As anyone who has lost a loved one can attest, memories are both friend and foe. We want to remember and fear forgetting. After all, if we can't find them in memory, then they are truly lost…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:44PMIt's a long way from Broadway to Kingsbury Avenue. But at one point in "Undressed," the new sketch show at the Mission Theater, the echoes of Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home" ring loud and clear.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:28PMIt's a long way from Broadway to Kingsbury Avenue. But at one point in "Undressed," the new sketch show at the Mission Theater, the echoes of Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home" ring loud and clear.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:28PMThe Prozorov sisters pine for Moscow as their world turns Paris Green. Throughout Geoff Button's cunning and muscular production of "Three Sisters" with The Hypocrites, verdant shades remini…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMThe Prozorov sisters pine for Moscow as their world turns Paris Green. Throughout Geoff Button's cunning and muscular production of "Three Sisters" with The Hypocrites, verdant shades remini…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMSo much depends upon a red child's wagon, glazed with saltwater beside the white neurotics. True, William Carlos Williams doesn't figure into Terrence McNally's 1991 play "Lips Together, Tee…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:55PMAs those of us who have recently reached the midcentury point know all too well, when those older folks from your childhood told you "it all goes so fast," they weren't kidding. Sometimes it…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:28PMIn a New York Times article on April 17 titled "Why Americans Don't Want to Soak the Rich," writer Neil Irwin pointed out that "Americans' desire to soak the rich has diminished even as the …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:28PMErnestine Harris, the matriarch of a music-loving family in small-town Mississippi, has left this earthly realm. No fan of the typical weepy memorial, she's charged her loved ones with throw…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:43PMYears ago, the humorist Roy Blount Jr. observed that a cat wasn't enough like having another person in the house, whereas a dog was too much like having another person in the house. He didn'…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:43PMAny play that uses a young person's death as its opening narrative gambit could fairly be accused of milking the audience's sympathy ducts. But what if the kid in question isn't all that sym…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:42PMSeeing Elaine Romero's "Graveyard of Empires" at 16th Street Theater on the 150th anniversary of General Lee's surrender at Appomattox added a touch of poignancy to this poetic and surprisin…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:01AMSeeing Elaine Romero's "Graveyard of Empires" at 16th Street Theater on the 150th anniversary of General Lee's surrender at Appomattox added a touch of poignancy to this poetic and surprisin…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:01AMTodd Bauer's "The Bird Feeder Doesn't Know" provides yet another entry in the burgeoning field of plays about grown children confronting the frailties — physical and emotional — of their…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:47PMIn a theater landscape littered with productions of Charles Mee's pop culture mashups of Greek tragedies, Jean Giradoux can't get any respect. But Giradoux's 1935 elegant tragicomedy, "The T…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:47PMIn "The Third Man," Orson Welles' Harry Lime famously observes, "In Switzerland they had brotherly love — they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo c…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:54PMIf Ed Wood had lived in 17th-century France, he might have been a bit like Valere, the effusive idiot at the heart of David Hirson's "La Bete" who crosses verbal swords with a fellow playwri…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:55PMTony Kushner's 1988 re-imagining of Pierre Corneille's 1636 play "L'Illusion Comique" is a tricky beast to pull off. Its earnest meditations on the tensions between romantic imagination and …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:55PMTony Kushner's 1988 re-imagining of Pierre Corneille's 1636 play "L'Illusion Comique" is a tricky beast to pull off. Its earnest meditations on the tensions between romantic imagination and …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:55PMVigilante black comedies aren't a new idea. Heck, some of 'em let you sing along. (Hello, "9 to 5" and "First Wives Club.") But the tricky part is getting the tone right. When mordant wit tu…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:11PMDylan Costello's Hollywood drama "The Glass Protege" has a split personality — and not just because it jumps between 1949 and 1989. In part, it seems derived from Kenneth Anger's "Hollywoo…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMLong ago, during one of those late-night chin-wags beloved of self-conscious undergrads, a dorm-mate erupted into a tirade against Sophocles' Antigone, whom she deemed "a useless martyr." An…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:48PMFull disclosure: I've never made it all the way through "The Lord of the Rings" — on the page or on screen. My notions of Arthurian legend derive from seeing "Monty Python and the Holy Gra…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMIn a widely shared article on the website The Archipelago last month, autistic writer Sarah Kurchak took to task the "anti-vaxxers" who have used the long-discredited notion that vaccines c…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:17AMIn a widely shared article on the website The Archipelago last month, autistic writer Sarah Kurchak took to task the "anti-vaxxers" who have used the long-discredited notion that vaccines c…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 11:17AMIn the past, Akvavit Theatre's offerings from the contemporary Nordic theatrical canon have felt decidedly on the bleak side, steeped in black humor and a frozen vein of static desperation. …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 06:00AMConsider the lowly tardigrades. They neither toil nor spin. But in "Circuscope," these tiny, water-dwelling creatures come into glorious focus through artists who spin, dance, juggle, drum, …
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:54PMAmy Timberlake's "One Came Home" has a distinct whiff of "True Grit" in its bones, with a dash of Ian McEwan's "Atonement." But in Lifeline Theatre's world premiere adaptation by Jessica Wri…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:32PMThe title of Madhuri Shekar's family comedy, "A Nice Indian Boy," is a sly feint. On the surface, it appears that the nice Indian boy in question is Naveen Gavaskar, the soft-spoken only son…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:37AMSomething unusual is happening onstage at Black Ensemble Theater: No one is singing.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:07PMSomething unusual is happening onstage at Black Ensemble Theater: No one is singing. If you've always viewed the House That Jackie Taylor Built as the place to go for roof-raising musical bi…
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:07PM
