4,886 stories by "Chris Jones"
"Health officials struggle to control the media narrative about Ebola," read a headline in the Washington, D.C., publication The Hill a few days ago. The words were atop an article arguing t…
NEW YORK " Ayad Akhtar's "Disgraced" " a deftly crafted, theatrically compelling dissection of the intersection of sex, ethnicity and ambition " makes an intense and mostly effective leap to…
About halfway through Second City's very moving and revealing collaboration with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago last week " you missed it, but I suspect it will be back " I found myself thinki…
It is dangerous for a critic to close his or her eyes at the theater; it usually is construed as sleepiness or disrespect. But at one point on Saturday night, I briefly rested my eyelids at …
Should the mice in "Frederick," the rather sweet new musical at the Chicago Children's Theatre, ever decide to turn tail and move to Chicago, they will be ahead of the civic game.
One way to understand the main problem facing "Amazing Grace," the very sincere new musical with Broadway aspirations, is to imagine a version of the Academy Award-winning movie "12 Years a …
"Animal Farm" from Steppenwolf Theatre Company ★★★★
"Animal Farm" from Steppenwolf Theatre Company ★★★★
Aside from being a hugely entertaining and strikingly emotional show, "The Art of Falling," Second City's not-to-be-missed new collaboration with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, is a very sign…
Al Pacino is to return to Broadway in a new play by David Mamet next fall, the New York producer Jeffrey Richards announced Thursday.
Billy Corgan, frontman of The Smashing Pumpkins, is writing a 20-minute musical for The Music Theatre Company of Highland Park, the group is to officially announce Thursday afternoon. The to…
"Are you going to Ionesco?" said the French woman in the Navy Pier elevator Wednesday night, a sharp question that set me off thinking about whether Ionesco could ever really be said to be a…
As I work in Tribune Tower on North Michigan Avenue, I have plenty of chances to pass through Pioneer Court, the privately owned public space directly south of Tribune Tower and north of the…
In the first moments of "Luce" at the Next Theatre on Sunday afternoon, I had a distinct sense of deja vu. There was actress Amy J. Carle, playing a defensive parent and confronting her son'…
On Monday night in Oakbrook Terrace, the Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee displayed a deep love for the intimate. Writers Theatre's production of August Strindberg's "The Dance of Death," a…
One of the happier consequences of the recent uptick in the quantity and quality of off-Loop musical theater is that a very capable but often pigeonholed director and choreographer like Bren…
The board of directors at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company engaged earlier this month in the kind of image management one associates more with politicians and major corporations than a nonpro…
NEW YORK - "Without the theater, New York is Newark," declares one of the characters in "It's Only a Play." Part sentimental confessional, part caustic farce rooted in bitterness and wholly …
Memo to Redmoon regarding the Great Chicago Fire Festival:
Like those with the misfortune to bare their necks to the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the Porchlight Music Theatre production of "Sweeney Todd" has its good and bad moments. But, to paraph…
The Profiles Theatre production of "The Cryptogram" features a really great performance from Aaron Lamm, a seventh-grader at Wilmette Junior High School. People tend not to believe critics w…
In 1933, the playwright Maxwell Anderson wrote a very lively drama all about Congress and pork, a drama that would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize and that now opens the season for Remy Bump…
Jackie Taylor, the maestro of the Black Ensemble Theater, has penned countless affectionate biographical tributes to recording artists. Whether it was Marvin Gaye or Dionne Warwick or Jackie…
NEW YORK " As inciting incidents go, the unsettling event as lights rise on "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" is a doozy. A dog named Wellington lies dead in the garden of …
Anyone who has suffered the ignominy of a fire pit, a backyard full of guests and a pile of soggy wood could only empathize with Redmoon on Saturday night.
Despite its bucolic name, the quiet hamlet of Sandy Point Town, St. Kitts, on a friendly island in the West Indies, has a history written in blood.
