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 03:56PMBLACK 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 ma…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:40PMBLUES 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 ja…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:44PMPRUDENCE 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…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:53PMANCIENT 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 funni…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:15PMAN 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 J…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:09PMOSCAR 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 am…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:20AMCHICAGO’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 …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:02PMMUSICAL 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” send…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:11PMTHE 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-gu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:55AMHIPSTER 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 specif…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:24PMSHTICK 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 jet…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:54AMMAKING 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…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:36AMCONDITIONAL 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 (a …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:00PMBEFORE 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’…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:11PMMY 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 03:48PMENERGY 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 wrest…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:54PMON 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. Eru…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:46PMIN 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…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:49AMMALE 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 01:03PMHEALING 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 …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:57PMTHEATER’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 last…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:45PMSTRIPPING 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 pa…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:30PMLITERAL 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 tha…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:31PMANOTHER 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…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:19PMPATHETIC 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 01:30PMTHE 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…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:10PMA 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 Mo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:15PMSOPHOCLES, 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 a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:14PMTHE 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 Chi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:20PMOPT OUT OF 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 Sweet…
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