When it comes to piano cabaret, I’m spoiled; I’ve attended the last several years of Justin Hayford’s informative, charming cabaret series at Davenport’s. Hayford’s a compelling st…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PMRECOMMENDED Modernist composer Charles Ives may be one of the most famous unknown composers in American music. Largely ignored during his lifetime, Ives’ innovative work continues to influ…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:00PMRECOMMENDED Before writing his breakout hit, “The Glass Menagerie,” in 1944, Tennessee Williams also worked on another memory play, one that he wouldn’t finish until 1977. R…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMRECOMMENDED Marriage is challenging; a marriage between two people whose belief systems are fundamentally different might be doomed. Yet Charles Darwin and his wife Emma managed to overcome …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:00PMRECOMMENDED Hungarian-born playwright Ferenc Molnar loved this country enough to begin citizenship proceedings. But he had no love for capitalist deal-making; his sharp criticism of American…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:00AMRECOMMENDED The World War II massacre in Jedwabne, Poland was long considered to be one of the worst Nazi war crimes; hundreds of Polish Jews were trapped in a barn and burned alive. But whi…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMRECOMMENDED Creators want the best for the things they make; every song composed should win a Grammy, every book can be the great American novel. Given that artists always dream big, it’s …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:30PMRECOMMENDED When it comes to community and contact, city dwellers take our myriad options for granted. We surround ourselves with like-minded people, and when our minds fail to meet, we move…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMRECOMMENDED Napoleon once said, “What is history, but a fable agreed upon?” We can never really know what the “truth” is where history’s concerned; maybe it’s just a fanciful st…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:00PMRECOMMENDED Eleanor Marx (Dana Black) is the heir to her father Karl’s throne, if such a thing is possible in socialism. She translates her father’s work and travels the lecture circuit…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMRECOMMENDED Sexual orientation is all too often reduced to an either/or binary—straight or gay, one or the other. Bisexual or pansexual people are presented by both straight and gay commun…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMHalf of the genius of talent is an artist’s ability to get others to support his work. Despite his stunning musical ability, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart failed to cultivate patrons who could s…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMAin’t no doubt, it’s a rough world out there. We’re surrounded by horrific events on a daily basis; it’s enough to make us permanently crawl under a rock. But we don’t; we find co…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PMRECOMMENDED The well-intended cliché “God never gives you more than you can stand,” offers precious little comfort for the world’s atheists. Stephen Karam’s latest deftly examines…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:00PMThings may not change quickly out in Colorado, but its citizens know how to adjust when it makes their community more livable; witness the state’s recent pot legalization. Eric Schmiedl’…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:00PMPhoto: Lee Miller RECOMMENDED In 1968, eleven-year-old Mary Bell was convicted of strangling two toddlers, shocking the English public and forcing them to re-evaluate their attitudes toward …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PMIn his writings on punishment, German philosopher Immanuel Kant stressed that punishment must fit the crime and that the criminal should not be used as a means to the state’s end. If left…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PMRECOMMENDED Each new scene in Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’ chronicle of family dysfunction and racism is greeted with the progressively louder sound of cicadas, the insects that rise to the sur…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:32PMRECOMMENDED Adaptations are tricky. The choices are endless: what to leave in, what to leave out. The 1861 Charles Dickens novel, which received mixed reviews when first published, remains a…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMRECOMMENDED When I reviewed “500 Clown and the Elephant Deal” four years ago, I remember wishing I knew more about Madam Barker, the sexy, charming “vocalist of the apocalypse…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:36AMI waited for it, and I wasn’t disappointed. I knew Neil LaBute’s latest could not be just a simple story about a man’s love for his late wife. There had to be a nasty wrench in the…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:00AMRECOMMENDED The insanely prolific, Pulitzer prize-nominated Theresa Rebeck, she of “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” fame, tries her hand at Greek tragedy. And while Rebeck captur…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:38PMRECOMMENDED After careening from the elegant wit of Wilde to the absurdist work of Beckett, Irish theater of the 1990s saw radical changes. Ensembles focused on gritty, darkly humorous urban…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:26AMHero cops Alex (Nick Mikula) and Hal (Mark Pracht) face investigation over rape charges filed by Hope (Kate Black-Spence). Barbara Lhota’s script careens back and forth between the two cop…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:08AMRECOMMENDED More than 16 million Americans served in World War II; in contrast, United States forces in Iraq numbered 112,000 in 2010 to 2011. While we may still be mired in conflict, we are…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:43PMRECOMMENDED Most family dynamics are difficult; they’re even tougher when family members are flawed beyond redemption. Playwright Rhett Rossi explores the difficulty of forgiveness, captur…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:05AMBenjamin Franklin once said “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days”; that’s the premise of Larry Shue’s critically panned but popularly acclaimed annoying-guest-comes-to…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:47PMRECOMMENDED There’s nothing wrong with living a driven, goal-centered life, unless the people in your life don’t share your goals. Julia Brownell offers a compelling look at a family tha…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:31PMRECOMMENDED The capricious nature of the insect world provides an excellent metaphor for our society’s savagery in Steep’s compelling look at a family in crisis. The fragile ecosystem of…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:08PMRECOMMENDED There’s nothing like a good plague scenario to set our imaginations whirring: we all wonder how we’d survive the zombie invasion or the next Black Death. Carrie Barrett’s n…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:33PMRECOMMENDED Just in time for Pride and the death rattle of DOMA, Bailiwick Chicago offers a heartfelt portrait of a family redefining itself after a loss as its members fail to connect. It�…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:37PM