68 stories by "Alex Huntsberger"
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…
RECOMMENDED A playwright friend and I were recently discussing the problems we had with shows that were collections of short plays. While these shows are often promising in theory they usual…
RECOMMENDED Theater as a whole is starting to come around on sci-fi and fantasy. And while that might put it about twenty years behind the cultural zeitgeist (can’t wait for that three…
For "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" to work properly, you need to credibly believe two things: the danger, and the liaisons. AstonRep Theatre Company's revival, directed by Charlie Marie McGrath,…
That title is a little misleading. Or it's not so much misleading as it is entirely metaphorical. Michael Golamco's "Cowboy Versus Samurai," being given its Chicago premiere here by A-Square…
Why is it that conspiracy theories – like, say, the one about the US government hiring director Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landing – continue to endure? Is the belief in a …
There's a problem sometimes at music festivals where you're too far away from the band to hear them. Sometimes it's because you didn't get there early enough to get a good spot. Sometimes it…
RECOMMENDED There is nothing little about Lillian Hellman’s 1939 potboiler “The Little Foxes.” The characters, the drama, the incestuous pairing of family and greed, it is …
RECOMMENDED I spent some time after I left Irish Theatre of Chicago's "The White Road" thinking about how I would have fared. The play chronicles the famous 1914 Shackleton expedition"an att…
RECOMMENDED “Bad Jews” is kind of a cheap title, but it's also a smart one. It reminds you of cable softcore porn or direct-to-video prank anthologies. It’s attention-getti…
What would drive a man to venture out alone in the dark reaches of the galaxy? Your typical 1950s serial might have you believe that it is his impeccable sense of adventure, his desire to ac…
RECOMMENDED “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” a new play by Emmett Rensin now premiering with First Floor Theater, takes its name from a famous 1964 essay by Richard Hof…
RECOMMENDED Just because someone's died doesn't make their death a martyrdom. It doesn't mean they were a saint. Complicated or downright negative feelings that a person had for someone when…
RECOMMENDED The family-sitting-room genre is built on secrecy. Sometimes it's a literal secret, one that lurks from the opening curtain until just the right moment"usually right before an in…
People will probably never stop basing plays (and movies and books) on “The Odyssey.” Homer's ancient epic poem chronicling Odysseus' long return home from Troy is elemental to o…
In case you are worried about false advertising, the opening number of "Murder Ballad," currently receiving its Chicago premiere courtesy of Bailiwick Chicago, confirms that you are, in fact…
RECOMMENDED There’s a lovely moment partway through the second act of Adam Pasen’s very funny, big-hearted play “Badfic Love” wherein ex-jock and current law student …
Friends are the opposite of Matthew McConnaughey's beloved "high school girls." You keep getting older, and they keep getting older too. You change, they change. Eventually you might still b…
RECOMMENDED The most famous quote from famous Chicago muckracker Upton Sinclair about his groundbreaking novel "The Jungle" is the following: "I aimed at the public’s heart, and by acc…
RECOMMENDED The man in front of you is not from here. He's a traveler from a foreign land. In fact "Traveler" is the only name by which he is identified. And as a person not from here he has…
The old maxim says, “You can’t go home again.” Which is of course not true. It’s a lying old maxim, a blanket statement that ignores an entire class of people for who…
