Wednesday, May 6, 2015
THE ONCE AND FALLEN DREAM It's a continuing crisis seen from the inside out, fleshed out with warmth and truth. In The Project(s), American Theater Company artistic director PJ Paparelli …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:56PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 5, 2015
BLACK IS BACK The "Man in Black" is back. Actually, it's more like a non sci-fi "Men in Black": It takes both Kent M. Lewis and Michael Monroe Goodman to play, respectively, the mature and y…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:40PM[SHARE]Friday, May 1, 2015
BLUES IN THE NIGHT Side Man is a superb title. It fits the story/situation splendidly. Warren Leight's 1999 Tony-winning memory play is narrated by a son named Clifford, its subject his jazz…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:44PM[SHARE]Thursday, April 30, 2015
PRUDENCE AND PASSION Offhand, sense and sensibility hardly seem antonyms. As the Brits say, it's a distinction without a difference. But in Jane Austen's 1811 novel of the same name (her fir…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:53PM[SHARE]Saturday, April 25, 2015
ANCIENT LAUGHS TIMES TEN An irresistible mix of Roman "new comedy," commedia dell'arte, and vaudeville, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum rivals The Producers as the funniest mu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:15PM[SHARE]Friday, April 24, 2015
AN OFFER HE CAN'T REFUSE It's easy to dislike this alleged 511-year-old comedy. All's Well That Ends Well (originally Love's Labors Won) is the wrong title: It should be "The End Justifies T…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:09PM[SHARE]OSCAR PLEADS FOR MERCY "We are all of us lying in the gutter–but some of us are staring at the stars." This fusion of original sin and the saving power of grace fuels the artful ambiva…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:20AM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 22, 2015
CHICAGO'S CIVIL WAR A grand dream is now completed. Over the last five years City Lit has delivered five old and new works to mark the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, now finished with th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:02PM[SHARE]Monday, April 20, 2015
MUSICAL MEASURES Grandstine, the beloved Mississippi matriarch of the Harris clan, has died and gone to her reward. Her many loved ones return to their roots for a "going to heaven" sendoff …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:11PM[SHARE]Sunday, April 19, 2015
THE CONTINUUM OF LOVE Ethan Lipton is a magic maker who's mastered the art of intertwining characters. The five lost and found souls in his 2012 offering Red Handed Otter are security-…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:55AM[SHARE]Saturday, April 18, 2015
HIPSTER HUMOR ON A ROLL The title of Second City e.t.c.'s 39th revue, Soul Brother, Where Art Thou?, is more wordplay than revelation. They know very well where to find their very spec…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:24PM[SHARE]Thursday, April 16, 2015
SHTICK ON A SHIP R.M.S. Titanic was not unsinkable but the S.S. American really is. It's been sailing strong since 1934 as Cole Porter's biggest hit before Kiss Me Kate. It may have jetti…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:54AM[SHARE]Monday, April 13, 2015
MAKING HEAVY OF LIFE "Can you see magic?" That's both process and purpose in Jordan Harrison's deliberately dazzling 75-minute bravura piece The Grown-Up, now strutting its precious stuff…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:36AM[SHARE]Sunday, April 12, 2015
CONDITIONAL LOVE AND EARLY DEATH The perils of parenting are center stage in Steppenwolf Theatre Company's truth-teller. British playwright Rory Kinnear's strangely named The Herd (…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:00PM[SHARE]Saturday, April 11, 2015
BEFORE IT WAS TOO LATE Six symbolic lives get ruthlessly entangled in this blast from the past. The world is pre-independent Virginia circa 1676 and the outcome is today in Marcus Gardley's�…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:11PM[SHARE]Wednesday, April 8, 2015
MY FAIR SONGBIRD They were the proverbial strange bedfellows who forged a classic Vegas act. The template for Sonny and Cher, they also held a mirror up to a misfit marriage. But Louis &#…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:48PM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 7, 2015
ENERGY IS NEVER ENOUGH Nothing is sadder than a forced farce. Or phonier than chases without consequences. Famed for his frenetic The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity (a comedy about w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:54PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 31, 2015
ON THE HORNS OF HISTORY Imagine history as a roller coaster–more specifically, Oscar Wide's masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest transmogrified into cerebral vaudeville. E…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:46PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 29, 2015
IN DEED HE DOESN’T Will Eno's 2012 solo script, now in a Midwest premiere, represents quite a departure (almost a repudiation) of Lookingglass Theatre Company's vintage style. Here be …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:49AM[SHARE]Friday, March 27, 2015
MALE DISBONDING Friendship tests us in ways we never signed up for: Plays about it task us by making us measure what we would do when the characters' choices come too close for comfort…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:03PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 24, 2015
HEALING BY THE NUMBERS It cost over a million dollars to launch the Windy City Playhouse, a beautiful new 149-seat theater on Chicago's Northwest Side (3014 W. Irving Park Road). Designed by…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:57PM[SHARE]Tuesday, March 17, 2015
THEATER'S TALKING CURE AT WORK AND PLAY The first theater to perform all ten dramas of the late August Wilson's 20th century chronicle, Goodman Theatre just staked a new claim to a lastin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:45PM[SHARE]Saturday, March 14, 2015
STRIPPING DOWN TO BASICS Charged with unforced sympathy and unpolemical solidarity for plucky underdogs, The Full Monty, like the Fox movie that inspired this musical make-over, fits the …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:30PM[SHARE]Friday, March 13, 2015
LITERAL LEVITY On display through this weekend at Millennium Park's Harris Theater for Music and Dance, the Spring Series from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago consists of five offerings t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:31PM[SHARE]Thursday, March 12, 2015
ANOTHER SCHOOL FOR WIVES It's a huge reversal. For generations the sole route for a successful show was from Broadway to Hollywood–from musical to movie. For young theatergoers today t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:19PM[SHARE]Monday, March 9, 2015
PATHETIC PAYBACK Some plays all but ambush their audience–dramatic Trojan horses that promise laughs and deliver the opposite. Aesthetically treacherous, they lure innocent onlookers i…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:30PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 8, 2015
THE OTHER CHICAGO FIRE No question, this 20-year-old tragedy is not as sexy a Chicago calamity as either the historic three-day blaze of 1871 or this year's centennial of the foundering of t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:10PM[SHARE]A PORTABLE COMMUNE SELF-DESTRUCTS This weird show is a strange but stirring entry in Steppenwolf's three-play "Garage Rep" series: Red Tape Theatre's The Walk Across America for Mother…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:15PM[SHARE]Friday, March 6, 2015
SOPHOCLES, ANCIENT BENDER OF GENDERS This "free translation" of Sophocles' timeless tragedy about a sister against the state is only 75 minutes long. Even so, Antigonick manages to alm…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:14PM[SHARE]Sunday, March 1, 2015
THE SCOTTISH TRAGEDY: NEVER SAY DIE You can't kill the Scottish tragedy. Written 408 years after Macbeth, Dunsinane is the Shakespeare sequel we never knew we needed. Now on tour at…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:20PM[SHARE]Saturday, February 28, 2015
OPT OUT OFÂ A PLOT THAT'S NOT The real "sweeter option" is to miss this altogether. A new work written by company member John Henry Roberts and hyper-directed by Marti Lyons, The Sweeter O…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:53AM[SHARE] 
