Wednesday, August 28, 2024
On July 27, 1982, as editor of Chicago GayLife newspaper, I attended a meeting in Washington, D.C., between government health officials and a group of LGBTQ+ activists and leaders of organiz…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:28AMWednesday, July 24, 2024
Amy Crider’s entertaining and stimulating new play Wells and Welles, receiving its world premiere in a very well-acted non-Equity production by Lucid Theater at the City Lit Theater space …
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 04:44PMThursday, December 7, 2023
Hell in a Handbag Productions serves up a hefty helping of Christmas camp in this new episode of its “The Golden Girls: Lost Episodes” franchise, which purports to feature never-broadcas…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:39AMFriday, November 3, 2023
City Lit Theater’s stage adaptation of Davis Grubb’s 1953 novel has a dark, homespun, campfire-tale feel that suits the folksy tone of its suspenseful Southern Gothic narrative. The Nigh…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 09:30AMFriday, July 7, 2023
“It’s our time, breathe it in: / Worlds to change and worlds to win. / Our turn coming through, / Me and you, pal, / Me and you!” So proclaims “Our Time,” the soaring choral finale…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:35AMThursday, June 8, 2023
John Pielmeier’s 1979 drama Agnes of God—whose title is a reference to “Agnus Dei,” Latin for “Lamb of God”—is an intriguing if somewhat murky mystery that asks both “whoduni…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:26AMThursday, March 30, 2023
Idle Muse Theatre Company’s The Last Queen of Camelot, scripted and directed by Idle Muse artistic director Evan M. Jackson, plays like an Arthurian fantasy graphic novel come to life. Jac…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:49PMWednesday, November 2, 2022
Every superhero saga needs a villain, and Mark Pracht’s new play The Mark of Kane—an origin story for the comic-book character Batman—provides one in the figure of Bob Kane. In […]
T…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 03:41PMThursday, October 27, 2022
Invictus Theatre Company delivers a solid, sometimes stirring, and strikingly relevant rendition of William Shakespeare’s 1599 tragedy. It’s the story of Marcus Brutus (played by Invictu…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:40AMThursday, October 13, 2022
Director Dusty Brown, who makes their Chicago directing debut with Three Crows Theatre’s storefront staging of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, has trimmed the tragedy down to a fast-paced, interm…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 02:40PMWednesday, October 5, 2022
“Extraordinary,” muses Amanda, the heroine of Noël Coward’s Private Lives, “how potent cheap music is.” Her rueful observation, uttered while she is standing on the terrace of a h…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 05:10PMWednesday, September 28, 2022
Idle Muse Theatre Company’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is good, dark Halloween-season entertainment, especially if you’re a fan of the Hammer/Amicus/American Internation…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 04:01PMWednesday, July 13, 2022
“In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple,” wrote Irish playwright John Millington Synge in the preface to his 1907 comedy The Playboy of the Western Wo…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:01AMWednesday, June 29, 2022
The central characters of Redtwist Theatre’s current production are a conservative male government leader determined to impose his laws on everyone around him and a radical young woman pas…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:15AMTuesday, May 17, 2022
It may be difficult to comprehend today just how shocking Edward Albee’s drama Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was when it premiered in October 1962, the same week that the Cuban missile…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:45PMTuesday, March 10, 2020
A cabaret homage to Garland and Minnelli lights up the Greenhouse.
This cabaret by singer-actors Nancy Hays and Alexa Castelvecchi pays homage to two of the grea…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:30PMTuesday, February 11, 2020
The action in Mart Crowley's landmark gay play surrounds the audience at Windy City Playhouse.
The Boys in the Band is a groundbreaking work in American theater …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:00PMThursday, January 23, 2020
Douglas Turner Ward's classic one-act kicks off their 20th season.
Derrick Sanders and Reginald Nelson arrived in Chicago in 1999 with a singular goal: to start …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:00PMTuesday, January 14, 2020
A young boy and his reclusive aunt face down old ghosts during World War II
One might have thought that a ten-year-old show with libretto by Kyle Jarrow (author …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:00PMTuesday, November 26, 2019
Current events have caught up with this solo play about refugee children.
Actor Tandy Cronyn, whose one-woman show The Tall Boy plays at Stage 773 for a limited …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:25PMTuesday, November 19, 2019
Dennis Začek's solid staging lets Samuel Beckett's existential comedy be.
Written in the wake of World War II, with its carnage and cruelty committed by all sid…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:13PMWednesday, October 23, 2019
A great star turn can't quite overcome the limitations of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1993 musical.
In a city whose theater scene is rooted in an "ensemble" aesthetic,…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 9, 2019
Terry McCabe's adaptation for City Lit is minimalist but effective.
Arthur Conan Doyle's 1902 thriller is one of those classics most people are more familiar wit…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 2, 2019
A 46-year-old play contains contemporary resonance in AstonRep's staging.
A haunted and haunting lead performance by the excellent Sean William Kelly drives Asto…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, July 17, 2019
About Face Youth Theatre turns 20 with this contemporary look at LGBTQ history.
About Face Youth Theatre's company-created work explores the lives of LGBTQ young…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, July 10, 2019
Steve Scott's bare-bones production is storefront Shakespeare at its best.
William Shakespeare's 1606 tragedy is often regarded as the Mount Everest of English d…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, July 3, 2019
Folks Operetta revives a lost hit from pre-World War II Berlin.
This operetta by composer Paul Abrahám and librettists Alfred Grünwald, Fritz Löhner-Beda, and…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, June 19, 2019
It's firmly rooted in the 80s, in more ways than one.
Anthony Tournis's new farce is based on the premise that televangelists are hypocritical crooks who fleece …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMTuesday, June 18, 2019
Out of the closets and onto the stage
Lanford Wilson's 1964 one-act The Madness of Lady Bright, a dynamic character study of an aging drag queen, is frequently c…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:00PMWednesday, June 12, 2019
And a new exhibit at Gerber/Hart Library and Archives provides the visual aids.
When the annual Pride Parade steps off from the intersection of Broadway and Mon…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, June 5, 2019
Guilt and grief lead a woman to imagine she's been contacted by aliens.
Imaginative and often beautiful visual projections by designer Tony Churchill transform S…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AM 
