Monday, August 22, 2016
TAME MAME STILL GETS ACCLAIM Few nicknames carry the impact of “Mame,” the free-spirited super-aunt. Appearing first in gay author Patrick Dennis’s best-selling 1954 novel,…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 05:45PMSunday, August 21, 2016
DANCERS DO GOOD BY MAKING ART For a quarter century—since 1991—one summer night of nights in Chicago has raised funds to fight HIV, assist the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and 30 other ser…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 06:40PMWednesday, August 17, 2016
THEATER NOIR EXPOSES A COLLABORATIVE CRIME WAVE Making its U.S. debut at the Greenhouse Theater Center, the solo saga Bloodshot, by Chicago native Douglas Post, feels as world weary and visc…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 05:21PMMonday, August 15, 2016
BRECHT FORCES YIN ONTO YANG A strong, often infuriating, truth about the protest plays of Bertolt Brecht is how much the socialist playwright pushes the plot beyond the ending: He ends up ac…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 10:16PMMonday, August 8, 2016
HIS HEART IS CRYING, CRYING The latest rouser in Black Ensemble Theater’s 40th anniversary celebration/season, The Jackie Wilson Story, a retrospective on an R&B Legend, showcases terr…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 05:10PMSunday, August 7, 2016
THE GLOBE’S STUNNING PRODUCTION HIGHLIGHTS SHAKESPEARE’S PLEA FOR DIGNITY AS MUCH AS MERCY A decade ago a Chicago critic notoriously concluded his review of The Merchant of Venice…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 10:36PMJAMES CAMERON MEETS CIRQUE DU SOLEIL Cirque du Soleil writes a new chapter in make-believe with Toruk – The First Flight, a not so typical two-hour fantasy inspired (but not based on) Jame…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 02:56PMTuesday, July 26, 2016
A MASON/DIXON CATHARSIS REPRISES ITS SUCCESS Can white trash/peckerwood/country cracker/Dixie doodles rise above their rotten roots? Byhalia, Mississippi is not just a place or a title but a…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 03:35PMMonday, July 25, 2016
AN EX-SLAVE BREAKS NEW CHAINS Eager to be relevant but not quite succeeding, Thomas Klingenstein’s Douglass, a world premiere by the american vicarious at Theater Wit, is nonetheless a val…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 01:56PMFriday, July 22, 2016
A FAR FROM COSMETIC MUSICAL MAKEOVER In the late James Kirkwood’s Legends!, two feuding divas–played on a 1986 national tour by theatrical goddesses Carol Channing and Mary Martin&#…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 06:53AMFriday, July 15, 2016
HIPOCRACY BEGINS AT HOME In theater revenge is best served quickly. That’s a virtue in David Alex’s 80-minute family drama, now detonating four times a week at Chicago’s Redtwist Theat…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 10:18AMSunday, July 10, 2016
COLORFUL CHARACTERS AIN’T ENOUGH Between Riverside and Crazy is a 2015 slice of strife from Stephen Adley Guirgis (perpetrator of The Motherf**ker with the Hat and Jesus Hopped The ‘A’…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 09:44PMA JEW WALKS INTO A COMMUNIST MEETING… Sometimes whistle-blowing can echo from the past. It’s never too late for a timely reminder that ignorance is no excuse. A 95-minute solo show …
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 07:03PMSaturday, July 2, 2016
THE LIES THAT PASS FOR LOVE Many years ago, a half hour into the Body Politic Theatre’s revival of The Importance of Being Earnest a woman behind me very softly threw up. It was done so ef…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 05:50PMThursday, June 30, 2016
FREEDOM BEHIND BARS: THE UNREACHABLE STAR JUST GOT REACHED A skeptic might argue that Man of La Mancha succeeds because it lifts the guilt of anyone who never read Don Quixote. (Two hours in…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 02:40PMTuesday, June 28, 2016
KEEPING COMPANY–SONDHEIM’S BITTERSWEET BEST It’s the first musical in Writers Theatre’s sumptuous new $30 million-dollar home in Glencoe, a light-loving complex with a more spaci…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 05:52PMMonday, June 20, 2016
BIKINI BOTTOM HITS THE HEIGHTS Upfront confession: I’ve never seen Nickelodeon’s 17-year-old SpongeBob SquarePants animation series. But my ignorance of this aquatic Sesame Street and it…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 07:55PMSunday, June 19, 2016
THE CANDY COUPLE “The world belongs to the fools who dare to dream”: Reprising the crowd pleasure of music-hall euphoria and pantomime cut-ups with a charming quintet of Cockney buskers,…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 03:32PMTuesday, June 14, 2016
OUT OF CONTEXT BUT EASY TO ADMIRE William Finn, a gay songwriter with wit and warmth (and second only to Sondheim), writes story ballads and situational numbers that teach as much as touch. …
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 04:02PMSunday, June 12, 2016
CORKING UP OR SELLING OUT? Living up to its title billing, Lookingglass Theatre Company’s world premiere Thaddeus and Slocum: A Vaudeville Adventure is a rampage down Memory Lane. Their 13…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 07:56PMFriday, June 10, 2016
SO BEYOND BAD THAT YOU’LL BE TAPPED OUT Half-baked, heavy-handed, overlong, poorly plotted, wretchedly sung, scenically sterile, contrived and clichéd, witless and mindless, and minus…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 07:37PMEV’RY MOUNTAIN GETS CLIMBED AGAIN It’s fitting that Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final collaboration is a tribute to the art and craft they served so well—music and singing. Like Ma…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 05:46AMWednesday, June 8, 2016
THE LONE EAGLE VERSUS THE LONE WOLF 81 years ago, everything conspired to make the “trial of the century” engrossing entertainment. (Actually, it was the second trial of the century̵…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 03:42PMMonday, June 6, 2016
LOVERLY The most insidiously satirical moment in Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore comes when a lowly sailor and his captain must instantly switch places when we learn that the latter…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 06:42PMFriday, June 3, 2016
SUBVERSION, DISRUPTION—AND PRETENSION Caught is just what Gertrude Stein said of Oakland: “When you get there, there’s no there there.” A series of metaphysical jokes played on the a…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 08:04PMThursday, June 2, 2016
CAPTIVATING VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF LOVE What a feat happens seven times a week in Steppenwolf’s upstairs theater! Usually critics tell you to take their words for what they saw–but…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 05:42PMWednesday, June 1, 2016
A RECIPE FOR BETTER THEATER It’s no accident that this bold play, the latest offering from Northwestern University professor Rebecca Gilman, happens in Wisconsin circa 1976. The story of …
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 11:33PMTuesday, May 31, 2016
INTERROGATING AN AUDIENCE It’s the afterschool special from hell: The North Pool is that rare you-can-hear-a-pin-drop play. In a mere 80 minutes, playwright Rajiv Joseph shrewdly and sharp…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 08:47AMMonday, May 23, 2016
BINGEWATCHING THE BARD “Tug of war”–a child’s game that mutates into an adult’s nightmare; it’s an apt title for Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s marathon of Bard his…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 01:31PMSunday, May 22, 2016
AN UNCRITICAL MATING COMEDY Familiar gay fare, The Boys Upstairs, a 2009 rouser by Jason Mitchell, revels in industrial-strength crowd-pleasing. Pride Films and Plays’ two-hour funfest is …
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 01:38PMThursday, May 19, 2016
A DOCUMENTARY DRAMA DELIVERS Chicago is currently witnessing two productions about photojournalists haunted by their work. TimeLine Theatre’s Chimerica offers a flawed but fascinating 180-…
Linked From Stage and Cinema at 03:48PM 
