The New York dancers who talked into a tape recorder for the rapacious director Michael Bennett at the Nickolaus Exercise Center on E. 23rd Street in 1974 are now, on average, more than 70 y…
Despite the title " or maybe because of the title " there's a real warmth to "Grinning From Fear to Fear," the new revue from Second City's e.t.c. company and the director, Anneliese Toft, o…
Enter the Apollo Theater and there will be a djembe drum on your seat. I speak not of some souvenir percussive takeaway nor of a cheap facsimile of the skin-covered goblet drum. Nope. Every …
Best puppet of the season? "King Kong" on Broadway. Height: 20 feet. Weight: 2,000 pounds. Style: Animatronic ape. Puppeteers: 14. Microprocessors: 16. Designer: Sonny Tilders. Cost: Good ch…
This summer in New York, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner are expected to begin filming their upcoming adaptation of "West Side Story," a remake of the movie that won a fleet of Oscars in 1…
Playwright Ike Holter's extraordinary Rightlynd saga " a multi-part dramatic odyssey that has taken a lucky few of us over a five-year stretch to the Jackalope Theatre, Victory Gardens, A Re…
Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company will make its first visit to Chicago in 25 years, Chicago Shakespeare Theater announced Tuesday. The RSC will be part of an expansive 2019-20 season on Na…
Do we all enjoy an exemption from moral, unselfish behavior when it comes to fighting for our own kids? It might seem we've decided otherwise " look at the righteous scorn heaped upon those …
An "Oklahoma!" for an anxious, riven America unable engage in any kind of collective, cock-eyed optimism anymore, director Daniel Fish's Broadway revival at Circle in the Square Theatre is a…
An "Oklahoma!" for an anxious, riven America unable to engage in any kind of collective, cock-eyed optimism anymore, director Daniel Fish's Broadway revival at Circle in the Square Theatre i…
Joe Foust, a distinguished and versatile Chicago actor, is alone on the stage in "The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey," an 80-minute monologue that begins with a detective from a small…
No crueler speech was ever uttered by a parent than the torrent of abuse that William Shakespeare's King Lear, that great beacon of self-awareness, unleashes on Goneril, the eldest of his th…
Weary of these moralistic times? Nostalgic for an emo-loving, streaming-free, pre-social-media-outrage era of acceptable decadence, amoral cinematic narratives and fanciful sensual depravity…
After more than 12 years as artistic director of the Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrace, and an affiliation stretching back three decades, William Osetek said Wednesday that he had resig…
What's your favorite scene in "Jersey Boys"? If you saw the show on Broadway or one of its earlier visits to Chicago, dollars to donuts it's the moment when the horns come out for "Can't Tak…
Few wise heads would choose a candidate for the Mayor of the City of Chicago entirely on the basis of their arts policy " without job growth, high-quality public education, safe streets, str…
In 2015, an entertainment publication conducted a poll among actors, asking them for the best movie ever made. You'd expect "The Godfather" or "Chinatown," but the winner was "Tootsie," the …
So how will history judge Rupert Murdoch, of Fox News and New York Post fame? As a devil from Down Under who trashed august journalistic institutions, made a mockery of the phrase "fair and …
Joe Keller, the tragic antihero of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" and a man who shipped out cracked cylinder heads to World War II fighter pilots, generally is played as a folksy sort of fell…
What's the difference between a clown and a fool? You might think the question moot, given the ample prevalence of both types in and around the White House. But it's the central issue in "Ga…
America's on the road to hell " better jump right off, my children. Too dangerous to look back. Instead, try and find the cracks in that famous wall we're building. That's pretty much the me…
Question. What do Harry Potter, the Ramones and the magician Jamie Allan all have in common? Canada. And trash cans. If there's one common denominator to the marketing plan of the young Cana…
A problem with writing dystopian dramas, be they in the theater or on TV, is that the sources of societal anxiety change fast. That is not to say that we get any less anxious overall, merely…
Most Broadway shows stick with playbills. Heidi Schreck hands out take-home copies of the Constitution of the United States of America. Or, as her 15-year-old self puts it in her mostly one-…
In Anna Jordan's "Yen," a British drama first seen at Manchester's awesome Royal Exchange Theatre in 2015 and enough to give nightmares to anyone who lives with young teenagers, two half-bro…