Friday, August 17, 2018
Restaurant criticism is different from other forms of cultural reviewing. For one thing, we all have to eat every day. For another, we have an inevitably intimate relationship with anything …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00AMThursday, August 16, 2018
Samantha Barks, the truly formidable young star of “Pretty Woman: The Musical,” achieves something close to a miracle at the Nederlander Theatre. With the help of her savvy director, Jer…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMWednesday, August 15, 2018
Fifteen years after opening on Broadway, and four years after it first played at the Mercury Theater on the Southport Corridor, “Avenue Q” is a long-running hit all over again in Chicago…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMMonday, August 13, 2018
The last time I saw a bona fide warm-up comedy act at a musical was back in the 1990s at the Royal Palm Dinner Theatre in Palm Beach, Fla. (“Are you ready for ‘La Cage Aux Folles'? Did y…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMA former Weather Girl is to headline the cast of “WaistWatchers the Musical," which is coming to Chicago's Royal George Theatre this September for an open run. Martha Wash — one half of …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:40PMFriday, August 10, 2018
Even in this golden age of the unfathomable and illogical tweet, it seemed bizarre. With deft abbreviation skills, a bit of snark and a pragmatic disregard of punctuation, former Arkansas Go…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, August 9, 2018
The Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Amy Morton will direct a Broadway revival of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Only there’s a difference. All of the characters will be wom…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:15PMDavid Cromer is returning to the Broadway stage. The Chicago-honed, Tony Award-winning director will be part of the cast of Kenneth Lonergan's dark comedy "The Waverly Gallery," slated to op…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:48AMThe Pride Films and Plays production of “Holding the Man,” the stage adaptation of a famed 1995 memoir by Timothy Conigrave, is a low-budget affair with barely a set, let alone sophistic…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:50AMWednesday, August 8, 2018
Benjamin Rauhala, a young musical director in New York, was flying home from Disney World in 2015 when he had a three-word idea: Broadway princess party. Especially if you have a budding one…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMMonday, August 6, 2018
After a 14-year run and 22 full productions, Chicago's Polarity Ensemble Theatre is calling it quits. In a statement Monday evening, the off-Loop theater company cited increased production c…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00PMThursday, August 2, 2018
“Can We Trust Facebook and Twitter?” asked a click-baity headline in The Wall Street Journal this week. No, is the obvious answer, given all the evidence of nefarious Russian interferenc…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:25PMWednesday, August 1, 2018
As tens of thousands of jubilant Chicagoans partook of the bacchanal known as Lolapalooza, a few tens of we diehard melancholics shuffled into the Den Theatre in Wicker Park on Thursday for …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:50PMIn its greatest moments, the Chicago theater has invented entirely new forms of creative expression. In 1955, for example, David Shepherd created a comedy-cabaret group called the Compass Pl…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMTuesday, July 31, 2018
You might recall Christine Ebersole was once on “Saturday Night Live” (same cast as Eddie Murphy and Tim Kazurinsky). You might now know that she got the gig after smoking the right join…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:45AMMonday, July 30, 2018
About an hour into director Scott Weinstein's production of “Murder For Two” at the Marriott Theatre on Sunday afternoon, an actor’s microphone went out. If you’ve read the title, it…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:35PMSunday, July 29, 2018
Back in 1997, I watched a guy named Rick Stone appear in a Black Ensemble Theater tribute to Otis Redding. A few weeks later, I went back to see another show there. Stone was taking my ticke…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:45PMFriday, July 27, 2018
In 2004, Dove launched its “Campaign for Real Beauty,” one of the most successful marketing plans in history and, inarguably, a prescient bit of Madison Avenue understanding as to how th…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:50PMThursday, July 26, 2018
Sir Philip Sidney, a modest and courtly chap of Shakespearean vintage, self-described his 1580 heroic prose poem “Arcadia” as “a trifle, triflingly handled.” Back in the misogynistic…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:00PMAt the age of 80, the Michigan-born Martha Henry has played many of the roles in the Shakespeare canon during her 44 years at the flagship theater of her adopted Canada. As 10 artistic direc…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:55PMTuesday, July 24, 2018
In April, the Paramount Theatre in Aurora will stage its first pre-Broadway tryout: “August Rush," a new musical by Mark Mancina and Glen Berger, based on the Keri Russell movie about an 1…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:55PMMonday, July 23, 2018
It’s popular to lament the isolation of the digital age. But “The End of TV,” the deeply moving show from Manual Cinema now at the Chopin Theatre mainstage for the next few days, is a …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:10PMSunday, July 22, 2018
Working at the Drury Lane, director Marcia Milgrom Dodge treats Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” as if it were a spooky story of scary shadows from the all-American past. Ha…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMFriday, July 20, 2018
What better company at the theater than summer campers? Especially in a show that not only asks you to be up for an adventure but to bring a fairy back to life. (Before noon.) No problem for…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:20PMThursday, July 19, 2018
The Broadway musical based on “The Color Purple” tried out in Atlanta in 2004. Sitting there in Georgia, I admired the zest and accessibility of the score and, in particular, the artful …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:20PMOn Wednesday, Chance the Rapper announced that he had purchased a dormant news-and-culture website called Chicagoist from the New York public radio station WNYC. His means of doing so — sh…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:40PMWednesday, July 18, 2018
Michael Shannon, his acerbic biography in the program at A Red Orchid Theatre informs, is soon to be enshrined in wax at Madame Tussauds near Times Square. A lifetime achievement, for sure, …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMTen years ago — shudder — I pointed my Honda toward Munster, Ind., to check out a new musical about one of the Hoosier State’s most vaunted citizens: Coach Knute Kenneth Rockne of the …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:10AMTuesday, July 17, 2018
“Heartbreak Hotel,” the biographical Elvis musical from the creator of the Broadway shows “Million Dollar Quartet” and “Baby It’s You,” begins with a spirited gospel performanc…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:45PMMonday, July 16, 2018
“Hamilton: The Exhibition,” the ambitious, tented attraction that aims to immerse fans of the hit Broadway musical in the life and nonfictional times of its central character, is postpon…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:30PMLifeline Theatre, the venerable and ensemble-based Rogers Park arts institution known for its theatrical adaptations of literary classics, has a new artistic director. It’s Ilesa Duncan, t…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PM 
