Thursday, September 7, 2017
BECOMING A “MAN†A brand-new musical about the past intersects the present with a vengeance. A world premiere from Permoveo Productions and Pride Films & Plays, The Civili…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:22PMSunday, September 3, 2017
SYMPATHY FOR SCUMBAGS How can two white-trash lovers—“small town nobodies,†as the press release puts it—“search for meaning at the height of the Great Depressi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:31PMThursday, August 31, 2017
A PRETTY WOMAN GETS AN INDECENT PROPOSAL— AND IT’S A MUSICAL! Some marriages get tested before they tie the knot. That’s trenchantly the case with naïve fiancÅ
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:04PMTuesday, August 29, 2017
UNDERCOOKED AND INNUTRITIOUS Yes, disruption continues to roil the stage in 2017. Old-fashioned make-believe dwindles into its opposite: dis-illusionment. The latest test case: Robert O 
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:10PMFriday, August 25, 2017
TUESDAYS WITH ELIZABETH IN A NOT SO PRIVATE PALACE Peter Morgan is the proverbial fly on the wall: Commanding the realm of royal fiction and other historical speculation, this British writer…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:41AMMonday, August 21, 2017
TOO MANY SAILS AND NO RUDDER How have the mighty fallen! It’s hard to believe that, 17 years after The Weir fascinated Steppenwolf Theatre audiences, not to mention all-absorbin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:51PMSunday, August 20, 2017
TOUGH LOVE GONE HAYWIRE Some people—hey, that could be a song title!—say Gypsy is the greatest Broadway musical ever written. And, calibrators of showbiz greatness, th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 11:39PMSaturday, August 19, 2017
LOVE AS A VERY MOVEABLE FEAST Love may be blind but it can certainly sing up a storm. Not to be confused with the John Cusack film about a Chicago vinyl record shop, High Fidelity: An Ope…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:28PMTuesday, August 15, 2017
MURDER—A REFUSAL TO SUBMIT? You could call Machinal a nightmare under stage lights. Still potent after nearly ninety years, Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 drama can’t be d…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:44PMSunday, August 13, 2017
SCHADENFREUDE GETS ITS SHOW We learn from fear, even if it’s the wrong lessons. Well before Mark Twain’s “Slovenly Peter,†let alone Edward Gorey, Roald Dahl or Tim…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:49AMFriday, August 4, 2017
WHEN LOVE SEEMED ALL A half century can wreak a ton of change, especially when it takes us from 1967’s Summer of Love to 2017’s Winter of Trump. It’s impossible to imagi…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:48PMTuesday, August 1, 2017
DRIVEN DANCES FOR JOY AND JUSTICE Their “dance card†is filled to bursting. Departing from Black Ensemble Theater’s usual blast-from-the-past musical reclamations (Nichola…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:27PMThursday, July 27, 2017
PARIS AS A PAS DE DEUX The opening image—a baby grand piano under the Arc de Triomphe—suggests the rest. The hopeful harbinger of a new normality, the beloved 1951 film An A…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:32PMSunday, July 23, 2017
MEMORIES OF MEXICO, LUZIA UNLEASHES A RAIN OF JOY The Cirque du Soleil just made a run for the border—and not the Canadian one. Ignoring the United States (a favorite activity of m…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:22AMFriday, July 14, 2017
BLUES WITHOUT NOTES It takes a play to raise a village. Here it’s East Harlem, a killing field with 8 homeless shelters, 36 drug and alcohol treatment centers, and 37 mental health tr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:13PMThursday, July 13, 2017
SOMETHING SILLY; NOT QUITE ROTTEN BUT HARDLY FRESH What is it about William Shakespeare that inspires lesser authors (namely, everyone else) to try to take him down? George Bernard Shaw spen…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:14PMSunday, July 9, 2017
DOMESTIC DISRUPTION From the start, a classic curtained proscenium conceals the utter disorder that detonates on Steppenwolf Theatre’s sprawling mainstage. Hir, now in a Chicago pr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:59PMFriday, July 7, 2017
BIGOTRY AT THE BURLESQUE Some swan songs will never sound sweet. Take the fade-out of female impersonators in Elizabethan drama. Or the final white thespian to wear blackface. Or—well…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:48PMTuesday, June 27, 2017
HAPPY DAY’S JOURNEY INTO LOVE It’s a dramatic “one-offâ€: The same Connecticut domicile supplies the site of two enormously different plays by the same author. If Eu…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:53PMSunday, June 25, 2017
A KURT WEILL COMEBACK Here’s another triumph worth the wait. Recently revived, City Lit’s London Assurance took 120 years to return—hilariously—to a Chicago stage…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:34PMSaturday, June 24, 2017
REST ASSURED: THE LIES LOVE LIVES ON You can’t keep a good comedy down. Wildly popular in its time, Dion Boucicault’s 1841 London Assurance is a mating romp that, inexplicably,…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:21PMWednesday, June 21, 2017
IT GETS WORSE TOO Teenage suicide due to cyberbullying deserves its storytelling: In just 70 minutes, Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill’s Late Company seems to cover the bases…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:57PMMonday, June 19, 2017
SONGS FROM THE BOTTOM OF A BOTTLE Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre really loves the sad songs of Jacques Brel. First came A Jacques Brel Revue: Songs of War and Love in 2005. Three years later th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:18PMSunday, June 18, 2017
THE WHITE WHALE RETURNS! You can’t keep a good cetacean down. Buoyed by the success of their 2015 inaugural production and national tour, Lookingglass Theatre Company (in association …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:20PMFriday, June 16, 2017
THE STAR WHO WAS A CONSTELLATION “Stardust†was the name for what made Bette Davis shine. With playwright Jessica Sherr’s solo recreation of more than big eyes and flou…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:32PMSunday, June 11, 2017
PROVOCATION PLUS DISRUPTION— 2017 GETS ITS PLAY! Ever since artistic director Anna Shapiro took over Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Chicago mecca hasn’t been afraid to upset …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:58PMSaturday, June 10, 2017
IS IT OK FOR PC TO FIGHT BS IN D.C. at the V.G.? (NOT WHEN IT’S TV…) There’s a cable series on the Investigation Discovery channel called Fear Thy Neighbor: It recr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:14PMFriday, June 9, 2017
DANCE BEGINS AT 40 For Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, it’s time to take stock. This 100-minute evening does it all and well. It’s as much a showcase for seven seminal choreograp…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:07PMSunday, May 21, 2017
A CLASSIC GOES GLOBAL It’s a marriage made in theater heaven: With a newly great Great Expectations, two very different Chicago theaters find common ground. The result is a cross-cult…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:52PMFriday, May 19, 2017
NO TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL A broken, cash-challenged clan go on a road trip to California that somehow heals their hurt. It’s not the Joads, colorful Okies in a Ford pick-up, fleeing the du…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:19PMMonday, May 15, 2017
C’EST SI BON! She was infamous for her 1927 “costume†in Un Vent de Folie—a girdle of bananas. In 1934 she became the first African American woman to have a major r…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:09PM 
