Rarely in my experience has a play that starts so well gone so flat by the end. The opening scenes of “A Perfect Ganesh” are perfectly hilarious, from the moment old friends Kitty (Jeann…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:45AMRECOMMENDED The idea of a musical tribute to Gertrude Stein is, on its face, overwhelming. Anyone with passing familiarity of the late poet’s propensity for playful and often anarchic verb…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PMRECOMMENDED Starting a show by making audacious promises to the audience—you will laugh, you will be amazed, etc.—is usually a misguided path to disaster. But host/MC Don Hall came off a…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:55AMBy Loy Webb “I choose to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That to me is my duty. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?” A poignant question raised b…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:13AMRECOMMENDED The show opens beautifully, with the witches translated into chic young hipsters who, perhaps having tired of yoga, are now into necromancy. They fuss about with rune stones and …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:25PMRECOMMENDED Dream Theatre Company has made a name for itself putting on unique performances that list strongly to the sardonic side, and “Alligator” is no different. Jeremy Menek…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:45AMI went to Palatine Friday night to hear Rossini’s “Barber of Seville.” Telling myself I had no expectations, I had been hoping for at least a fifteen-piece orchestra of solid musicians…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:15AMRECOMMENDED If a joke is clever and a scene is comedic then by what name do you call an entire production that assumes, with winking sincerity, a conceit so potentially dubious that one migh…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:45PMRECOMMENDED Despite being set thousands of miles—and possibly many years—away, I was unsurprised by director Robin Witt’s reference to Baltimore in her notes on “Brilliant Adventures…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:42AMPolarity Ensemble Theatre’s eighth Dionysos Cup Festival of New Plays, featuring four plays written by local playwrights, began last night at the Greenhouse Theater Center. Originated in 2…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:35AMBy Dennis Polkow “You know, you should start thinking about symphonic suites from your shows because you’re going to need them someday,” conductor and longtime Stephen Sondheim collabo…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:35AMThe Gift Theatre announced Monday the addition of nine new playwrights, directors and actors to their ensemble, expanding the group to thirty-one full-fledged members. The new ensemble membe…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:45AMDear theater-goer, as “The Titus Andronicus Project” at The Public House Theatre demonstrates, never pay good money to see any theatrical production with the word “project” in its ti…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PM“If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.” Or so the song says. If you were to apply that wisdom to “Matawan,” the latest from The Ruckus, you might throw in germs, po…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:35PMRECOMMENDED Still going strong after more than three years (and, in fact, expanded to multiple nights a week since opening), this sixty-minute showcase of Second City’s improvisational ski…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:45AMRECOMMENDED “Moby Dick” is the leviathan of American literature, diving deeper than any other work into the mysteries of human nature and destiny. Shakespearean in scope, biblical in fla…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:00PMRECOMMENDED At first, given the emphasis on magic and the dirgey, chant-oriented music, one could be forgiven for thinking “Storm,” a collaboration between international collective Moon …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:45AMBy Elle Metz Last year saw a surge of a certain type of film, the mid-life crisis, coming-home movie (see: “The Judge,” “This is Where I Leave You,” or “Are You Here” for…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:51AMRECOMMENDED While many adolescents take their parents’ values as a challenge, rarely do they grasp what’s at stake for them. A child’s success can completely reverse years of fatalisti…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:06PMRECOMMENDED “The America Play” presented by Oracle Theatre is not for the faint of heart. Actually, scratch heart and insert the word mind. Playwright Suzan Lori Parks demands of her aud…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:45AMBefore we get into the meat of this review, I should make it clear that I love fantasy novels. I read George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series back in 2005 and I’ve read it…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:30AMRECOMMENDED While watching Second City alum Ithimar Enriquez, I couldn’t help but think of “Geri’s Game,” the Pixar short film wherein an elderly man plays an increasingly erratic an…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:45PMI have to hand it to Underscore Theatre Company; their world-premiere production of “Borderlands: Three Chords and the Truth” is about as ambitious as it is long. And at more than two…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:58PMBy Loy Webb, When I was younger my two sisters and I shared a room. One of our many Saturday rituals was flipping through magazines to find pictures to decorate our walls. Most of the pictur…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:30PMRECOMMENDED Who knew the composer Gian Carlo Menotti was a serious, prophetic social critic? Not I. I remember watching his charming fantasy, “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” on black-and…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:15PMThe trouble with theories is that they never quite measure up to reality. The trouble with people is that they never quite live up to the expectations set by themselves and others. This fund…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:25PMRECOMMENDED Early on in “Miracle!” queen of queens Crystal Pain (David Cerda) makes a point of welcoming all the straight people in the audience. “Once you get a couple of drinks in yo…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:35PMRECOMMENDED Back in 2007, the film “Once” struck a chord with anyone who’d ever witnessed a mysterious, brooding stranger leave it all on stage at a small town open mic night. Likely i…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:15PMRECOMMENDED It has been at least seven-hundred years since the Pied Piper first began playing his (or maybe her) flute. In all that time, I doubt there have been many more imaginative retell…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:05PMRECOMMENDED For better or worse there has been no shortage of plays about the plights of living in Chicago lately. Yet Collaboraction’s revisitation of their original work about violence i…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:10PMRECOMMENDED In Regina Taylor’s thrilling new play “stop. reset.” aging businessman Alexander Ames (Eugene Lee) tells the story of his most precious possession—his family bible. This …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:35AM
