Tuesday, May 3, 2016
RECOMMENDED Lyric Opera of Chicago has found a formula that comes closer to a successful collaboration between the resources of a major opera company and the magic of musical theatre. This &…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 02:00PM[SHARE]Monday, April 25, 2016
RECOMMENDED James Goldman's 1966 period piece with contemporary colloquialisms has played the world over, buoyed by the success of the 1968 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole.…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 05:00PM[SHARE]Thursday, April 21, 2016
Andrew Lloyd Webber's rock oratorio "Evita" sings a story that never tires in its retelling: the disenfranchised individual, working with their particular skill set and virtually on their ow…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 04:00PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 24, 2016
RECOMMENDED Perhaps best known for the heroine's waltz song, which arrives in the first act and isn't quite equaled for sparkling melody thereafter, there is still much music to savor in thi…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 01:00PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 23, 2016
RECOMMENDED Shakespeare's problematic play "The Tempest" is a heady undertaking for any theater company. Never mind the need to replicate an onstage shipwreck. Culminating in the playwright'…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 10:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, February 11, 2016
RECOMMENDED “Far From Heaven,” the acclaimed 2002 film starring the translucent Julianne Moore, was penned and directed by Todd Haynes and shot using the carefully composed color…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 04:00PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 4, 2016
By Aaron Hunt Lyric has announced its electric, eclectic 2016/17 season. If you're already an operagoer, this is a major opportunity to put seldom-heard notches in your production belt. If n…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 12:00PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 2, 2016
RECOMMENDED Memory is dampened by medical advances, giving succor to those who want to believe AIDS is now a manageable disease. With a generation erased, who is left to remember and tell th…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 01:00PM[SHARE]Monday, January 25, 2016
RECOMMENDED "Nabucco" established Verdi's preeminence as an operatic composer not only with its winding melodies and passionate declamations but because it struck a nerve with a populace emb…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 10:00AM[SHARE]Monday, January 18, 2016
RECOMMENDED "The Duchess of Malfi" is not a perfect play. The plot jolts, character motivations are incoherent, it is occasionally verbose when it should move like lightening and vice-versa.…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 10:00AM[SHARE]Wednesday, December 9, 2015
RECOMMENDED As the latest torrents of terrorism shatter our souls with their senseless deaths and enhanced suspicions, Lyric Opera of Chicago's world-premiere production of "Bel Canto" could…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 06:00PM[SHARE]Thursday, November 19, 2015
RECOMMENDED If you've groused about Christmas decorations already taking over the seasonal aisle of Walgreens, grumbled about the Christmas tree already glistening from behind the draperi…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 05:30PM[SHARE]Wednesday, November 18, 2015
RECOMMENDED Franz Lehár’s beloved, wildly successful operetta "The Merry Widow" will woo and then suspend in delicious wistfulness even the staunchest objector to its inclusion i…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 07:30PM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 17, 2015
From the program notes of Northlight Theatre’s "You Can't Take It With You": "The Sycamore family lives in Morningside Heights, which was a distinctly middle-class neighborhood i…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 12:00PM[SHARE]Saturday, November 14, 2015
Eclipse Theatre Company ends their Terrance McNally season with "The Lisbon Traviata." The author of the Maria Callas-centric play "Master Class", “The Lisbon Traviata” suffer…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 03:30AM[SHARE]Friday, November 6, 2015
RECOMMENDED A film-to-stage musical enjoying regional success, "White Christmas" is based on the 1954 movie of the same name. Starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Elle…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 07:45PM[SHARE]Monday, November 2, 2015
RECOMMENDED Lyric Opera of Chicago launched its season with two confections"cakes appeared on stage in both"and now moves on to meat. If "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "Cenerentola" focused on the…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 04:25PM[SHARE]Saturday, October 10, 2015
RECOMMENDED The Dead Writers Theatre Collective focuses on presenting classic pieces in the style and ethos of the period in which they were first produced, and they do so with great verve a…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:45AM[SHARE]Saturday, October 3, 2015
RECOMMENDED This little operetta dinghy overcame modest box office and, proving the critics right for once, sailed away with the 2014 Tony Award for Best Musical. No small feat in an era whe…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:30AM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 30, 2015
RECOMMENDED Willy Russell, playwright of "Educating Rita" and "Shirley Valentine," wrote the book, music and lyrics for the folk cantata "Blood Brothers," which ran for twenty-four years in …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:45PM[SHARE]Tuesday, September 29, 2015
RECOMMENDED Remember banker's boxes? Those white, cardboard, 10″H x 12″W x 15″D storage bins that arrived flattened, to be unfolded and refolded until they took a shape tha…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PM[SHARE]Monday, September 28, 2015
RECOMMENDED With a splash of commedia dell’arte, a spoonful of Restoration comedy, and pounds of clowning, director Barbara Gaines has exploded the up-and-downstairs Mozartian confecti…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:45PM[SHARE]Friday, September 25, 2015
RECOMMENDED Chicago's opera enthusiasts must be collectively humming as the 2015/2016 opera season explodes on the scene with two Mozart operas, "Lucio Silla" at Chicago Opera Theater, and "…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PM[SHARE]Thursday, September 17, 2015
RECOMMENDED Despite four Tony Award nominations, "Side Show" seemed destined for the Forgotten Musicals shelf. But after enjoying success in regional theater, the show was reworked, and a le…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PM[SHARE]Friday, August 28, 2015
RECOMMENDED From Homer J. Hickam's memoir, to a Universal Studios film, comes a musical retelling of an ageless, American story of the right, and the ability, to rise above one's circumstanc…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 5, 2015
RECOMMENDED Follow the fluorescent yellow paint on the floor through a dark, winding corridor, and you'll find yourself immersed in the ethos of the secretive gay bars of the 1970s. A few la…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:00PM[SHARE]Friday, July 31, 2015
RECOMMENDED Mind-numbing with its soft-rocky up-tempo songs and pop-ish ballads, the 1973 and 2014 Tony Award-winning "Pippin" continues to charm all save the occasional music lover. If any …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:59AM[SHARE]Friday, July 24, 2015
By Aaron Hunt Chicago Summer Opera advertises itself as another of our city's startup, storefront, non-profit operatic enterprises; its title promises a spoonful of gastronomical respite as …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PM[SHARE]Friday, July 10, 2015
Having first been groomed in Chicago, "Kinky Boots" won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Musical. Rock icon Cyndi Lauper finagled Best Score, despite its jumps from song to song without connecti…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:23PM[SHARE]Friday, July 3, 2015
How To Run For Mayor The Chicago Musical Theatre Festival provides an important birthing-space for Chicago-connected, nascent musical theater to access our city's storefront-ethos, where new…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:34AM[SHARE]Friday, June 19, 2015
RECOMMENDED I thought a show where the colorful people stayed on one side of the stage while the colorless people stayed on the other, plot lines fizzled, and the leading players were a scre…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:15AM[SHARE] 
