RECOMMENDED I'm writing this twenty-four hours after the final blackout and "Grand Concourse" is still making me unsettled. Set in a Bronx soup kitchen run out of the basement of a Catholic …
RECOMMENDED Given that its first scene contains a teenage girl scheduling an abortion and then her boyfriend showing her a gun"one that might as well come with a giant neon “Chekhov…
RECOMMENDED If I were asked to describe Cock And Bull Theatre's "Voyage" in one word, that word would be "Ridiculous." But I don't mean that strictly as a negative. The piece is indeed ludic…
RECOMMENDED I wonder what it would have been like to watch "Bent" in a parallel universe where Obergefell v. Hodges went the other way. It's not an easy play to experience under any circumst…
RECOMMENDED The opening moments of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” are pure Chekhov. A brother and sister sit in their country home staring at a pond, hoping to see a blue …
RECOMMENDED One might think that Sean Graney's title for his play/adaptation/mashup/opus "All Our Tragic" is a bit of playful hyperbole. But nope. It's all in there. From Prometheus on the r…
When characters clash in Ayad Akhtar's "The Who & The What," they do so under a number of different banners. The play, receiving its Midwest premiere at Victory Gardens, has conflicts in…
RECOMMENDED Priests are common characters in American storytelling but they are rarely ever protagonists. They often have a part to play, it's just never in their own story. So it is refresh…
RECOMMENDED Irish playwright Conor McPherson is a master of dread. From "The Weir" to "The Seafarer" to "The Shining City" McPherson's plays have an impeccable knack for slowly turning up th…
RECOMMENDED Any show buys itself some goodwill when it prominently features the Michael Jackson catalogue. The music of the King of Pop threads its way through Bixby Elliot's bluntly titled …
On paper, superheroes and stage musicals would seem like a natural fit. Both stories feature larger-than-life characters, bright shiny action and, more often than not, a syrupy core of since…