All stories by Catey Sullivan on BroadwayStars

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

They love the 80s by Catey Sullivan

It’s totally easy to make fun of the 1980s. Shoulder pads you could poke an eye out with. Leg warmers over fishnets. The elevation of Bret Easton Ellis into a literary celebrity. But it wa…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:20PM
Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Anything Goes is everything you need for winter by Catey Sullivan

Longtime cabaret chanteuse Meghan Murphy has always had an outsize stage persona. For years her “Big Red” shows (the name refers to both Murphy’s supermodel stature and flaming red hai…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:48PM
Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Love, Chaos, & Dinner is back with more spectacular acts by Catey Sullivan

Teatro ZinZanni Presents: Love, Chaos, & Dinner has been a reliably entertaining fantasia of top-tier circus hijinks since it debuted here way back in the before times of 2019. (For a fe…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:48AM
Thursday, November 9, 2023

Assassins at Theo examines the real national pastime: violence by Catey Sullivan

I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Stephen Sondheim’s appallingly timely tale of U.S. assassins (and wannabe assassins) since it premiered in 1990. I can tell you that Theo�…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:07AM
Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Eurydice loses its way by Catey Sullivan

At first, it seems like a match made in heaven. Or rather, Mount Olympus. But marriages between goddesses and mortals are complicated, and throughout Greek myth, their unions are defined by …

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:41AM
Monday, October 2, 2023

The Lehman Trilogy is TimeLine at its finest by Catey Sullivan

Three actors play more than 50 characters over a span of some 160 years in the TimeLine Theatre/Broadway in Chicago collaboration on the epic drama The Lehman Trilogy. But it’s not dauntin…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:34AM
Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Rose’s show by Catey Sullivan

The titular showgirl in Gypsy isn’t necessarily Gypsy Rose Lee, the reluctant vaudeville child star who—per the “musical fable” from Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), Jule Styne (score) and…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 02:46PM
Friday, August 18, 2023

Enraging and engaging by Catey Sullivan

Sometimes more didactic than dramatically sound, Ella Hickson’s The Writer remains enraging and engaging as it offers a graphic crash course in the perils of playwriting while female. And,…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:18AM
Friday, July 7, 2023

Sanctuary stories by Catey Sullivan

At the crux of writer/director Kareem Fahmy’s promising but incomplete drama is a father and a daughter, whose relationship is cruelly subject to the seemingly random structures of immigra…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:51AM
Thursday, June 8, 2023

A provocative Pippin by Catey Sullivan

Pippin was a forerunner in the big swing of musical theater away from the happy-ever-after era that defined the genre’s “golden age.” The 1972 show by Stephen Schwartz (music) and Roge…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:31AM
Thursday, May 4, 2023

Timely Twain by Catey Sullivan

The dramaturgy displays alone for Mercury Theater Chicago’s Big River, based on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, taught me more about Mark Twain’s 1830s-set, biting antislavery novel than…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:17AM
Tuesday, May 2, 2023

Lovely, dark, and deep by Catey Sullivan

The woods are leaf-free spires of light, Cinderella’s sisters are outfitted in bad 80s prom dresses, and Rapunzel’s coil of blonde hair is a rope in the national touring production of In…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 01:28PM
Thursday, April 27, 2023

Damn Yankees hits it out of the park by Catey Sullivan

The devil goes down to Washington (D.C.)  in the 1955 musical Damn Yankees, and he’s rarely been more irresistible than in his current incarnation at the Marriott Lincolnshire.  Damn Yan…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 02:01PM
Thursday, February 23, 2023

Summer and smoke by Catey Sullivan

Nilo Cruz’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics is a lit-fuse kind of drama, beginning with a slow but unmistakable simmer that ultimately detonates with scorching, devastating…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:00AM
Thursday, February 9, 2023

The beautiful business of show by Catey Sullivan

First, some mathematical context: I’ve seen A Chorus Line at least 18 times since 1976, the year the first national tour rolled into Chicago. Prior to last week, I was certain the brillian…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:00PM
Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Not so golden by Catey Sullivan

The hardest working queen in showbiz? That’d be Ginger Minj (fight me). After three stints on RuPaul’s Drag Race (season seven, All Stars 2, and All Stars 6), the breakout star and two-t…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:49AM
Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Stuck in a snow globe by Catey Sullivan

Nearly 69 years since its birth as a smash movie, the seasonally ubiquitous White Christmas remains a good, old-fashioned holiday chestnut. It also remains an objectively odious, old holiday…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 09:12AM
Tuesday, December 20, 2022

Why Charles Dickens Wrote A Christmas Carol (Hint: It Wasn't to Spread Holiday Cheer) by Catey Sullivan

The ghost story of Christmas was originally a way to bring attention to the problem of poverty.

SOURCE: Playbill at 04:06PM
Wednesday, November 23, 2022

What’s new, pussy cat? by Catey Sullivan

At 25 years old, The Lion King has been seen by more than 110 million people and played every continent but Antarctica. Between global warming and ticket demand, it’s probably […] The po…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:09AM
Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Not a clinker by Catey Sullivan

No matter your views on Christmas and the bulging Santa’s sack of psycho/socio/political/familial drama wrapped up in the sparkle-plenty holiday, this much I know is true: If you aren’t …

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 05:02PM
Wednesday, October 19, 2022

A swing and a miss by Catey Sullivan

As the single most-produced contemporary playwright in the Goodman Theater’s history, Rebecca Gilman has provided audiences with some truly perceptive, unflinching depictions of life’s v…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:55AM
Thursday, October 13, 2022

As teardrops fall by Catey Sullivan

If you’re a fan of The Notebook—either the romantically waterlogged, sugary-sentimental 2004 movie or the Nicholas Sparks novel that prompted it—you’ll probably be swept away by the …

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 02:58PM
Thursday, October 6, 2022

Smile by Catey Sullivan

Any thoughtful or true exploration of mental illness and how it manifests is cast aside in favor of the increasingly gory encounters that torment Rose. The post Smile appeared first on Chica…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 03:00PM

Alma offers more than just a mother-daughter conflict by Catey Sullivan

The sound design hits you first in Alma, Benjamin Benne’s 70-minute two-hander that uses a mother-daughter relationship to depict precisely how inextricable the political is from the perso…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:12AM
Thursday, September 22, 2022

Attend this tale by Catey Sullivan

I’ve seen bloodier stagings of Sweeney Todd than the current incarnation from Kokandy Productions at the Chopin Theatre’s downstairs space, directed and choreographed by Derek Van Barham…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:50PM
Friday, September 16, 2022

Northlight plans its Evanston homecoming by Catey Sullivan

It’s a fool’s exercise, listing the Chicago theaters that have come and gone over the past quarter century. I tried but gave up when I hit 24 at 17 years […] The post Northlight plans …

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:04AM
Wednesday, August 17, 2022

When the swash buckles by Catey Sullivan

There’s a reason you rarely see Zorro: The Musical, the 2008 show inspired by a masked Spanish hero (conceived of by Johnston McCulley in 1919 and since the subject of numerous […] The …

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:26AM
Friday, August 5, 2022

Vengeance by Catey Sullivan

It’s a story about a storyteller who is creating a story about how mythology (stories) are created. It is also an acute reminder of how easy it can be to hide secrets in plain sight. The p…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 04:50PM
Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Three sisters of Failure by Catey Sullivan

The cliché has it that life is what happens when one is making other plans, but that’s clearly preposterous. In the main, it’s death that happens when we’re making other plans. Even i…

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 03:14PM
Tuesday, July 19, 2022

The Sea Beast by Catey Sullivan

If you’re going to title your movie The Sea Beast, you need to commit to a beast that earns its billing. The post The Sea Beast appeared first on Chicago Reader.

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:30AM
Friday, July 15, 2022

Fantastic beast by Catey Sullivan

When Luis Carreon takes the stage at the Chicago Magic Lounge, he’s pure old-school vaudeville, an elegant throwback in silver-toed boots and a tuxedo subtly imprinted with crushed velvet …

SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:11PM

All that Chat

2023-2024 BROADWAY SEASON
May 30, 2023: Grey House - Lyceum Theatre
Jun 26, 2023: Just For Us - Hudson Theatre
Jul 24, 2023: The Cottage - Hayes Theater
Nov 16, 2023: Spamalot - St. James Theatre
Dec 18, 2023: Appropriate - Hayes Theater
Mar 07, 2024: Doubt - Todd Haimes Theatre
Apr 14, 2024: Lempicka - Longacre Theatre
Apr 17, 2024: The Wiz - Marquis Theatre
Apr 18, 2024: Suffs - Music Box Theatre
Apr 25, 2024: Mother Play - Hayes Theater
Jun 10, 2024: The Drama Desk Awards