Tuesday, January 10, 2017
The old '60s saw, "Never trust anyone over 30," worked off the assumption that people (and perhaps by extension, institutions) grow more conservative as they age. But in the case of Pegasus …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:10PMTuesday, January 3, 2017
Sketch comedy holds a mirror up to human nature as much as Shakespeare does. It just happens to be a funhouse mirror. And as Steve Martin told us years ago, "Comedy is not pretty." In 2016, …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:40PMWednesday, December 21, 2016
In a "best of times/worst of times" year (and really — every year feels that way to somebody, somewhere), Chicago's theater offerings continued to provide a cultural balm for troubled time…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:02PMTuesday, December 20, 2016
Ebenezer Scrooge isn't the only one haunted at the holidays. All the lights and tinsel can't quite hide that for many, this is a time for bittersweet personal reflections, poignant bursts of…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:54PMTuesday, December 13, 2016
Amid the sugarplums and good cheer, dyspeptic holiday-themed diversions also abound this time of year. For the third year in a row, the Goodman Theatre gets into the anti-holiday show act wi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00AMTuesday, December 6, 2016
True to holiday cabaret tradition, Chicago actor and singer Christine Bunuan fills her solo-show stocking with songs ranging from naughty to nice, sardonic to sentimental. But what Bunuan al…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:21PMMonday, December 5, 2016
There's a vague sense of dissonance from the beginning in Remy Bumppo's production of "Pygmalion." We know it's set in 1912. But why is there a midcentury radio on, playing pop hits of a lat…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:44AMWednesday, November 23, 2016
Finding magic in the tragic is a time-honored tradition in children's literature. No one understood that better than J.M. Barrie. Peter Pan represents the triumph of denial over mortality. A…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:18PMReady or not, the holidays are upon us. Whether you need a way to reconnect with friends and family or just a break from the shopping and stress, we've got you covered with theater, dance an…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00AMMonday, November 21, 2016
Like its eponymous sea creature, Jake Jeppson's "Turtle" spent some time treading water. Originally slated for Next Theatre — before that Evanston institution went belly-up two years ago �…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:14PMTuesday, November 8, 2016
After Prince died, Chevrolet paid its respects with an ad featuring a vintage red Corvette, above which floated the phrase "Baby, that was much too fast" and "1958-2016." "Speed" is the them…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:40PMMonday, November 7, 2016
Charles Johnson's celebrated National Book Award-winning 1990 novel, "Middle Passage," reconfigured classic allegorical stories of 19th-century seafaring life, a la Herman Melville, through …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:24PMThursday, October 27, 2016
Made of spit and spirit, cunning and chaos, deliverance and destruction, Kristiana Rae Colon's "Octagon" takes apart the world of slam poetry with bravado and brio. Though at times self-indu…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:46PMTuesday, October 25, 2016
What's a "Saturn return?" Think of it as Mercury retrograde on steroids. In astrological terms, a Saturn return refers to the ringed planet orbiting back to the exact place in the sky that i…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:38AMWednesday, October 5, 2016
Though written in 1957, Harold Pinter's "The Room" — his first produced script — might well be the best thing to see to understand the U.K.'s Brexit vote earlier this year. In Dado's sta…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:53AMTuesday, October 4, 2016
Three years ago, "How We Got On," Idris Goodwin's affectionate portrait of 1980s teenagers learning to rap in the middle of suburbia, got its local premiere in suburbia — Lake Forest's Cit…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:42PMWednesday, September 28, 2016
Akvavit Theatre's mission — staging contemporary Nordic plays — often takes them far away from the familiar dyspepsia of Ibsen and Strindberg. But their latest offering, Sofia Freden's "…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:26AMWednesday, September 21, 2016
Calling all Baker Street Irregulars: The place to be this fall in Chicago is Lifeline Theatre. Christopher M. Walsh's "Miss Holmes" offers a cunning and highly enjoyable gender-bent take on …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:01AMMonday, September 19, 2016
The clash between past and present, haves and have-nots, has taken root in recent years through plays that use the trope of a down-on-his-luck friend or relative moving in — and wreaking h…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:45PMWednesday, September 14, 2016
A play about the clash between old-school feminism and a female tea party-esque presidential candidate should resonate particularly well during this highly polarized election season. But Geo…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:31PMYes, there's the Big Show Everybody Is Talking About. Let's face it, if you don't have your "Hamilton" tickets already, you're probably out of luck, unless you want to sell a kidney in retur…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMFriday, September 9, 2016
The late humorist Florence King, one of the greatest in the grand tradition of genteel-but-acidic Southern curmudgeons, once observed, "Sanity holds no charm in the South." No less a persona…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:57PMTuesday, August 30, 2016
It's hard to name a living playwright who is more influential — yet more routinely ignored by major theaters — than Maria Irene Fornes. The 86-year-old Cuban-born avatar of the avant-gar…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:19PMSunday, August 28, 2016
On a clear day, you can see that loss is forever. So who wouldn't prefer some mental clouds to cover the painful truth? Denial-as-survival is one of the frayed threads tying together the fal…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:13PMFriday, August 26, 2016
Stop me if you've heard this one before: a parent has died and the estranged offspring gather to rehash the past, complete with recriminations, secrets and lots of booze. No, it's not "Augus…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:59PMThursday, August 18, 2016
When rehearsal is over and the stage lights dim, a lot of Chicago stage artists head straight to the comforts of their own homes. But what about out-of-town talent? A number of Chicago's maj…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMTuesday, July 19, 2016
Transitioning is hard, as anyone who has stood by a loved one in the process of living as their true gender (rather than the one on their birth certificate) can attest. But what if the perso…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:13PMWednesday, July 13, 2016
First things first: you're not losing your mind. David Carl's show, now in a short run (it ends Sunday) at Chicago Shakespeare as part of the Shakespeare 400 celebration, was originally mark…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:57PMTuesday, July 12, 2016
Writing a musical around the stages of marriage after Stephen Sondheim's "Company" is a tough proposition. In the words of another Sondheim classic, "You Gotta Get a Gimmick." You can go cut…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:36PMMonday, July 11, 2016
An actor walks into a restaurant. He says, "I'll take the extra-large order of a Dream Deferred. Hold the ambition." The manager says, "Get to work. You've got tables." That may not be exact…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:12PMSunday, July 10, 2016
A working man joins his comrades in the woods to rehearse a "most lamentable comedy." But someone's made an ass of him — literally. "Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee," cries out one of his f…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:51PM 
