4,886 stories by "Chris Jones"
NEW YORK " "Come look at the freaks," goes the accusatory opening number of "Side Show," the eclectic and enticing 1997 musical from Bill Russell and Henry Krieger that looks at the struggle…
Would you kill your own daughter as a sacrifice to the gods?
NEW YORK - Anyone who has had more than one lover " or been with someone who has been so lucky " has confronted the same dangerous moment.
Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" has been running in London for more than 60 years now " some 25,000 performances of the whodunnit that bested all whodunits have taken place, making "The Mo…
Outgoing Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has said he wants to push through an increase in the minimum wage for the state of Illinois " from the current $8.25 an hour to $10 an hour " before he leave…
As an annoying pooch jumped over a llama Wednesday night at the Allstate Arena, as annoying pooches are wont to do, the llama shot its fellow llama a knowing look that truly said it all in t…
Terry Green, an old-timer when it comes to Chicago theater, took me to task on Facebook this week for giving short shrift to many of the early artistic glories of the Next Theatre Company, w…
As a serial theatrical and banquet entrepreneur of the old school, Anthony Tomaska has had his hits " such as the hugely profitable Chicago production of "Tony n' Tina's Wedding," which ran …
Next Theatre of Evanston has closed its doors and cancelled the rest of its 2014-15 season, artistic director Jenny Avery said in a letter sent this weekend to the actors and other theater a…
Next Theatre of Evanston has closed its doors and cancelled the rest of its 2014-15 season, artistic director Jenny Avery said in a letter sent this weekend to the actors and other theater a…
Given its inexorable associations with the glamorous Kennedy White House and such formidable but distant personas as Richard Burton and Julie Andrews, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's e…
Beginning Friday, Nov. 7, The Theater Loop with Chris Jones will become part of the premium digitalPLUS tier of ChicagoTribune.com.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post printed an impassioned letter from pianist Dejan Lazic, which began like this: "Dear Madam/Sir, It is hard to believe that almost four years after this articl…
Richard "Dick" Schaal, a pioneer at the Second City comedy theater in Chicago, the former husband of the actress Valerie Harper and a familiar face from a plethora of character roles on movi…
NEW YORK - In the fall of 2012, the world's most lucrative redheaded, pooch-loving orphan appeared again on Broadway, directed by James Lapine. Although it was never the box-office hit its p…
The Broadway-bound show "First Wives Club The Musical" has announced who will play its leading trio of spurned spouses: Faith Prince, Christine Sherrill and Carmen Cusack.
A cold wire in Chicago. A black sky. A little man " so fragile, as we all are " in orange with no visible contingency plan for his uphill jaunt over a frigid river, beyond an enviable certai…
We're all vulnerable in love and marriage " even arty, self-aware British intellectuals who pride themselves on their carefully constructed and seemingly unimpeachable castles of wit, irony …
A fresh and welcome wind is blowing up the Malay Peninsula " well, across the Marriott Lincolnshire golf course, at least " with the famed suburban theater's very fine new production of "The…
Dee Snider, the longtime frontman of Twisted Sister, really likes his family Christmas. Over lunch the other day with Snider and Suzette Guilot-Snider, his charming wife of more than 30 year…
The Broadway actor Steven Pasquale, recently a star of "Bridges of Madison County," is to play the role of the carnival barker Billy Bigelow in Rob Ashford's upcoming Lyric Opera of Chicago …
The music of the man in black is headed to the Southport Corridor this summer as the Mercury Theatre, 3745 N. Southport Ave., plays host to a transfer of last spring's Theatre at the Center …
In the beginning of Abbie Spallen's dense 2009 drama "Strandline," now in its U.S. premiere at A Red Orchid Theatre, we learn of a man apparently drowned, off the coast of Northern Ireland.
No Broadway musical of the last two decades is more ill-served by a massive production than Maury Yeston and Peter Stone's "Titanic." That might seem counterintuitive. The RMS Titanic was a …
NEW YORK " As captain of "The Last Ship," and the one who set this mostly autobiographical and wholly original Broadway musical on its daring course, the great songwriter Sting can take sola…
