Tuesday, February 12, 2013
It might seem intimidating to have to sit through a Shakespeare play, but this one is worth a watch. There are enough twists and turns to draw you into the world of court intrigue and absorb…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 04:38PM[SHARE]Monday, February 11, 2013
Screen Door promises *a combination of video, theater, and music performance to deconstruct movies into their composite visual and aural parts.* Their end result, thankfully, is a very poli…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 10:04PM[SHARE]Disconnect is an entertaining look inside an Indian call-center. But like the call center itself, there is a lot going on here, and in the clamor some focus gets lost. (read more...)
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 07:59PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 10, 2013
ATC has done a masterful job in bringing this script to updated life since its 2005 premiere. With surreal style and a surprising amount of levity and compassion, columbinus explores Columbi…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 06:32PM[SHARE]This is a new production. The set and costumes were designed by Vicki Mortimer's sets and costumes are majestic, moving us from cathedral to neighborhood street to cobbler house to townsqua…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 04:40PM[SHARE]Saturday, February 9, 2013
Steppenwolf's mostly-distinguished cast does their best, but toil under the subpar script and Austin Pendleton's baffling direction. Also, the dialects are so terrible I couldn't tell if the…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 07:12PM[SHARE]We recommend the Successors for anyone from Chicago or anyone with a family that fights over politics. This political comedy is an inside look into the Mayor's dirty laundry. (read more...)
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 05:21PM[SHARE]There's potentially a good play in here, with some trimming of the overlong scenes and some fuller backstory or context. Right now, it feels longer than its two hours of stage time and fails…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 03:39PM[SHARE]Friday, February 8, 2013
Maybe opening night is like the first pancake--it's a test and should be thrown away. Alas, that happened, all too forgettably even for this transience, on as the improvisers failed to push …
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 09:23PM[SHARE]There isn't an iota of seriousness in this comedy, which is just as it should be. At times the humor gets a bit slapstick, perhaps more so than avid Wodehouse fans will be comfortable with, …
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 08:16PM[SHARE]ShawChicago's method of production is staged readings by primarily Equity Actors. The bare-bone show puts the words center stage and is a reminder why George Bernard Shaw is a legend. Widow…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 05:47PM[SHARE]Thursday, February 7, 2013
The lack of clarity about what emotion this show is trying to evoke is ultimately what makes it a less than enjoyable theater experience. Perhaps with focusing on just the 'horror' aspect of…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 05:48PM[SHARE]Wednesday, February 6, 2013
"Happiness" is one of those shows that makes us grateful to playwrights like Mickle Maher for gifting us their creativity, and to casts like this for their labor of love. See this show and y…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 09:51PM[SHARE]Christine Sherrill, as Norma Desmond, puts in a bravura performance, belting out the ballads like "With One Look" with enough power to shake the chandeliers. (read more...)
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 09:10PM[SHARE]Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill is a beautifully, devastating musical biography of a legend. We've lost Billie Holiday but for a limited engagement we have Alexis J. Rogers. This la…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 06:20PM[SHARE]Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Director Michael Halberstam and his crew have amped of the sex and dealt with the out-of-date aspects by giving the show a stylized, slightly surreal edge, making it almost fantasy. This "S…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 01:25PM[SHARE]insert picture with top margin and right margin of 5px, and bottom margins of 10px. Sweet Charity Book by Neil…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 01:16PM[SHARE]Sunday, February 3, 2013
Despite the lack of storyline sustenance, The Baker's Wife (in Concert) is a sincere and tasty surprise. (read more...)
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 07:29PM[SHARE]After curtain call, Cathy Rigby flies over the audience. Two seats down from me, a little girl reached her arms up to catch the shower of sparkles. When the lights went up, I (the jaded crit…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 11:16AM[SHARE]Saturday, February 2, 2013
By the time the grand finale rolls around, you'll be wiping away a tear while smiling at the giddy wonder of the Magnificents. (read more...)
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 05:35PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
In the end, David Hare's play feels like a carefully scripted rhetoric competition. The performances may be well wrought, but Skylight has a very small window of actual drama. (read more...)
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 09:54PM[SHARE]A range of entirely unsympathetic characters pay little mind to him anyway in a production that, like its central character, has a lofty idea but ditches the hope and goes right for audacity…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 09:16PM[SHARE]While disillusionment by realized dreams, or marriages straining to survive with stress are not novel themes, what's refreshing about Lucinda Coxon's script is that she doesn't wrap it up wi…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 04:35PM[SHARE]Although there's nothing majorly wrong with this production, with so little merit to the script, I can't help but wonder why Metropolis didn't turn its talents to a more worthy project. (rea…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 03:17PM[SHARE]Definitely worth heading out to Aurora for! Director Rachel Rockwell's choreography excels throughout, but "Seventy Six Trombones" especially delights. Music Director Michael Mahler and his …
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 12:07PM[SHARE]Sunday, January 27, 2013
I highly recommend that this play be seen by students to get the real deal of slavery and perhaps some new revelations on America's most shameful past. This is not revisionist history. The W…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 10:31PM[SHARE]Directed by Marc Robin and conceived by Robin and Aaron Thielen, Now and Forever: The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber is a stunner of a show packed with bravura vocals, thrilling choreography a…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 03:20PM[SHARE]Saturday, January 26, 2013
Luther wants to show a target audience of do-gooders what happens when do-gooding goes too far. As a satire, it fails. As a display of gratuitous puppetry, unnecessary choreography and flat-…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 05:32PM[SHARE]Friday, January 25, 2013
TimeLine Theatre Company's engrossing drama and five supple players deliver impressionistic variations on the myriad facets of recollections and recovery. (read more...)
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 05:10PM[SHARE]Thursday, January 24, 2013
It's fascinating to watch a family fall, and Other Desert Cities dishes dirt with aplomb. The Wyeth family are successful, wealthy and very real in their neuroses. I caught that. I loved it…
SOURCE: Chicago Theater Beat at 11:29PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
