Wednesday, October 17, 2018
If you doubt that the ferocious passion of one gifted performer for one iconic role can propel an entire young cast to raise its game to the rafters, then you have not seen E. Faye Butler at…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:50PMWhen the national tour of Jerry Zaks’ hit Broadway revival of “Hello, Dolly!” arrives in Chicago next week, Betty Buckley will play the starring role of Dolly Gallagher Levi, the match…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMMonday, October 15, 2018
With “Avenue Q” going gangbusters on his main stage, L. Walter Stearns of the Mercury Theater is stuffing a full-blown, surround-sound “Pippin” inside his spiffy new cabaret-and-cock…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:10PMSunday, October 14, 2018
As 50 percent of the Weather Girls, Martha Wash is a platinum-selling recording artist responsible not only for the iconic disco anthem “It’s Raining Men” but also for many of the pote…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:25PMFriday, October 12, 2018
I first saw Pearl Cleage’s “Flyin’ West,” a potboiler of a show set in an all-black frontier town in 1898, in Montgomery, Ala. It was 1998 and Cleage — a prolific novelist as well …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PMThursday, October 11, 2018
The U.S. airline industry — essentially an oligarchy — has come to love the word “discipline.” Abandoning its past practice of adding competitive routes and bigger planes on a whim, …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:20PMWednesday, October 10, 2018
Chicago’s fall theater season opened in a flurry of activity in recent days. Before I talk you through what I think you should see, let me start by saying this has been a golden fall for c…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:05PMSunday, October 7, 2018
The Faustian myth — wherein some ambitious dude sells his soul to the devil to score some instant gratification — is one of literature’s most popular themes. There’s Christopher Marl…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PMFriday, October 5, 2018
Ah, Switzerland. Home of chocolate, cleanliness, secret bank accounts, beautiful scenery, lonely wanderers, studied neutrality and a carefully veiled past. What might it be like to stare int…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:40PM“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” is an atypical project for the Steppenwolf for Young Adults program, which for years has produced either original, socially conscious …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:55PMThursday, October 4, 2018
When a furious Brett Kavanaugh decried his United States Supreme Court confirmation history as a “circus,” he was using the word as a pejorative: He was describing what he believed to be…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:35PMNoah Weisberg, the fine young actor playing Willy Wonka in the musical version of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” has a tough gig. He has to follow the late Gene Wilder, whose twink…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:10PMWednesday, October 3, 2018
On Tuesday night, the Chicago Cubs learned a tough lesson from “Macbeth”: “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PMTuesday, October 2, 2018
Anyone who works in the theater is familiar with struggle. But the Polish-Jewish novelist Sholem Asch had so much strife with his 1907 play, “God of Vengeance,” that he surely must have …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:45PMDrag queens are coming to Motor Row. And they will be serving you dinner. “Lips,” a for-profit, dinner-theater concept that has lasted 22 years in New York, is expected to open in March …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:00PMMonday, October 1, 2018
The best moment in “Tootsie,” which opened its pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago on Sunday night, is not when the remarkable Santino Fontana first appears in a dress as Dorothy, the ill-adv…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:00AMSunday, September 30, 2018
As the nonprofit American theater has primarily become a gathering place for educated, like-minded progressives, those who provide its content have a sacred moral and artistic duty not just …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:30PMA charming courtesan is plucked from her former milieu by a rich and powerful patron. Although initially reluctant, she moves into his rooms, relieving his boredom and even helping him, in h…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:00PMFriday, September 28, 2018
Hubbard Street’s Season 41 Fall Series asks a lot of its audience: The new environmentalist collaboration between the choreographers Emma Portner, Lil Buck and Jon Boogz runs close to 90 m…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:30PMOn Friday afternoon, Mayor Rahm Emanuel will officially announce an estimated $10 million donation to support his Year of Chicago Theatre initiative. The private money, which comes from the …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:50AMThursday, September 27, 2018
Snooker isn’t pool, any more than it’s billiards. The widespread confusion annoys us aficionados of the noble cue sports on both sides of the Atlantic. Any number of snooty leisure activ…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PM"This is a circus," roared the furious Judge Brett Kavanaugh, reflecting how we often respond when a seemingly controlled life of achievement devolves into escalating chaos that we discover …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:45PMWednesday, September 26, 2018
Not long ago, a New York-based actress named Kelly Felthous found herself auditioning for Roxie Hart in the musical “Chicago.” The audition was in Manhattan, but the theater was the Drur…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:15AMTuesday, September 25, 2018
One of the most thrilling developments in the American theater is a broader acceptance of women playing the great male roles of dramatic literature. Instead of the same old wizened dudes doi…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00PMTony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s “Caroline, or Change” is a musical that dangles the one quality common to any politician worth the time of day, and to almost every musical ever to ap…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:50PMIn 1988, a young humble, quirky, British-American monologuist named David Cale appeared in the studio theater in the old Goodman Theatre. His show, he said at the time, was dedicated to the …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PMFriday, September 21, 2018
One fundamental problem faced by America’s oldest Equity actor — that would be the 94-year-old Mike Nussbaum — is that directors keep casting him in age-appropriate roles. Such is his …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:00PMOn CNN Monday, the remarkable Spanish-American chef Jose Andres was interviewed while feeding tens of thousands of the victims of Hurricane Florence in both Wilmington and Raleigh, North Car…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, September 20, 2018
Tracy Letts is to star alongside Annette Bening in a spring Roundabout Theatre revival of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons.” The revival of the moralistic 1947 family drama, set in small-town …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PMWednesday, September 19, 2018
Thanks mostly to Chicago’s culture czar, Mark Kelly, and the genuine enthusiasm of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 2019 has been designated the Year of Chicago Theatre by the city of Chicago. Before I…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:00AMMonday, September 17, 2018
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is to make it official on Monday: 2019 is to be the Year of Chicago Theatre. A citywide initiative dreamed up and spearheaded by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Spe…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00AM 
