4,886 stories by "Chris Jones"
In the great flurry of Chicago theater openings this last three weeks, two must-see shows have emerged. They are "Smokefall" at the Goodman Theatre and "Native Son" at the Court Theatre.
At an on-site press conference Thursday morning, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company announced both a major expansion project and an artistic succession.
On Aug. 10, 1991, a 44-year-old freelance journalist named Danny Casolaro was found dead in a West Virginia hotel room. His wrists were slashed. His death was officially a suicide.
The birth of Sunny, the central character in Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's unstinting and sardonic new play, "The World of Extreme Happiness," is celebrated by her moments-old self being stuffed i…
Perhaps the biggest change in American society over the last 10 years is the amount of grease now to be found on the long-standing ladder leading toward middle-class stability, even as the r…
In Noah Haidle's quixotic, gorgeous "Smokefall," the narrative begins with a young couple who have fallen in love. They get advice from someone much older " this romance will end in tragedy,…
The question of what you will feel like when you die " and, more specifically, whether you will actually feel like you are dead " suffuses Conor McPherson's "The Night Alive." The season ope…
Without artists who teach, the cultural life of Chicago would effectively cease to exist.
The Isango Ensemble's touring production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1791 opera "The Magic Flute" (or "Impempe Yomlingo") has been a hit in London and many other parts of the world. One und…
The Hypocrites said Thursday that their hit, 12-hour production of Sean Graney's "All Our Tragic" will return in the summer of 2015 for an encore engagement at the Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwa…
Canada has so much to like: an excellent business climate; a compassionate health care system; some of the finest classical theater in North America; the Maple Leaf cookies they used to sell…
Canada has so much to like: an excellent business climate; a compassionate health care system; some of the finest classical theater in North America; the Maple Leaf cookies they used to sell…
What the cult Canadian TV show "Slings & Arrows" did for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival " and for resident classical theaters in general " so Shawn Pfautsch's "Season on the Line" aims t…
On Monday, Noah Haidle's "Smokefall" opens on the main stage of the Goodman Theatre. If you follow theater in Chicago, you might have read something about this remarkable play about a Grand …
A potential Bernie Madoff does not lurk behind every financial planner's desk. This is just as well. Most of us working stiffs struggle enough to save rather than spend without watching our …
For a snapshot of what Chicago theater loves most about its new Broadway star, Jessie Mueller, you need only have been at the City Winery Monday night, when the self-effacing lead of "Beauti…
The Idaho retirement community at the heart of "Rest," the new play by Samuel D. Hunter, who received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" last week , is no place you want to spend your gol…
Sheldon Patinkin, a crucial figure in the development of improvisational comedy in Chicago and a mentor to numerous generations of American and Canadian comedians and aspiring theatrical dir…
I'm not generally a fan of watching solo performance pieces performed by others but I make an exception for the actor Usman Ally who, crossing racial lines, disappears inside his characters …
The Museum of Contemporary Art is going all out for David Bowie " some 400 objects, a gala, a Tumblr blog, a sponsorship from Louis Vuitton. This is understandable; the exhibit, organized by…
In 2013, after years of denials, the cyclist Lance Armstrong confessed to Oprah Winfrey that he had taken performance-enhancing drugs. Some four years previously, Armstrong had given an inte…
Any biographer entering a crowded field " and the life and work of the great playwright Tennessee Williams is hardly virgin territory, given the confessional diaries, the innumerable extant …
Barbara Gaines' raw and visceral Chicago Shakespeare Theater production of "King Lear" begins, poorly, with the titular monarch, he who hath ever but slenderly known himself, fast-forwarding…
Sir Isaac Newton, the 17th-century British philosopher and mathematician, said a lot of things. But it's a pretty fair bet that, even in his wild and crazy youth, the formulator of laws of m…
The best thrillers " and, believe me, playwright Caitlin Parrish's grippingly intimate new play "The Downpour" is as tense and disturbing an experience as any thriller you might find at the …
