Thursday, July 27, 2017
George Gershwin's 1928 symphonic tone poem, "An American in Paris," was written on commission. Modernist and experimental, rather than obviously lush or romantic, it was intended to convey t…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:52PMWednesday, July 26, 2017
I picked up my voicemail earlier this week and found the kind of message that makes doing this job feel like a privilege. "I am below the poverty line," the older gentleman on the recording …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:36PMChicago Shakespeare Theater has a proud history of producing family-oriented summer shows that go far beyond what you would expect at a pleasure pier. On Navy Pier in 2010, "The Emperor's Ne…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:49PMTuesday, July 25, 2017
"An American in Paris," which arrives in Chicago this week for a two-week stand of its national tour, was a critical (and a modest financial) success on Broadway in 2015. But the much-antici…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:41PMIn the Chicago of 1860, when there barely was a Chicago, McVicker's Theater had what this newspaper called "a rousing hit" with a production of "The Octoroon," a spectacular melodrama by an …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:55PMSunday, July 23, 2017
A quarter-century ago, a sensual Russian aerialist named Vladimir Kekhaial turned up the heat of a Chicago summer by flying around a tent, his undulating, glistening muscles hardly confined …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:21PMFriday, July 21, 2017
The little theater under the "L" is set up like a voyeuristic European cabaret: little tables, shaded lamps, intimate fabrics, dark corners into which an amorous couple might try to disappea…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:31PMUnder the Obama administration in 2015, the Department of Education toughened up a set of rules known as the Gainful Employment Regulations. The rules were designed to protect students from …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00AMThursday, July 20, 2017
For the first time in its history, the Cirque du Soleil has a touring production under its signature grand chapiteau that doesn't dwell in an abstract conceit. "Luzia," which opens in Chicag…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:41AMTuesday, July 18, 2017
One of the longest-running double acts in Chicago theater history is coming to a close: artistic directors and co-founders Michael Menendian and JoAnn Montemurro are "retiring" from Chicago'…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMMonday, July 17, 2017
When the poetic playwright Dael Orlandersmith premiered "Beauty's Daughter" in Midtown Manhattan in 1995, few had heard her name. This was before "Monster," "The Gimmick" or "Yellowman," a f…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:24PMSunday, July 16, 2017
"A parrot, a shark and a cheeseburger walk into Wrigley Field" may sound like the beginning of a bad bar joke, but in reality it refers to just a few of the Parrothead characters who made th…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:13PMFriday, July 14, 2017
In 2008, a playwright from the Yale School of Drama named Alexander Woo was charged with writing the fifth episode of a new HBO series. The series was "True Blood" and this was to be a gothi…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMWednesday, July 12, 2017
At the end of the Saturday night performance of his solo show "How to Be a Rock Critic," a work based on the writings of the great Lester Bangs, the actor Erik Jensen, sweaty from his exploi…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:55PMMonday, July 10, 2017
In his 1976 Creem magazine review of Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" a review with the headline "The Greatest Album Ever Made," the late rock critic Lester Bangs justifies his enthusiasm by…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:32PMSunday, July 9, 2017
The Steppenwolf Theatre Company may not have invented the incendiary play wherein some downstate, post-nuclear American family explodes its rotten guts all over the stage as you stare back i…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00PMThursday, July 6, 2017
After more than 25 years as an innovative, percussive, quirky and cobalt enterprise, the performance company known as Blue Man Group is selling itself to Cirque du Soleil, the Montreal-based…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:24PMWednesday, July 5, 2017
In 2005, I wrote a profile in this newspaper of Libby Adler Mages, a diminutive, charming and ever-curious Chicagoan and one of the most successful commercial producers in the history of Chi…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:53PMMonday, July 3, 2017
Ever since its New York opening in 1977, D.L. Colburn's "The Gin Game" has attracted extraordinary actors. First, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy made the play their own. In the 1990s, Charles…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:51PMFriday, June 30, 2017
In 2003, the National Endowment for the Arts put out a genuinely surprising report: Audiences — those attending jazz, classical music, opera, dance and theater performances — were in ser…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, June 29, 2017
If you want to understand how much one performance, by one inestimably excellent artist, can mean to a work of musical theater, let me suggest a trip to "The Bridges of Madison County" at th…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:18PMWednesday, June 28, 2017
Just in case you have not been paying attention: Issues about who has the right to talk about what, and with whom, are pretty hot right now. Especially when speakers dare to wander beyond th…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:07PMTuesday, June 27, 2017
If there is a practicing alcoholic or addict in your family when you're a kid, you're better off when the boozer is your uncle rather than your dad or mom. If it's your drunk uncle, he can b…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:17PMMonday, June 26, 2017
The Belgian singer-songwriter known as Jacques Brel does not get nearly enough credit for his influence on the popular music of the latter half of the 20th century and beyond. I'd argue that…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:11PMSunday, June 25, 2017
Are you a pirate two hundred years too late? Got a Caribbean soul you can barely control? When you see a salt shaker, do you worry it will get lost? If you answered yes to any or all of the …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00AMFriday, June 23, 2017
A rakish, irascible, handsome, poorly behaved and thoroughly charming actor known for both his rich comedy and an oft-confounding sense of pathos, Howard Witt was the embodiment of what, in …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:35PMWhich American presidents have most loved the arts? The 45th would be a nonstarter, Donald J. Trump's foray into Broadway producing notwithstanding. (If you've not heard, the show was a come…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:52AMWednesday, June 21, 2017
In Chicago theater circles, the joke about Steve Scott, producer at the Goodman Theatre, is that he does whatever his boss, artistic director Robert Falls, does not want to do. That job desc…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:03PMSunday, June 18, 2017
The all-Equity touring version of director Bart Sher's 2015 Lincoln Center revival of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's "The King and I" is a magnificent, genuinely revelatory produ…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:15PMFriday, June 16, 2017
In their fascinating analysis of the algorithm used by the authorities to predict gun violence in Chicago, the journalists and crime analysts Jeff Asher and Rob Arthur argue that people are …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:58AMThursday, June 15, 2017
So you watched the Tony Awards. Now you're wondering when you might get to see all those new shows in Chicago. I've talked to a few insiders on the matter, and here's my best analysis of the…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AM 
