OPT 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…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 10:53AMFAME BY DAY, A CLOSET AT NIGHT This retrospective 2010 drama by British playwright Dylan Costello is so well meant, you want to forgive it for its good intentions. But–well–don�…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:40PMDEFINITIVE DATES ON INDEPENDENCE DAY In this 95-minute one-act called Four, half the “dialogue” seems unspoken but not unfelt. The audience is literally just along for the ride. Christop…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:59AMA PASSION PLAY FROM PLACID Like a baby on a breast, Lifeline Theatre thrives on adaptations of “coming of age” novels. Like many memory-rich predecessors, Jessica Wright Buha’s clear a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:58AMSHRINK, ENLARGE THYSELF! Christopher Hampton’s dramas are marvels of complicated construction, starting in the past and finding us fast. A retelling of the “creation myth” of psychoana…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:25PMDARK DOINGS IN POSTWAR PARIS Now in an appropriately driven local premiere by Chicago Opera Theater, Tobias Picker’s two-and-a-half hour opera from 2001 delivers a bleak harvest of shame. …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:17AMA VICTORIAN TALE FOR TODAY Jackie Robinson was not, it seems, the first black baseball player in the major leagues. Long before 1946, Moses Fleetwood Walker was a catcher for the Toledo Blue…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:03PMDOOMSDAY THERAPY The peculiar premise behind Matt Lyle’s lifestyle comedy, now running in a moderately intriguing Midwest premiere by The Ruckus, is that for some folks the end of the worl…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:32PMALL KINDS OF ADMISSIONS A peculiarly persuasive puzzle play, Daniel Pearle’s resonant A Kid Like Jake strategically omits the title character from the cast of characters. That’s very rig…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:08PMVOGUEING IT AT VERSAILLES The putative appeal of David Adjmi’s Marie Antoinette is that everyone likes to watch a train wreck. Now exfoliating in Steppenwolf’s upper stage in a dispensab…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:00PMBEING ALIVE—AND SONDHEIM Way overdue and instantly invaluable, Porchlight Music Theatre’s Sondheim on Sondheim delivers the inside look on Broadway’s brightest. Rich with new arrangeme…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:43PMGAGA FOR GANESHA Now in residence at Victory Gardens Theater, the newly minted Rasaka Theatre Company is in hot pursuit of more diversity on Chicago stages. Their mission: to share the tales…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:54PMVERY FINE FRENZIES Winter can be wonderful in Chicago—well, if you’re safe inside the Auditorium Theatre for the ten performances of Unique Voices. The Joffrey Ballet’s three-work show…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:56PMIT’S ALL FOR THE WORST…IN A GOOD WAY With his typical topsy-turvy perversity, Charles Francis Addams might have been happy had the 2009 musical inspired by his sardonic New Yorker …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:59PMELEVATING THE SUBWAY There’s a very specific springboard for Redlined: A Chicago Lyric, 75 minutes of slam protest poetry: It’s the elevated transit line that runs through the Windy City…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:54PMTITS AND ASSHOLES Gay activists who deride this delight forget just how radical the musical was in 1983 (the original film even more so in 1973). A third of a century later, it’s still a m…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:34PMWILL OF FOOLS You can’t take it with you—but that doesn’t mean you go gently into that good night. Dividing the Estate, Raven Theatre’s latest offering, is the late Horton (The Trip …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:49PMROUGH STEPS FOR A TEAM OF TEN It was worth the wait. It’s been way overdue for Giordano Dance Chicago to finally play the Auditorium Theatre, part of the treasure house’s ongoing 125th …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:43PMPASSIONLESS PRONOUNCEMENTS Freud’s enduring question persists: “What do women want?” Gina Gionfriddo’s aggressively hip drama, now in an equally frenetic staging by Kimberly Senior, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:40PMTHE JUICY APPLES’ SLICE OF LOVE You can’t keep an eloquent family down. TimeLine Theatre Company’s concurrent productions of election-night episodes from Richard Nelson’s Apple Famil…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:41PMACTION SNAPSHOTS IN AN APPLE HARVEST Commissioned by New York’s Public Theatre, the four-part saga Apple Family Plays by the prolific Richard Nelson is a remarkable effort to preserve the …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:21PMRELUCTANT HEROISM IN A CHANGING CAUSE Oracle Theatre, Chicago’s 44-seat public-access venue where tickets are free, just unleashed another populist piledriver. It’s a play with several s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:04PMNO BOYS IN THIS BAND In only 80 minutes, Grant James Barjas’s Accidentally, Like a Martyr assembles the very actual denizens of an obscure, unnamed gay bar on Manhattan’s East Side—an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:12PMONE HAND, ONE HEART—ONE HIT! Sadly, hate conquers all in West Side Story, but the love we see and feel can hold its own. Though over a half-century old, the Bernstein/Laurents/Sondheim…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:58PMLET THERE BE DARK In endurance sagas such as Lord of the Flies and The Blue Lagoon, stranded youngsters on deserted islands try to reimagine civilization by mimicking adult classics, or else…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:58PMCAUGHT IN TENNESSEE’S WALTZ An opera disguised as a play, Tennessee Williams’ 1951 labor of longings The Rose Tattoo is the first and last word on heartbreak. The master made a good choi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:10PMSING OUT, ETHEL! What a difference a vowel makes! After his catchy title The Book of Merman, it seems that Leo Schwartz’ delightful world premiere musicale practically wrote itself: You …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:56PMONE MIRACLE TOO MANY A very righteous offering from Stage Left Theatre, Penny Penniston’s world premiere Keys of the Kingdom is a well-intentioned attempt to build bridges between ideologi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:30PMHIT AND MISS SEMI-HORROR Calling your 75-minute compilation Scary Stories 2015 puts the premium on terror, a concept or condition that’s hard to compete with real life. In the thoughtfully…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:57PMFALSTAFF LITE There’s potent psychology operating inside Shakespeare’s two-part Henry IV, the twin tales of a false father and a false son. The latter is Prince Hal, the fiery rebel who…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:04PMIT DOESN’T GET ANY MERRIER THAN THIS This radiant revival is Light Opera Works’ fourth coming of Franz Lehár’s masterpiece from an earlier turn of the century. Rudy Hogenmiller’…
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