Monday, July 23, 2018
Tackling a musical adaptation of “The Taming of the Shrew” in the nearly 70-year-old footsteps of “Kiss Me, Kate” takes chutzpah. While Cole Porter can rest easy that “Shrew’d!,�…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:30PMThursday, July 19, 2018
“This is the Plains, a state of mind, right, some spiritual affliction, like the blues” says Barbara, the eldest daughter of the Oklahoma Weston clan in Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage C…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:05AMFriday, July 6, 2018
After the 2016 massacre of 49 people at Orlando’s Pulse dance club, fresh attention landed on a tragedy in the gay community decades earlier. On June 24, 1973, an arsonist set fire to the …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00PMTuesday, July 3, 2018
“Easy as pie” doesn’t apply to the life of Jenna, the anguished-but-still-warmhearted baking whiz at the heart of “Waitress.” But then, the colloquialism refers not to the act of c…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:30PMMonday, June 25, 2018
Is “You Can’t Take It With You,” that nuttiest of chestnuts in the classic American comedy canon, the play we need right now? Arguably, no. Given the current stakes for our democracy, …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:15AMFriday, June 8, 2018
Combining Shakespeare and songcraft is a Broadway tradition — whether it be “Kiss Me, Kate” or “Something Rotten!” But Len Cariou’s “Broadway & the Bard” brings the two toget…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:20AMThursday, June 7, 2018
Smart horror is turning out to be the piquant flavor of the season in smaller theater offerings. On the heels of Ike Holter’s “The Light Fantastic” at Jackalope (running through June 1…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:15PMMonday, June 4, 2018
If Virginia Woolf’s time-traveling, gender-shifting “Orlando” had crash-landed in the French courts of Louis XV and Louis XVI, the result might be a bit like Canadian playwright Mark B…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:05PMWednesday, May 23, 2018
When spring comes so late, we know it’s even harder to take time away from beaches and barbecues, street fairs and sunshine. But great theater happens year-round in Chicago. Here are 25 pi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMMonday, May 21, 2018
If class and social status determine how we live, why shouldn’t it determine how we die? That premise is the jumping-off point for Lucas Baisch’s “Refrigerator,” now in a world premi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMThursday, May 10, 2018
When are penguins — those adorable, tuxedo-clad flightless waddlers — the stuff of controversy? When they’re in a same-sex relationship, of course. The true story of Roy and Silo, two …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:00PMMonday, May 7, 2018
Nothing has changed, but everything is changing. That’s the first gut reaction to “Columbinus,” the docudrama about the 1999 attacks at Columbine High School that ended with 15 dead, i…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:55PMThursday, May 3, 2018
The young artists of Albany Park Theater Project have explored the theme of “home” many times in the past, including in their celebrated production of “Home/Land,” which looked at th…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:30PMTuesday, April 24, 2018
When it first opened in 1989, “Grand Hotel” won more plaudits for Tommy Tune’s stylish direction and choreography than for its score (by Robert Wright, George Forrest and Maury Yeston)…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:00AMMonday, April 23, 2018
The American dream of home ownership is indelibly entwined with our shameful history of racial discrimination. That’s particularly true in Chicago, which has served as a laboratory for seg…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:30PMMonday, April 2, 2018
Caught in a poetic no man’s land between Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and Wilfred Owen’s grim battlefield verses, Stephen Massicotte’s World War I-er…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PMThursday, March 22, 2018
“What does a woman want?” Sigmund Freud famously asked. If he’d taken a glance at 21st-century advertising featuring women, he might well have answered “salad!” The Hairpin, a femi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:15AMMonday, March 19, 2018
The recording studio as the crucible of creative dreams figures in a lot of plays and movies. Sam Phillips’ legendary Sun Studios alone gave us the jukebox musical “Million Dollar Quarte…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:30PMMonday, March 12, 2018
“The most defiant nose in France” gets a contemporary makeover in BoHo Theatre’s “Cyrano.” But though Edmond Rostand’s script has been sculpted and contemporized in places, the o…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:20PMFriday, March 9, 2018
Much as we might prefer living in less interesting times, Sideshow Theatre Company’s opening of Mia Chung’s “You for Me for You” — on the night that the White House announced a mee…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:15AMMonday, February 26, 2018
Nearly a year after his death at 90, Chuck Berry is getting the bio-musical treatment at Black Ensemble Theater. The man who helped create rock and roll music (as well as writing, well, “R…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:25PMThursday, February 22, 2018
The gritty romance of the war photographer/correspondent has long cast a spell for writers and filmmakers. (Think “The Year of Living Dangerously” or “The Bang Bang Club.”) Often, th…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMMonday, February 5, 2018
The premise is familiar — a young man confronts his own past (including long-held secrets) in the aftermath of a parent’s death. But like the celestial satellite that provides part of it…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:40PMWednesday, January 31, 2018
Where have you gone, Princess Celestia? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. And we need the Elements of Harmony now more than ever. If you got those references, then you’ve probably s…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:05PMMonday, January 29, 2018
During the Great Feminist Backlash of the 1980s (not to be confused with the feminist backlash in every other decade), a Newsweek cover story proclaimed that a single white woman over 40 wit…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:30PMTuesday, January 23, 2018
On the surface, children’s birthday parties are loud, joyous affairs. But if you’ve had a child, or been a child, you know how fraught they can be. They provide us with some of our earli…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:30AMWednesday, January 17, 2018
Not long after Oprah Winfrey’s rousing speech at the Golden Globes, a meme began circulating on social media showing her at previous Hollywood functions with Harvey Weinstein, bearing the …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:00PMMonday, January 8, 2018
Thought pieces abound on the newest generation of young adults — the first raised entirely in the age of the internet. What do they think about the world and their place in it? Whether tha…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:25PMMonday, December 18, 2017
In a year when the political and international drama went up to 11, Chicago theaters offered up a raucous and rousing array of productions, from world premieres to classic revivals. Here are…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:00AMFriday, December 1, 2017
Through political turmoil, social unrest and roller-coaster economic developments, one thing remains true: There’s always a bull market for alternative facts. Fakery-as-commodity in many h…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:50PMWednesday, November 22, 2017
Attention, residents of Whoville! It’s that time of year again. And while we know you’re busy with your snoof and your fuzzles, your tringlers and trappings, don’t forget to take time …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AM 
