Wednesday, June 19, 2019
An intellectual debate escalates into the unwinding of tightly-coiled fears.
Steven Levenson's family drama, set in the months immediately before and after the 2…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMMonday, June 17, 2019
The play’s the thing wherein to catch the conscience of the queen in Timothy Findley’s 2001 drama “Elizabeth Rex,” now in an al fresco staging with Oak Park Festival Theatre. Fitting…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:15PMThe play’s the thing wherein to catch the conscience of the queen in Timothy Findley’s 2001 drama “Elizabeth Rex,” now in an al fresco staging with Oak Park Festival Theatre. Fitting…
SOURCE: at 04:15PMWednesday, June 12, 2019
There is method to the mess in this Red Tape Theatre production.
The YouTube video of Pussy Riot's brief provocation—about 48 seconds—at Moscow's Cathedral o…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:00PMTuesday, June 11, 2019
Forget the fiery passions and howling heartbreaks of youth. If you want to stare into the real abyss of human rage, loss and despair, try figuring out how to take care of the people who rais…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:50AMThursday, June 6, 2019
Back before Tinder and OKCupid, making a suitable match — for single men in possession of a good fortune and the single women depending upon finding them — was a fraught proposition. One…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMTuesday, June 4, 2019
On Monday, Trap Door Theatre received a special citation at the Non-Equity Jeff Awards, recognizing the company’s “endeavors in opening a magical door to an evocative and surreal world o…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMThe glorious Broadway revival makes a quick stop in Chicago.
Halfway through the first act of Falsettos, Trina, a woman whose husband has left her for a younger …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:00PMTuesday, May 28, 2019
Style and grace fill the stage with abundance in Black Ensemble Theater’s latest show. When you’re focusing on Lena Horne and Nancy Wilson, how could they not? But if you’re looking fo…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:00PMThursday, May 23, 2019
As always, it takes long enough to get here — and summer in Chicago can be gone before we know it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make time for great theater, which never takes time o…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMTuesday, May 21, 2019
The men may kick and scream, but it’s the women who lead.
Whether Augie March turns out to be the hero of his own play, or whether that station is held by the …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 04:30PMMolly Bloom has come unstuck in time. All right, not the real Molly Bloom. She’s fictional, after all. But in Steven Dietz’s 2015 time-travel romance, “Bloomsday,” James Joyce’s he…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:30PMThursday, May 16, 2019
The nostalgic tones don't resonate quite as fully with the modern music scene as they could.
In his 2004 New York Times essay "The Rap Against Rockism," Kelefa S…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, May 15, 2019
Obsessive-compulsive disorder and comedy aren’t strangers to each other, as fans of Tony Shalhoub’s “Monk” can attest. But comedian and solo performer Adam Strauss’s detective work…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:45PMTuesday, May 7, 2019
In the early years of this century, Tom Dudzick’s meat-and-potatoes (or should that be “kielbasa-and-cabbage?”) nostalgic comedy “Over the Tavern,” about a Polish-Catholic working-…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMWednesday, May 1, 2019
“Unless your being innocent is as interesting to them as being guilty, you will not be believed.”
Egyptian American playwright Yussef El Guindi is mostly kno…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMFriday, April 19, 2019
Small towns afraid of dancing and alternative lifestyles (such as … enjoying dancing, I guess) have provided a fair amount of fodder for musicals. “The Prom,” the sweet-and-snarky musi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMTuesday, April 16, 2019
Kate Fodor set the stakes high in her first play, 2003’s “Hannah and Martin,” which debuted at TimeLine Theatre (and enjoyed a reprise with them the following season). By putting the t…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:30PMWednesday, April 10, 2019
The cast elevates the production beyond karaoke night.
Fans of both the 1999 film riff on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and of…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMMonday, April 8, 2019
Many years ago, I had the privilege of watching theater artist and activist Rhodessa Jones work with incarcerated women through her Medea Project in San Francisco. The women’s stories, whi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:25PMThursday, April 4, 2019
The horror! The horror!
Wolfram Lotz's fractured take on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (and its famous cinematic version, Apocalypse Now) started out as a ra…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMMonday, April 1, 2019
A white — and putatively liberal — politician with a rising profile finds his career threatened when a story about a racist act he committed in college comes to light. No, it’s not the…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:15AMFriday, March 29, 2019
A stellar cast keeps the parody musical cruising.
The dramatic footage from the Norwegian cruise ship stranded in rough waters this past weekend was cool, but yo…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMThursday, March 28, 2019
Kerry Reid’s top picks for spring theater
Three new shows this season celebrate defiance and derring-do, from the poetic grit of Saul Bellow to the feminist s…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMMonday, March 25, 2019
In Season 3 of NBC’s afterlife comedy, “The Good Place,” the quartet of humans who’ve dubbed themselves “The Soul Squad” find out (spoiler alert!) that getting into heaven has be…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:30PMWednesday, March 20, 2019
But the performances in this touring production are fresh and assured.
This 2016 musical based on Chazz Palminteri's 1989 solo show (which itself became a Robert…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMMonday, March 18, 2019
The terrorist murders at the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand cast an understandable pall Friday night at the opening of Silk Road Rising’s latest offering. But Karim Nagi’s spirited…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:15PMMonday, March 11, 2019
Longtime patrons of Black Ensemble Theater are probably familiar with the post-curtain speech sometimes heard there. “Going to Black Ensemble is just like going to church — because there…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:10PMTuesday, March 5, 2019
The first genocide of the 20th century — the German extermination of the Herero people in what is now Namibia — remains largely ignored and untaught, at least in America. Playwright Jack…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMMonday, February 25, 2019
Chaos is dull. That which goes right is poetry,” declares Gabriel Syme, the protagonist in G.K. Chesterton’s 1908 metaphysical/satirical novel, “The Man Who Was Thursday.” But in Bil…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:30PMWednesday, February 13, 2019
As sleet and snow slashed the air outside on Tuesday night, a theatrical fire blazed onstage at the Den Theatre. In “The Total Bent,” the polymath known as Stew, perhaps best known for h…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:30PM 
