Friday, June 1, 2012
BAD COP GOOD COP The cynical title My Kind of Town acknowledges the pop song that celebrates Chicago but also a likely culture of police brutality. This is the work of investigative journali…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:35PMMonday, May 21, 2012
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THE STORY? The tortured elements in the life of the great rhythm and blues artist Marvin Gaye would be fascinating fodder for a powerfully tragic stage play. Ei…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:46PMAN INCREDIBLY BRIGHT LIGHT The Light in the Piazza opened on March 12 at Theo Ubique and has now been extended into midsummer, and counting. It’s gathered a sheaf of rave reviews and the t…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:29PMFriday, May 11, 2012
A SMALL LITTLE CREATES HUGE RESULTS For its scintillating revival of A Little Night Music, the Writers’ Theatre has condensed the Stephen Sondheim classic into a chamber musical. The actio…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:06PMWednesday, May 9, 2012
THE ICEMAN HATH ARRIVED Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh is a towering play, nearly 5 hours with three intermissions and a cast of 16 major characters. Yet its theme can be summarize…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:55PMTuesday, May 8, 2012
RENT GETS A NEW LEASE ON LIFE, EVEN AS THE INTRINSIC PROBLEMS REMAIN As soon as David Cromer was announced as the director, the revival of Rent became one of the buzz productions of the seas…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:21PMWednesday, May 2, 2012
MAKE A FELINE FOR THEATER WIT At the beginning of Tigers Be Still at Theater Wit, 24-year old Sherry takes a microphone and announces to the audience, karaoke style, “This is the story of …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:37PMTuesday, May 1, 2012
A PRODUCTION TO TAKE PRIDE IN All of Jane Austen’s novels are built on the same premise. A woman meets and marries an eligible man after a series of usually comic difficulties. But Austen …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:52PMSaturday, April 28, 2012
THE ACTING IS DARK AND DEEP BUT THE SCRIPT GETS LOST IN THE FOREST In a Forest, Dark and Deep may not be top drawer Neil LaBute, but it does provide a showcase for two of the area’s best p…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:15AMWednesday, April 25, 2012
THE LONG MARCH E. L. Doctorow’s The March was a fine Civil War novel and likely would make an excellent motion picture, but as a play it has problems. The ambitious adaptation at the Stepp…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:19PMA PRODUCTION THAT IS THE VERY MODEL The comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan can be an acquired taste for modern audiences. The plots are inane and the satire, so cutting in Victorian days, …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:26AMMonday, April 23, 2012
A PERFECTLY COIFFED HAIRSPRAY A successful revival of Hairspray demands pinpoint casting in two roles. Tracy Turnblad, the show’s central character must be short, exceedingly stocky, look …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:12PMThursday, April 19, 2012
SECOND CITY KNOWS EXACTLY WHO THEY ARE Second City calls its 100th mainstage revue Who Do We Think We Are? The question is rhetorical. For more than half a century, Second City has been the …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:09PMMonday, April 16, 2012
A LITTLE OUTDATED, ANGELS IS STILL MANNA FROM HEAVEN In 1994, Tony Kushner’s two-part Angels in America plays – Millennium Approaches and Perestroika – opened locally at the Royal Geor…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:12PMI SAY YOU WANT THIS REVOLUTION After the Revolution is a chewy new play about family dynamics and the difficulty of making moral judgments, especially after the fact. For audiences thirsting…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:50PMSunday, April 15, 2012
THE IDEA WORKS BETTER THAN THE ACTUAL PRESENTATION Jackie Sibblies Drury’s new play could have the longest title in the history of the theater: We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:32AMSaturday, April 14, 2012
MUSICAL STRIKES A UMBILICAL CHORD Motherhood the Musical doesn’t break any new ground in taking on the joys and tribulations of motherhood, nor does the 100-minute revue deliver any surpri…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:14AMFriday, April 13, 2012
THE BOYS ARE BACK, AND BETTER THAN EVER Maybe it’s the law of averages. Put enough jukebox musicals on the American stage and one of them is bound to come up a classic. That may explain th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:59AMThursday, April 12, 2012
IT’S NOT SAFE TO GO BACK IN THE KITCHEN Along with cutting meat for a living, Valerie, the butcher in Marisa Wegrzyn’s impressive The Butcher of Baraboo, is a middle-aged woman who is th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:04AMThursday, April 5, 2012
THE PLAY’S ACTING’S THE THING Plenty of negatives can be directed toward Lee Blessing’s Chesapeake, which suffers from personality disorder: Is it a satire? A comedy? A fantasy…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:33PMTuesday, April 3, 2012
HAUNTINGLY IMTIMATE Ghost stories are difficult to bring off on stage. The physical reality of flesh and blood actors works against the sense of the supernatural and the suspense and horror …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:14AMSaturday, March 31, 2012
IF FOOD BE THE MUSIC OF LOVE, EAT ON The Lookingglass production of Cascabel is the toughest ticket in Chicago this side of The Book of Mormon. The hook of the show is the menu prepared by c…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:06AMFriday, March 30, 2012
ONE EXCLAMATION POINT IN THE TITLE IS NOT ENOUGH Audience enjoyment of Fela! at the Oriental Theatre will be in direct proportion to the viewer’s capacity to absorb more than two hours of …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:37AMWednesday, March 28, 2012
A FREUDIAN TRIP Freud’s Last Session at the Mercury Theater is a “what if” play. What if the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and the English professor and author C. S. Lewis met i…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:59AMSaturday, March 24, 2012
FOR BETTER OR WORSE, IT’S A TELLTALE TITLE Suzan-Lori Parks claimed that her play Fucking A, now playing at the Urban Theater Company, was inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Sca…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:46AMTuesday, March 20, 2012
ALL ABOUT ALFRED AND LYNN Ten Chimneys is the name of the estate near Madison, Wisconsin, where the famous American husband-and-wife acting team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne retreated an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:10AMWednesday, March 14, 2012
REAL GENIUS OR REAL CLUNKER? Tennessee Williams wrote at least 10 plays that are more accessible and commercially viable than his Camino Real (pronounced CA-mino Reel). Even the most zealous…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:59PMRIVER OF DREAMS All good things must come to an end, they say, so it was inevitable that Riverdance would finally end its run, at least in the United States. But will it ever be missed! Play…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:35PMThursday, March 8, 2012
THE BOOK ISN’T READY, BUT BRING IT ON ANYWAY Bring It On at the Cadillac Palace Theatre is cut from the Legally Blonde cloth of contemporary musical theater: they are both inspired by moti…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:56PMTuesday, March 6, 2012
A REVIVAL THAT’S WORTH THE PRICE The Price (1968), in a solid revival at the Raven Theatre, demonstrates Arthur Miller at the top of his game – writing intense, eloquent, densely texture…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:55PMSaturday, March 3, 2012
A STRANGE MIXTURE OF BELLY-LAUGH FARCE AND POLITICAL INTRIGUE The North Plan at Theater Wit is either a farce with dark political conspiracy overtones or a political conspiracy drama played …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:30AM 
