICE Between now and Sunday, four innovative female choreographers offer an evening of motion quests. The Harris Theatre is the backdrop for themes of not-so-close encount…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:40PM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 9, 2015
HILARITY HAMMERED HOME, OR AN HEIR TO MISFORTUNE The tone is set from the start: The Heir Apparent begins with a chamber pot being emptied from a balcony window. It answers a question …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:39PM[SHARE]Sunday, December 6, 2015
TO HAVE AND HAVE NUT After 28 years the Joffrey Ballet is ending Robert Joffrey's The Nutcracker. All good things, it seems, must come to an end. Next year Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's belo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:50PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 24, 2015
DUMBING DOWN DICKENS It doesn't matter that A Christmas Carol has drifted from Dickens: Goodman Theatre will never slaughter its sacred (cash) cow. For 38 years now, playing three venu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:04AM[SHARE]Monday, November 23, 2015
AN ABORTED AFFAIR The "Maui Pipeline," it seems, has run out of waves. This "co-world premiere" from Boise Contemporary Theater and Chicago's Sideshow Theatre Company offers an unedifying lo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:41AM[SHARE]QUIT WHILE YOU'RE BEHIND Some absurdities are just too stupid for satire. Transparently ridiculous, they automatically self-indict, hanging themselves on their own petard. Such is the object…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:41AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 10, 2015
COALS IN EVERYONE'S STOCKINGS Sometimes an entire life can crystallize around a seminal recollection. It can freeze a moment of time into a measure of what did and didn't come true, what mig…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:55PM[SHARE]Monday, November 9, 2015
WHEN LIFE IMITATES OPERA Life imitates opera: Concluding Eclipse Theatre Company's season-long retrospective of oeuvres by Terrence McNally (Lips Together, Teeth Apart and A Perfect Ga…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:05PM[SHARE] 
