Tuesday, November 12, 2013
SNUFFING OUT SNOBBERY Preferring acting over setting, Gale Childs Daly’s joyously theatrical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ coming-of-age masterpiece uses six actors to play almost 40 ch…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:37PMWednesday, November 6, 2013
GONE BUT NEVER SILENT Commemorating the 75th anniversary of “Kristallnacht,” the terrible nights of November 9-10, 1938 when Nazi thugs unleashed their most public assault on Jewish life…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:12PMMonday, November 4, 2013
COMPASSION PLAY Forgetting the ineptitude of Larry Kramer’s 1988 farce Just Say No, it’s ripe to revive his 1985 masterwork about how a health crisis defined the gay community–as m…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:29PMSaturday, November 2, 2013
A TITLE THAT LIVES UP TO ITS NAME The circus has rolled into Rosemont again, and the fall classic is worth running off to join (it moves to the United Center after Allstate Arena). This 143…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:48PMSaturday, October 26, 2013
FAST, FURIOUS AND FUNKY Ending tonight at the Harris Theatre, the latest balletic blast from the newly renamed Giordano Dance Chicago delivers six hyper-kinetic pieces. This generous outpour…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:40AMWednesday, October 23, 2013
REINVENTING ROCK A huge West End hit for over a decade, this compilation jukebox musical does for Queen what Mamma Mia! did for ABBA, Buddy for Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and Jersey Boys …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:11PMSunday, October 20, 2013
BOYS WILL BE MONSTERS William Golding’s 1954 cautionary thriller depicts a world on the edge of nuclear war. But when a plane crashes, a tiny portion of humanity is given a do-over. Tragic…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:32PMFriday, October 18, 2013
A PUPPET IN THE WILDERNESS In The Table, a curious creation now on its first U.S. tour, three members of the U.K.’s Blind Summit puppet theater depict a garrulous Bunraku-style hand puppet…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:45PMThursday, October 17, 2013
INDIAN NIGHTS Earlier this fall the Joffrey Ballet revisited the uneasy birth of modern dance with a kinetic revival of Stravinsky’s still-shocking, century-old Sacre du Printemps in all i…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:56PMMonday, October 14, 2013
THE STANDARD FOR STORYTELLING It’s a coup just to get the theatrical rights to this juicy work, the late, great Paddy Chayevsky’s Oscar-nominated 1956 screenplay. But it’s sensational …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:23PMFriday, October 11, 2013
A ZOMBIE MUSICAL THAT NEEDS BRAINS There’s something wrong with a show that demands you be drunk. On opening night the howling fans of this cult phenom, now in its fourth incarnation (if t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:52PMThursday, October 10, 2013
LOVE IMITATES ART Ironically, the real-life love affair celebrated on film and in the theater by co-creators Glen Hasard, an Irish composer, and Marketa Irglova, a Czech songwriter, fizzled …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:27PMWednesday, October 9, 2013
FRIENDS DISCOVERING BENEFITS Familiarity needn’t breed contempt. An old-fashioned “coming out” drama can reinvent the wheel with charm enough to distract from any cloying sense of déj…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:38PMTuesday, October 8, 2013
ROMANCE MEETS REALITY Written early but published posthumously (1817), Jane Austen’s most comical novel, Northanger Abbey, works equally well as a literary satire and a psychologically pro…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:12PMMonday, October 7, 2013
CLUELESS CORRUPTION Much has been said about Neil LaBute’s work at Profiles, but there’s so much that can’t be given away about Wrecks (2005), a 70-minute solo show by the ever-co…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:54PMSunday, October 6, 2013
THE TALE OF A LOVE THAT LINGERS TOO LONG Freud said that an unfinished task is never forgotten. But the inability to forget is nothing to the life-long longing of an aborted romance. For nov…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:14PMFriday, October 4, 2013
A REAL BEAUTY Reality T.V. meets classical ballet and the latter wins: The stars of the CW’s Breaking Pointe have teamed up at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre through Oct. 6 to produce a da…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:59PMThursday, October 3, 2013
PANACHE, YES—PASSION, LESS If a story’s strong enough, you just need to rekindle the plot. Edmond Rostand’s timeless love story celebrates the one-sided love between the famous 17th ce…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:01PMSunday, September 29, 2013
CHANGE ON A TRAIN Schematic, predetermined and sometimes improbable, Cheryl L. West’s ambitious family saga Pullman Porter Blues blends blues ballads with convenient confessions in order t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:56PMThursday, September 26, 2013
VERDI UNLEASHED A DOMESTIC TERRORIST Written in 1845 and seldom seen since, this early opera by Giuseppe Verdi (whose centenary we celebrate) was a promissory note to be redeemed over and ov…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:18PMSunday, September 22, 2013
A TRAIN TO NOWHERE It’s not enough reason for Joan Allen’s Chicago comeback. She returns to her ensemble-thick roots on the Steppenwolf stage after a 22-year absence during which, among …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:00PMThursday, September 19, 2013
A SMOKING SAMOVAR It’s a different kind of “spring fling,” much m0re fitting for September when the season has faded fast. The latest installment in the Joffrey Ballet’s “Masters o…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:34PMWednesday, September 18, 2013
BON APPETIT! A welcome return engagement (which is now part of the prestigious Broadway in Chicago subscription lineup), TimeLine Theatre Company’s revival of its 2010 original work To Mas…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:43PMTuesday, September 17, 2013
KILLER THEATER Recreating in part the pivotal Civil War battle fought 150 years ago this July, Lifeline Theatre’s labor of hate, powerfully staged by Matt Miller, is as cinematic as theate…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:44AMFriday, September 6, 2013
WAR IS CONCENTRIC SLICES OF HELL Just as America seems to be expanding rather than concluding our deal with the Devil in the Middle East, Sideshow Theatre Company’s Chicago premiere–…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:14AMTuesday, September 3, 2013
LOONY TUNES IN EVERY WAY You could call this two-act, two-actor, two-hour romp Irma Vep meets Singing in the Rain. A charming trifle that’s also a stunning tour-de-deuce, Porchlight Music…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:56PMTuesday, August 27, 2013
WHERE BLARNEY GOES TO DIE Who’d have guessed that a 90-minute Irish play would be set in a bar where everyone gets sozzled and crocked much sooner that an hour and a half could ever allow?…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:08AMSunday, August 11, 2013
HEROISM AND ESTROGEN Well worth seeing, this stylized 100-minute tour de theatre nonetheless requires—and rewards—an informed audience: It needs eager theatergoers already aware of the s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:37PMSunday, August 4, 2013
AN ARAB ZELIG Supple, swift and slippery, this 80-minute, four-character satire by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (translated by Rachel Wilson-Broyles) skewers Islamophobia and its many mutations. Its…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:03PMWednesday, July 10, 2013
ISOLATION AND INSANITY There’s a good reason for no intermission in this devilishly deceptive Belleville. It’s taut to a torque as it depicts a young American couple’s disintegration i…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:53PMTuesday, July 9, 2013
THE ENSEMBLE IS HOT, THE PLOT IS NOT Sam Shepard loves to level, if not to topple, his characters. In the treacherous course of True West, two brothers exchange identities: The Hollywood hot…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:49PM 
