Thursday, July 25, 2024
It takes a special kind of person to enjoy Saw the Musical. That’s because you must be a fan of the film to appreciate this production’s absurdity at its fullest. Luckily, Saw is my Rock…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 05:21PMMonday, July 22, 2024
“The Mad Ones” is a calculated musical risk—though however you look at it, Blank Theatre Company’s production comes out ahead.
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMThursday, July 18, 2024
It was the unsecured, random bundle of cords that first caught my eye at Otherworld Theatre’s The Lightning Thief: A Percy Jackson Musical. They were slung around the railing to the audien…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:36PMMonday, July 15, 2024
Just as Hedwig changed her life amid upheaval, so too will the talented folks behind the groundbreaking Haven. Thank you for over a decade of one-of-a-kind work.
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMTuesday, July 9, 2024
“Beehive the Sixties Musical” is a trip. Even if you don’t fancy revues, this one may have you rethinking that stance.
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMTuesday, June 18, 2024
As Dennis Dent’s undeniably charming Hustleman makes all too clear, there is always more to every story. And this story? It may be called The Salon, but its roots run far deeper than its p…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 05:53PMWednesday, May 1, 2024
Self-indulgent. A blunt word, yet little else feels appropriate for a show that ran three hours and eight minutes—from late start to the end of curtain call—when it is said to be two hou…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 03:17PMWednesday, March 6, 2024
“Sludge and slurry!” Badger (John Drea) frequently exclaims to giggles and muted repeat-backs from the littlest of audience members. Utterly enchanted, the children in this audience seem…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:00PMThirteen-year-old Amanda, not quite a Twihard herself but an avid reader who loved Twilight, would have died over Otherworld Theatre’s Twihard musical parody. Thirty-one-year-old Amanda th…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:23AMWednesday, February 28, 2024
"It is one of my all-time favorite plays, and Invictus Theatre’s production is a brilliant example of how to handle this intense two-hander."
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMTuesday, February 20, 2024
“Band’s Visit” takes so many of the traditional musical theater-type songs and mashes them together into an enchanting story about what it means to be a person in the world with other …
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMTuesday, February 13, 2024
When we meet Gigi (Iris García) she is having a crisis of personality. Staring horrified in front of her bedroom mirror, the blonde wealthy woman is suddenly a dark-haired Indigenous woman.…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 01:07PMWednesday, February 7, 2024
Sitting in near silence in an apartment, curtains drawn, television above a whisper, and fans oscillating to feign static sound. That is how we meet Taroon (Owais Ahmed). Alone in a Kabul re…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 04:00PMMonday, November 27, 2023
This is Aaron Posner’s very loose adaptation of Chekov’s “The Seagull.”
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMTuesday, November 21, 2023
Based on the true story of a battle between essayist John D’Agata and fact checker Jim Fingal, “Lifespan” bemoans the realities of journalism that few in the general public truly under…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMWednesday, November 15, 2023
A carnival of famous American assassins who got their day in history or missed their mark, Stephen Sondheim uses them as thematic devices. Are they misunderstood outsiders? Misguided patriot…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMThursday, August 10, 2023
Settled in the grass at Moore Park in the Austin neighborhood, a baby clad in a vegetable-patterned onesie coos to the music, while a toddler wriggles, wiggly worms in hand, to the aptly nam…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:11PMWednesday, July 26, 2023
The stages at Chicago Shakespeare Theater are accustomed to classic tales of daring sword fights, magic spells, and a prince in disguise—just the kinds of stories that Belle loves to read.…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 04:01PMTuesday, May 23, 2023
Heidi Schreck’s play showcases our narrator regaling us with her complicated love story. This romance between an American teen circa the 1980s and the United States Constitution circa the …
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMTuesday, April 18, 2023
No one does thriller or horror like A Red Orchid Theatre, truly.
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMMonday, April 17, 2023
A simple lit rooftop, church steeple, or body-as-a-temple metaphor greets you as you enter the theater. Two bright lines meet in the middle, seemingly pointing upwards towards something grea…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 06:06PMThursday, March 30, 2023
Like the people in the allegorical Tower of Babel, the citizens of Jacqueline Goldfinger’s futuristic Babel are seeking oneness. The kind of oneness that mankind has never reasonably come …
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:49AMThursday, March 23, 2023
Hajja Souad’s story, eight decades of life lived, is woven into a narrative of resilience, hope, and the changing tides in Palestine during her long lifetime. Brought to life in the U.S. p…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 09:41AMWednesday, March 22, 2023
We are reminded, subtly, that we too are made up of the stuff of those who have loved us. Whether we like it or not there are characteristics and tendencies we each carry within ourselves ta…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMThursday, March 16, 2023
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
When I read Molly Smith Metzler’s now award-winning Cry It Out in 2018, I knew it was something special. I am still not a parent myself nor (at that point) were any of my closest friends. …
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 01:30PMTuesday, February 21, 2023
“Gone with the Wind”'s Hattie McDaniel’s artistry and life were complicated, much like history. That’s why TimeLine’s production suits them so well. We get to imagine what things w…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMWednesday, February 15, 2023
A murder trial transcript that went missing, not to be found until 2004—decades after the murder of Emmett Till. The Black Chicago teen whose unfathomable death in 1955 sparked the Civil R…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 04:04PMThursday, February 2, 2023
This is an inventive and gorgeous retelling of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.”
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMWednesday, February 1, 2023
Brent Askari places Warhol just ahead of the revolution in Iran (then Tehran) in the 1970s to get Polaroids of the Shah’s wife for a portrait commission.
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AMFriday, January 27, 2023
Michael Gene Sullivan’s new play is a lively reminder that those who came before are not just names to memorize in grade school. Their legacies, infamous or not, follow us in ways seen and…
SOURCE: www.newcitystage.com at 08:00AM 
