Wednesday, June 12, 2019
“Lifetime achievement,” said the writer Terrence McNally at the Tony Awards last weekend. “Not a moment too soon.” That dry opening joke by the 80-year-old author of such dramatic ma…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:25PMThe 2019 Tony Awards turned out heavenly for "Hadestown," the stylized, bluesy, steampunk-influenced Anais Mitchell musical based on the "Orpheus and Eurydice" myth and set partly in the und…
Linked From The Baltimore Sun at 09:06AMTuesday, June 11, 2019
The Den Theatre — the hip, multi-stage venue on Milwaukee Avenue in Wicker Park — has been one of the great success stories of the last decade in Chicago theater. For the past generation…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PMBarbara E. Robertson has graced pretty much every major theater in Chicago: Goodman, Steppenwolf, you name ‘em. She played for a while in “Wicked,” too. But her performance in Firebran…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:30PMSunday, June 9, 2019
"Hadestown," a stylized, bluesy, steampunk-influenced Anais Mitchell musical based on the "Orpheus and Eurydice" myth and set partly in the underworld, beat out its more traditional rival "T…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:30PMWednesday, June 5, 2019
A million dollars for the new TimeLine Theatre in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood; $2 million for the South Side Community Arts Center; $850,000 for the Puerto Rican Arts Alliance; $927,500 …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:03PMKenneth Lin — a writer for "House of Cards" among other TV shows — has written a really lovely little play, all about people who have risen in life on the back of their affinity for numb…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:20PMChicago Shakespeare Theater has never moved a show to Broadway. Might that change with “Six,” its big hit this summer? If the theater keeps its head on its shoulders. (I’m here all wee…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMTuesday, June 4, 2019
Walk into “Ms. Blakk for President,” the new Steppenwolf Theatre show from Tarell Alvin McCraney and Tina Landau about the remarkable political odyssey of Terence Smith, one of the found…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:30PMGiven the state of the world, who wouldn’t want to be abducted? I mean, it would at least be nice to keep that option in one’s back pocket: When our streets fill with water and our plane…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMMonday, June 3, 2019
The Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre, a recent transplant to Evanston and a longtime favorite of the Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee, shared top honors at the 2019 Non-Equity Jeffs with The Art…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:00PMA political soothsayer and savant, the English playwright and novelist W. Somerset Maugham despised the hypocrisy of war. And as early as 1933, from his home in southern France, Maugham coul…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:25PMFriday, May 31, 2019
Near the end of the first of his two nights of shows at the Chicago Theatre on Thursday, the British comedian Eddie Izzard let out a kind of goodbye to all this: “This might be my last tou…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:40AMThursday, May 30, 2019
Terrence McNally's "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" begins with climactic sex between a middle-aged waitress and her short-order cook. In the script he wrote in the late 1980s, McNa…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:30PM“If I said I love him,” sings Marvin, the leading character in “Falsettos,” “you might think my words come cheap. Let's just say I'm glad he's mine awake, asleep.” Truths about l…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:45PMWednesday, May 29, 2019
The other day, Instagram followers of Virgil Abloh, the 38-year-old creator of Off-White and also now the "artistic director" of Louis Vuitton’s entire menswear line, got a treat — the c…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:55PMCourt Theatre is in the final weeks of a truly extraordinary five-show season, featuring a quartet of four-star shows. Taken as a whole, Court's 2018-19 productions were far and away the bes…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMFriday, May 24, 2019
A Red Orchid Theatre said Friday that it was adding eight new members to its artistic ensemble: Karen Aldridge, Myron Elliott-Cisneros, Levi Holloway, Travis A. Knight, Jess McLeod, Sadieh R…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:30AMThursday, May 23, 2019
Hit shows — and, make no mistake, the dynamic new pop musical “Six” has clear Broadway potential — invariably arise from great ideas that fit a moment. Get a load of this mighty shre…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PMWednesday, May 22, 2019
What makes an acting performance worthy of a Tony Award? It’s always a fascinating question on Broadway: Must such a performance command a marquee, spare no prisoners and take change of an…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PMMalcolm Ewen’s first foray into a life in the theater was in his hometown of Winnetka, in a middle school production of “The Hither and Thither of Danny Dither.” He played the role of …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:50PMCirque du Soleil has brought 25 different shows to the Chicago area over the last 30 years. I’ve reviewed 24 of them, from “Alegria” to “Saltimbanco” to “Varekai,” from the old…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:00PMIn 1991, Joan Jett Blakk ran against Richard M. Daley for Mayor of Chicago. By the following year, the radical drag persona of the courtly, mild-mannered performer Terence Smith was running …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMTuesday, May 21, 2019
So what, exactly, were Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, Claire Clairmont and George Gordon Byron all really doing in the Villa Diodati in Lake Geneva (Switzerland, not Wisconsin) in the rainy sum…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:35PMMight you find yourself a few steps ahead of the play at “Into the Breeches!,” the new comedy from the Northlight Theatre? Is Winnetka north of Wilmette? Actually, so formulaic is George…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PM“Four Chords and a Gun,” the new show from Toronto now at the Broadway Playhouse, is an odd duck. Of course, so were The Ramones. Here was an American punk rock band with influence that …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMMonday, May 20, 2019
In 2011, the British author and critic Martin Amis — a man who believes that Saul Bellow was the greatest American writer of the 20th century — stood on a stage in this city and describe…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:45AMSunday, May 19, 2019
In 1977, the actor Joe Mantegna — then and now a rabid fan of the Chicago Cubs — came up with an idea designed to get baseball lovers into the theater. The result was the legendary Organ…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:45PMThursday, May 16, 2019
Back in 2011, just before the first national tour of Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s magnificent, Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “Next to Normal” came to Chicago, a dear out-of-town friend…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:00PMThe Chicago production of "Hamilton" will close Jan. 5, 2020, the Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller said in an interview with the Tribune Wednesday evening. The date of closing is not a surpr…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:30AMLaurie Metcalf was known to Chicago theater lovers for years before she became a Broadway mainstay. The Steppenwolf ensemble member — also known for her work on the TV sitcoms "Roseanne" a…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:40AM 
