Within the space of 72 hours last week, a pair of aging alpha males, one real, one fictional, said goodbye for good. Both feel like the last of their breed. Both carried great symbolic weigh…
In one of those prosaic upstairs studios at the Atheneum Theatre in Chicago, and with only a few projections, a bit of tape and a small amount of scenery for company, Kelvin Roston Jr. is ta…
PJ Paparelli, the artistic director of American Theater Company in Chicago, a highly respected and nationally accomplished director of new plays, and the co-author of such potent works of do…
PJ Paparelli, the artistic director of the American Theater Company, a highly respected and nationally accomplished director of new plays, the co-author of such potent works of documentary t…
PJ Paparelli, the artistic director of the American Theater Company, a highly respected and nationally accomplished director of new plays, the co-author of such potent works of documentary t…
Amy Schumer's brother lives in Chicago, replete with wife, baby and at least one cat that sheds all over his sister. That family visit, Schumer said Wednesday night at the Laugh Factory, exp…
Taking a break from railing against the purported roundness of our planet, the Flat Earth Society was one of the first groups to argue that the six Apollo moon landings all were fakes, and t…
Taking a break from railing against the purported roundness of our planet, the Flat Earth Society was one of the first groups to argue that the six Apollo moon landings all were fakes, and t…
In the early minutes of "Our New Girl," a tense domestic thriller from Britain that's now in its first Chicago production at Profiles Theatre, an Irish nanny named Annie arrives with her sui…
In the final weeks of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I found myself in the Mesopotamian Gallery at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute. The then-director Karen Wilson was showing me p…
In most musicals, factory work is presented as quotidian drudgery, something to be endured before heading out, say, to ride the carousel. But in the early minutes of "Shining Lives: A Musica…
In most musicals, factory work is presented as quotidian drudgery, something to be endured before heading out, say, to ride the carousel. But in the early minutes of "Shining Lives: A Musica…
On Tuesday, the Goodman Theatre formally announced its new Alice B. Rapoport Center for Education and Engagement, a $15 million endeavor named for a beloved late trustee. Dedicated to educat…
Tragedy is an experience of chaos. Most great tragic actors eventually realize that truth. Whether it's Oedipus the King or Hamlet, these great characters aren't so much making decisions as …
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, British radio and television was filled with so-called light entertainment, prime-time quiz shows, wish-fulfillment shows and variety shows with music and comedy…
Chicago's Goodman Theatre is to expand its downtown facility at 170 N. Dearborn St. to include new classroom, meeting and rehearsal space for its educational programs. Dubbed the Alice B. Ra…
At one point in "The Little Foxes," Lillian Hellman's juicy morality melodrama of 1939, the amoral entrepreneur Ben Hubbard delivers a prescient little speech about the future. Soon, he opin…
With all the focus on the development of earnest, worthy, politically predictable new plays around Chicago, Theater Wit has been able to carve out a very simple but savvy niche. It favors fr…
In 1944, Johnny Cash's beloved older brother, Jack, was pulled into a head saw in the mill where the kid worked to help his cash-strapped family. He died a week later from his horrific injur…
Along with an increased pollen count, May is high season for the spring ritual known as annual benefits. For those rare creatures who relish plated chicken breast and bottomless decaf, these…
The Writers Theatre production of John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt: A Parable," the well-known 2004 play (and then 2008 movie) about a nun who suspects a priest of child abuse, is being staged …
Martha Lavey, artistic director of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago since 1995, is in a Chicago hospital, recovering from a stroke.
Martha Lavey, the artistic director of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago since 1995, is in a Chicago hospital, recovering from a stroke.
The news this week that the highly entertaining "Louis and Keely 'Live' at the Sahara" was closing at the Royal George on May 17" despite good reviews and fairly robust ticket sales, I'm tol…
No one who was living in Chicago in 1994 can ever forget the death of 5-year-old Eric Morse, who fell to his death from the 14th floor of the Ida B. Wells public housing complex on Chicago's…