Friday, June 15, 2018
Here’s something no one anticipated when the Harris Theater for Music and Dance was built in 2003: it would begin to function as a neighborhood venue. Here’s something I never anticipate…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00AMThursday, June 14, 2018
Jacob Harvey, artistic director of the Greenhouse Theater Center since 2016, is exiting the position, effective on Friday. William Spatz, who owns the producing and presenting operation, loc…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:15PMWednesday, June 13, 2018
At one point in Monty Cole’s uber-contemporary “Hamlet” — at the Gift Theatre in Jefferson Park — the title character turns his back on the audience, picks up a can of red spray pa…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:10PM“The Band’s Visit” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” dominated Sunday’s Tony Awards. But when will we see these shows — and the other Tony winners — in Chicago? Very li…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:55AMTuesday, June 12, 2018
Of the many myths surrounding the building of the Taj Mahal — the wondrous mausoleum in the Indian city of Agra — one of the most persistent is that its creator, the Mughal emperor, Shah…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:25AMMonday, June 11, 2018
Steep Theatre Company's shattering production of "Lela & Co.," a haunting play about sex-trafficking and abuse, emerged triumphant at Chicago's non-Equity Jeff Awards Monday night at the Ath…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:55PMSunday, June 10, 2018
“The Band’s Visit,” the wry, sad and moving new musical helmed by David Cromer of Skokie — unarguably the leading auteur stage director to emerge from the Chicago theater in a genera…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:00PMFriday, June 8, 2018
For risk-loving contemporary dancers, Gaga needs no Lady. It’s the name of a technique pioneered by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, artistic director of the Tel Aviv-based Batsheva Dan…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:30PMThursday, June 7, 2018
David Cromer — Skokie-hatched, Columbia College-trained, fed and watered in the Chicago theater, the current odds-on favorite to win the Tony Award on Sunday for best direction of a musica…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:15AMWednesday, June 6, 2018
With “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” likely to do to its rivals nominated for best play what the Dementors do to Ron and Hermione — in one narrative, anyway — most of the tension…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:10PMHave you craved the opportunity to see a musical about dead Chicago architects? Did you always hope to catch Daniel Burnham and John Root doing a soft-shoe together? When staring, say, at th…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:05PMTuesday, June 5, 2018
At one point in “Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3)” — Suzan-Lori Parks’ brilliant and riveting Civil War triptych in the Homeric vein — a slave named Hero, fighting …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:10PM“The Cher Show” rolled quietly into Chicago on Tuesday — minus Cher, who didn’t even show up as a hologram. But if the name on the marquee — and the reason to buy a ticket — was …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:25PMMonday, June 4, 2018
Say Nemo and most kids now think of the Disney clown fish with the neurotic dad. Mention Nautilus and you’re into a fitness brand. But in 1870, the great Jules Verne imagined Captain Nemo …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:20PMFriday, June 1, 2018
At one crucial point in “Mies Julie,” Yaël Farber’s explosive and adept South African adaptation of August Strindberg’s throbbing naturalistic classic from 1888, now firing up the V…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:15PMIn 1977, the Mount Holyoke College alumna Wendy Wasserstein wrote “Uncommon Women,” a sparkling, groundbreaking and deeply moving play about brilliant women at an elite college, all prob…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:45PMIn September 1989, the cover of TV Guide featured the stars of the two highest rated shows of the era. One was "The Cosby Show." The other was "Roseanne." Each regularly attracted some 30 mi…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, May 31, 2018
When the courageous playwright Mart Crowley wrote "The Boys in the Band," half a century ago and several galaxies away, he was more concerned about making his play funny and true than worryi…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMA signed Hirschfeld drawing of the cast of "Frasier." A Dale Chihuly vase — once a fixture on the set of the NBC sitcom — signed by the renowned artist. Autographed scripts for "Frasier,…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PMWednesday, May 30, 2018
As far as I remember, I first saw Rachel Rockwell perform in 1999. The show was director Marc Robin's production of "A Chorus Line" and the venue was the now-defunct Drury Lane in Evergreen …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMTuesday, May 29, 2018
Bennett Fisher’s new play “Damascus” is set mostly on Interstate 94. The rolling location is an airport shuttle van that normally plies its trade at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. B…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:20PMMonday, May 28, 2018
Rachel Rockwell, one of Chicago's leading directors and choreographers of stage musicals over the past two decades — and also a rising star on the brink of a major national career in the A…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:15PMFriday, May 25, 2018
During my preshow detour in the interests of personal comfort, an announcement of a pending curtain came across the Chicago Shakespeare Theater loudspeaker, which reaches everywhere. Beginni…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:30PMThursday, May 24, 2018
A quarter-century ago, the lavish new Rosemont Theatre caused severe indigestion among the nervous honchos of Chicago. The occasion was the 1993 groundbreaking for a 4,200-seat theater — a…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:05PMWednesday, May 23, 2018
Robert Redford is headed June 1 to the Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods in north suburban Riverwoods, where he and his wife, German-born environmental activist and multimedia artist Sibylle…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:50PM"Pretty Woman: The Musical" will be changing leading men for Broadway. The producers announced Wednesday that Steve Kazee, who played the lead role of Edward Lewis during the show's pre-Bro…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:20PMTuesday, May 22, 2018
When did you last see a baby at a show? And when did you last see a baby in a show? If you attended one of the early previews of Tracy Letts’ “Mary Page Marlowe” at the Steppenwolf The…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PMMonday, May 21, 2018
Since Antonin Scalia, the late and famously flamboyant associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, once taught — very happily, by his own account — at the University of …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:55PMSunday, May 20, 2018
New parents are notoriously difficult to attract to the theater and the reasons are obvious: Sitters add greatly to the cost and hassle of an evening and, in my experience anyway, a fun and …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:55PMFriday, May 18, 2018
Which has the greater importance to Chicago: The Chicago Blues Festival or the Chicago Jazz Festival? If you love our city’s musical heritage, you’d rightly answer “both.” But what a…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMThursday, May 17, 2018
As bookends go for any first act, you could do a whole lot worse than killer renditions of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Lady Marmalade,” replete with its aspirational sing-along…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:20PM 
