Wednesday, March 4, 2015
SMART DRAMA REVEALS POLAR ATTRACTION A world premiere production, Mat Smart’s The Royal Society of Antarctica at The Gift Theatre is easily one of the year’s best new plays. Smart, who w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:34AMSaturday, February 28, 2015
YANKEE DOODLE DUD Of all the plays inspired by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Yankee Tavern has got to be one of the worst. Steven Dietz’s play, which takes place in New York…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:28AMMonday, February 16, 2015
A REALLY REALLY TIMELY PLAY 29-year old playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo’s Really Really premiered at Virginia’s Signature Theatre in 2012 before heading to Off-Broadway, where it was helm…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:14AMSunday, February 15, 2015
EVERYTHING A FIRST DATE SHOULD BE First Date, an enjoyable new musical comedy that opened on Broadway in 2013, should really be called Blind Date. Its two principal protagonists, awkward Aar…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:07AMWednesday, February 11, 2015
TANNHÄUSER TIES TOSCA IN TERMS OF SIMILARLY SHODDY DIRECTION From the highpoint of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Lyric Opera’s 60th anniversary season has been on a slow downward arc. That in…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:18AMWednesday, January 28, 2015
BECKETT’S RIDDLE CONTINUES TO CONFOUND Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is not an easy play to write about, let alone produce, act, or even watch. It’s challenging, opaque, and ambig…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:37AMTuesday, January 27, 2015
WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO (NOT THE BRITISH) With Puccini’s Tosca, Lyric Opera has done one update too many this season. Don Giovanni was bumped up 300+ years in time to the 1920s, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:52PMMonday, December 15, 2014
THE HOTTEST SHOW IN TOWN One of the best-reviewed and most popular Christmastime shows, The Ruffians’ Burning Bluebeard, returns beginning tonight for three weeks only through Jan. 4, 2015…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:04PMFriday, December 12, 2014
CST STAGES A FRESH AND FANTASTICAL PERICLES William Shakespeare is a man of many faces. To most, he is quite simply a master of the English language and one of the greatest playwrights who e…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:47AMRADVANOVSKY IS REGAL IN ANNA BOLENA With so much filmed and written about the six wives of Henry VIII, the Tudor period is perhaps one of the most familiar eras in English history. Yet Gaeta…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:27AMTuesday, December 9, 2014
THIS SCHOONER SAILS IN ON YULETIDE EUPHORIA A joyous holiday tradition, The Christmas Schooner has been warming Chicagoan hearts for nearly two decades. Following a lengthy run at Bailiwick …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMSunday, December 7, 2014
TELL US SOME MORE Turin, Italy’s Teatro Regio Torino opened its first ever North American tour with a magnificent concert performance of Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell at the Harris Th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:49AMWednesday, December 3, 2014
THE HYPOCRITES PLAYFULLY ROCK THIS BOAT A nautical joyride of musical mayhem, belly laughs, and unadulterated fun, this world premiere adaptation of H.M.S. Pinafore completes The Hypocrites�…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:47PMTuesday, December 2, 2014
ARMACOST LIGHTS UP THE NULLITY OF SHINING CITY Hot on the heels of Steppenwolf’s production of Conor McPherson’s newest play The Night Alive comes Irish Theatre of Chicago’s current pr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:39PMThursday, November 27, 2014
HOLLYWOOD HORROR STORY Director Michael Driscoll brings B-movie exploitation antics to Strawdog’s Hugen Hall stage in Darren Callahan’s Desperate Dolls. This over-the-top, no-holds-barre…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:21PMSunday, November 23, 2014
MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY It begins with a woman taking a bath. The lighting is low and there are dozens of candles spread about the set. She slowly gets up and dries off, donning a linen s…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:01PMSaturday, November 22, 2014
LYRIC DOES THE BESS THAT IT CAN After two outings to Spain (Don Giovanni and Il Trovatore) and one to Paris (Capriccio), Lyric Opera is bringing audiences something homegrown, composed by an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:35PMWednesday, November 19, 2014
A HOLIDAY FOR HUMANITY Playwright Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, and his Speech and Debate—with its with crackling humor and vivacity�…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:52PMWednesday, October 29, 2014
A TREASURE TROVATORE There’s nothing subtle about Verdi’s ambitiously conceived Il Trovatore (The Troubadour). Grandly realized and magnificently staged by Lyric Opera, it is one of the …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:41PMMonday, October 27, 2014
EXCELLENT BY ALL APPEARANCES It is rare enough to find early operas staged in the U.S., so to find a whole company devoted to their performance is truly extraordinary. Haymarket Opera Compan…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:12AMWednesday, October 22, 2014
WHERE BLACK BOX EQUALS COFFIN Just in time for Halloween, The Chicago Mammals are performing their All Girl Edgar Allan Poe. Apart from the original source material, most everything about th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:44PMTuesday, October 21, 2014
GRACEFULLY AMAZING John Newton (1725-1807) was many things: a slave trader, a sailor and a clergyman. Yet today he is chiefly remembered as the author of “Amazing Grace,” perhaps the mos…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:25AMSunday, October 19, 2014
THE FARM-TO-FABLE REVOLUTION IS HERE One of the most extraordinary things about George Orwell’s novels is their prophetic power; they are perhaps even more relevant now than when he wrote …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:58AMTuesday, October 14, 2014
A CONFESSION ABOUT SWEENEY TODD Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been four days since my last confession. I saw Porchlight Music Theatre’s production of Sweeney Todd at Stage 77…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:23AMMonday, October 13, 2014
MISSING MECHE Although Nobel Prize-winning writer Vargas Llosa is known primarily as a novelist, he has also written nine plays spanning a period of sixty years. La Chunga,written in 1986, i…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:57AMThursday, October 9, 2014
SOME MAGIC IS ADDED, SOME MAGIC IS TAKEN AWAY South Africa’s Isango Ensemble is undoubtedly full of talented actors, singers, and musicians, but doesn’t quite have the specialized skills…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:01PMPARTY LIKE IT’S 1928 A riot from start to finish, Bailiwick Chicago’s The Wild Party is a breathless, exuberant, fast-paced production running for an hour and forty minutes without pause…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:50PMTuesday, October 7, 2014
THIS CAPRICCIO IS NO CAPRICE The brooding romanticism of Capriccio’s opening sextet sets the tone for the introspection that is to follow. Instead of a dramatic overture and crowd-pleasing…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:52PMMonday, October 6, 2014
PUZZLING THROUGH THE CRYPTOGRAM IS WORTH THE EFFORT The title alone should have been clue enough that this was going to be a difficult play, but nothing could have prepared me for the lack o…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:07PMFriday, October 3, 2014
A VANDAL OF AN ENDING Thirty-something actor and writer Hamish Linklater’s The Vandal is one of those plays that starts well and ends poorly. It begins with a middle-aged woman waiting at …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:27PMMonday, September 29, 2014
THE MANY LOVE(S OF) DON GIOVANNI Why does Chicago love Mozart’s Don Giovanni so much? Well-received as Lyric Opera’s first production back in 1954, and revived many times over the ensuin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:39AM 
