Thursday, June 19, 2014
Co-artistic director of The New Colony Andrew Hobgood, who directed “Orville and Wilbur Did It!” comments on the type of creative progression that affords this work its charm at the same…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:00AMSaturday, June 14, 2014
RECOMMENDED In a recent commencement speech given to Dartmouth College’s graduating class, award-winning writer, director and producer Shonda Rhimes addressed the question she is most ofte…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMWednesday, June 11, 2014
RECOMMENDED Few things incite feelings of patriotism in the average American like USO shows and the performing of staple military ballads like “Anchors Aweigh” and “Marines’ Hymn.”…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:00PMFriday, June 6, 2014
Just entering the tiny side project theater feels like an intrusion on somebody’s private space. The lack of separation between the single row of seats and the bedroom stage creates a sens…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:00PMThursday, June 5, 2014
By Dennis Polkow “As a songwriter,” Sting admits, “I had experienced a long drought.” Rarely inactive, Sting, now sixty-two, had been involved with a number of projects since his las…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMTuesday, June 3, 2014
Comedy has come a long way. In the old days, many male comedians believed with all of their hearts that women just weren’t funny. The comedy world was once filled with barriers for female …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMMonday, June 2, 2014
Mention to any fan of the American musical theater the musicalization of Stephen King’s novel “Carrie” and I guarantee you will enjoy a visceral response; anything from the lift of an …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMWorking in a city like Chicago, especially downtown, the travel to work is filled with the homeless. The man shaking his paper cup, greeting those who get off the train. The woman with the d…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMSunday, June 1, 2014
RECOMMENDED With a double bill of Viktor Ullmann’s “The Emperor of Atlantis” and Carl Orff’s “The Clever One”—two one-act pieces beautifully matched, with stories revolving aro…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:00PMLooking for love can be a daunting task. With scores of social media and internet dating sites to choose from, most people find it easy to create a profile and start a conversation with some…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMThursday, May 29, 2014
By Aaron Hunt “Many mumbling mice, Are making merry music in the moonlight, Mighty nice,” sing six fresh-faced, eager-eyed young performers in unison, up the scale and then back down. Da…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMSaturday, May 24, 2014
RECOMMENDED Book writer of Writers Theatre’s new world premiere musical “Days Like Today” Laura Eason says of playwright Charles L. Mee’s work, from which “Days” borrows and burn…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMFriday, May 23, 2014
The essence of pop music is that it demands nothing of us at all. It just reminds us of what every other pop song has already told us, permeating the airwaves and synapses with the honeyed p…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMMonday, May 19, 2014
RECOMMENDED Artistic Director Charles Newell’s fine production affords us the opportunity to reexamine a twenty-six-year-old play that shocked and riveted audiences and critics alike with …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:00AMRECOMMENDED There is a poignant moment in Shattered Globe Theatre’s production of Sally Nemeth’s “Mill Fire.” Three widows pour the ashes of their dead husbands onto a bed, while rec…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMFriday, May 16, 2014
Mixed marriages are never easy … especially between nerdy young shop clerks and millennia-old, mystical serpent spirits in human guise. That’s one of the major takeaways of writer/direct…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMMonday, May 12, 2014
RECOMMENDED In Margaret Edson’s “Wit,” Dr. Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., an English professor whose work focuses on the Holy Sonnets of poet, satirist, lawyer and cleric John Donne, falls pre…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:00PMRECOMMENDED “You can’t keep cancer a secret forever, can you?” In the emotionally and factually fat exposition scene that begins Neil Simon’s autobiographical play “Lost in Yonkers…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:00AMEveryone’s got to eat, right? But not everyone has a healthy relationship with food. In fact, it’s estimated that over twenty million Americans are affected by an eating disorder…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:00AMFriday, May 9, 2014
“A song is something with a beginning, middle and an end,” Berry Gordy (Clifton Oliver) advises Smokey Robinson (Nicholas Christopher) early on in “Motown the Musical.” It is not onl…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMWednesday, May 7, 2014
RECOMMENDED Just like they sing it in the title song, “Hair” is indeed “fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty, … bangled, tangled and spaghettied.” But for all of its loose-jointed, …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMRECOMMENDED Quiche is a pretty funny word. It’s funny enough when it’s just used to represent the quaint egg-pie dish that it is, but once it starts getting thrown around as a euphemism …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:00PMMonday, May 5, 2014
RECOMMENDED The eternal story of love grasped for and lost, lost forever or regained resounds all the way back to Eve and that snake’s apple, and goes down easiest with musical accompanime…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMSaturday, May 3, 2014
Like the 1981 movie starring married couple Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, Rebekah Theatre Project’s production of playwright D. L. Coburn’s first play also stars a husband and wife team…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00PMThursday, May 1, 2014
RECOMMENDED A historical reenactment “is an educational or entertainment activity in which people follow a plan to recreate aspects of a historical event or period.” Critics of previous …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PMBy Sean Kelley In a city with such an established and vibrant theater scene, there are many institutions that could easily make the case that the beating heart of Chicago theater lies within…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMWednesday, April 30, 2014
RECOMMENDED Seven Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama celebrated the first production of this Frank Loesser-musicalized story about an ambitious young man who stumbles upon a book wit…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PMTuesday, April 29, 2014
RECOMMENDED The second entry in Lyric Opera’s five year traversal of the blockbuster entries of the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon fares far better than last year’s inaugural entry “Okl…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMRECOMMENDED “Avenue Q,” originally conceived as a television series, developed as a stage production in 2002, moved Off-Broadway and then to Broadway in 2003, and garnered three Tony Awa…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PMMonday, April 28, 2014
We’re not too far into “Lay Me Down Softly” before we learn that the carnival where the play takes place isn’t the sort of traveling sideshow that features freaks; if there were any …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMFriday, April 25, 2014
RECOMMENDED From the very beginning of Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge,” you know there’s a train coming, but you can’t get off the track. All you can do is watch as the tr…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PM 
