Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Cirque 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 North Pier to…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:00PM[SHARE]In 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 …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, 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…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:35PM[SHARE]Might 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 Bra…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PM[SHARE]"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 ecli…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AM[SHARE]Monday, 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 described Ch…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:45AM[SHARE]Sunday, 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 Organic T…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:45PM[SHARE]Thursday, 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 asked…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:00PM[SHARE]The 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…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:30AM[SHARE]Laurie 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" and…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:40AM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 15, 2019
In the days leading up to Memorial Day, Chicago traditionally has more theater openings than at any other time of the year. And 2019 is bringing an especially bumper crop of marquee spring a…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Like "The Tempest" and "Cymbeline," William Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" traditionally has been seen as a romantic play about forgiveness, penance and reconciliation. Its early dramatic…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:25PM[SHARE]Monday, May 13, 2019
Death! Cannibalism! Fire! Michael Shannon on film! All of the above are on offer in A Red Orchid Theatre's cacophonous new production of "Killing Game" ("Jeux de Massacre"), a show, lead by …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:25PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 12, 2019
On an extraordinary night at Second City in Chicago, a fearless, vulnerable and determinedly transparent Margaret Trudeau took the stage to talk of affairs and mistakes, family and failures,…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:40PM[SHARE]Friday, May 10, 2019
In a pivot away from developers and controversial Evanston high-rises, Northlight Theatre says it has made a fresh plan for a new home. Northlight said Friday that it has signed an option ag…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, May 9, 2019
The children of immigrants long have written plays and novels about what it's like to be a first-generation American, trying to build a life in a new country under the watchful eyes of forei…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:20PM[SHARE]Most Broadway tours are like those old mimeograph machines: the more times they're toured, duplicated and recast, the more the quality fades. So why is "Chicago the Musical" different? I fou…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:15PM[SHARE]In 2015, Justin Trudeau was elected prime minister of Canada. In his Montreal victory speech, delivered in both French and English, he said, "Sunny ways, my friends. Sunny ways!" Historians …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 7, 2019
In an extraordinary development likely to transform the fortunes of a bold but small Chicago company, Definition Theatre is to receive $1.6 million in direct funding from the City of Chicago…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PM[SHARE]Monday, May 6, 2019
For fans of Chicago's legendary indie music scene, Hank's Bar will feel like a fusion of The Hideout, Lounge Ax, Martyrs, the Double Door, and any number of other mission-based small music c…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:20PM[SHARE]To call "August Rush," the new musical at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora, a pre-Broadway tryout is a major overstatement. What is up on that historic stage at present is more akin to a work…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PM[SHARE]In 1995, his senior year at Ohio State, Eddie George rushed for a school-record 1,927 yards and scored 25 touchdowns, gaining an average of 148 yards per game. Against Notre Dame that season…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:00AM[SHARE]Sunday, May 5, 2019
The current, vociferous debate over classic Broadway musicals is not unlike that over the Constitution of the United States. On the one hand, you have those who argue that the Constitution s…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:00PM[SHARE]Friday, May 3, 2019
"Matilda," the proto-feminist story of a gifted little girl with nasty parents, is perhaps the best family musical of this young century. Prescient for 2010, it managed both to be a thrillin…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:30PM[SHARE]Thursday, May 2, 2019
If you've not heard of Jireh Breon Holder or his play "Too Heavy for Your Pocket," you might well think that the new drama at the TimeLine Theatre is a long-lost play from the so-called gold…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:00PM[SHARE]Some three weeks before leaving office, Rahm Emanuel, the 55th Mayor of Chicago, sat for an interview in his office at City Hall about the arts in Chicago. This is an edited transcript of ou…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AM[SHARE]Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Heard of "Venus in Fur"? That's nothing compared to "First Love is the Revolution," a play about a torrid and intensely emotional love affair between a 14-year-old boy and a young vixen. In …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PM[SHARE]For hopeful new Broadway musicals, Chicago has become the most famous tryout town in America. But Aurora? Come Friday, it gets a piece of the action that has been going almost entirely to ei…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AM[SHARE]Tuesday, April 30, 2019
If " strike that, when " the Earth suffers some sort of horrific ecological disaster of our own making, humanity probably won't disintegrate into dust overnight. More likely, some of us will…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:30PM[SHARE]As Broadway looks for a safe landing between changing times and the traditional makeup of its audience, this year's Tony Award nominations, announced Tuesday morning, reflected fevered compe…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:15AM[SHARE]After six years of a Cirque drought in the desert, the Cirque du Soleil is to bring a new attraction to the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas later this year. Instead of the acrobats and trapeze arti…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:00AM[SHARE] 
