4,886 stories by "Chris Jones"
Longtime Steppenwolf Theatre Company casting and associate artistic director Erica Daniels is to join Second City Theatricals as a vice president. Second City Theatricals is a company within…
Although set in 1969 " the height of militant social action, you might think " August Wilson's "Two Trains Running" is actually a portrait of Pittsburgh folks stuck in a siding. Everyone in …
MILWAUKEE " When former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush joined the incumbent president, Bill Clinton, at the 1994 funeral of former president Richar…
Even for the likes of David Copperfield, Criss Angel and Nik Wallenda, it's never easy for an illusionist to sell out a big theater or sustain a national movement. They all need personal bra…
In 1995, Doug Zook was a business agent for Local 1 of the Service Employees International Union. Many of the employees at Chicago cemeteries were represented by that union, including Homewo…
As old Willy Shakes well knew, revenge is a tricky emotion to sell on the rialto. Buried in our Judeo-Christian consciousness is the nagging feeling that forgiveness is a preferable emotion.…
The new season at the Goodman Theatre, announced Wednesday, includes new plays from Jose Rivera and Rebecca Gilman, revivals of works by Lorraine Hansberry and Thornton Wilder, a new adaptat…
When you play a prostitute (Betty) in a popular Showtime television series ("Masters of Sex"), you should probably expect a few stares when you visit Walt Disney World with your husband. Ann…
I first heard the score of "Jesus Christ Superstar" in about 1975, when my childish self (for I was but a babe) gave the original concept album a whirl on the old turntable. Ian Gillan, the …
Between July 13 and July 20, 1995, when temperatures lingered at 106 degrees and the heat index reached 125 degrees, more than 700 Chicagoans died. A preponderance of those deaths were of mi…
Mary Zimmerman, the widely acclaimed Chicago theater artist behind such titles as "Metamorphoses" and "The Arabian Nights," is to adapt Robert Louis Stevenson's classic swashbuckler "Treasur…
Mary Zimmerman, the widely acclaimed Chicago theater artist behind such titles as "Metamorphoses" and "The Arabian Nights," is to adapt Robert Louis Stevenson's classic swashbuckler "Treasur…
Court Theatre announced its 2015-16 season on Monday, featuring works by August Wilson, the Greek tragedian Aeschylus, Terry Teachout, Eugene O'Neill and Richard Bean.
Music, especially angsty British new wave from such artists as Altered Images, Sigue Sigue Sputnik and New Order, was an indispensable part of the cinematic oeuvre of John Hughes.
Aside from giving the redoubtable Helen Mirren another chance to essay Queen Elizabeth II " a necessarily reclusive character with whom this actress is now so closely allied that the two ver…
Aside from giving the redoubtable Helen Mirren another chance to essay Queen Elizabeth II " a necessarily reclusive character with whom this actress is now so closely allied that the two ver…
In August 2005, August Wilson picked up the phone and called two reporters to tell them he was dying.
NEW YORK " Larry David's first foray into Broadway comedy is like watching a weird " but undeniably entertaining and, God help us all, even potentially transformative " fusion of "Curb Your …
"We have an agenda," said the comedian Robin Ince the other day, between bites of a chicken sandwich. These days, who doesn't? Of course, the most effective polemical tool might not be calli…
The elephants are to be phased out of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the Associated Press first reported Thursday morning. The lumbering pachyderms will be gone from th…
We all know "The Diary of Anne Frank" does not end happily. If you are watching a truthful, deeply engaged production, and director Kimberly Senior's work for Writers Theatre is most certain…
We all know "The Diary of Anne Frank" does not end happily. If you are watching a truthful, deeply engaged production, and director Kimberly Senior's work for Writers Theatre is most certain…
A new play by Tracy Letts, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "August: Osage County"; the regional premiere of Annie Baker's "The Flick"; a new Frank Galati adaptation of John Steinbeck's …
A new play by Tracy Letts, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "August: Osage County"; the regional premiere of Annie Baker's "The Flick"; a new Frank Galati adaptation of John Steinbeck's …
A three-act, three-hour play set in Antarctica? At this point in this particular Chicago winter, it is hard to imagine an onstage prospect with less commercial potential. Even this critic " …
