When I first saw the family-oriented musical "Anastasia" on Broadway in 2017, I thought to myself that the show would have to suffer its share of mockery. Replete with a tortured villain cha…
Two prominent Chicago theaters have announced their 2019-20 seasons. Lookingglass Theatre will stage a timely new play about the former Chicago mayor Jane Byrne, while the Goodman Theatre's …
You catch the 7 Line train from New York's Times Square " a chaotic urban carnival of commerce, musicals, plays, comedy and gawking, technology laying atop the grime of urban history, its li…
Back from spring break? Still got a week of rest ahead? Either way, the sun is shining as I write (not that it's warm or anything) and Chicago theaters are planting bulbs. Let's take a look.…
The ladies in yellow, purple, blue, green, brown, orange, red, women of color all, step out on the stage of the Court Theatre into what feels like an agora, a place of assembly, of confessio…
Christine, the central character in the world premiere Northlight Theatre play "Landladies," badly needs an apartment. She has a minimum-wage job at a taco joint, a young daughter, a trouble…
A new production of the much-admired Adam Guettel musical "The Light in the Piazza" is coming to Chicago's Lyric Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive, next winter, starring the famed opera singer…
"Ain't Too Proud," the frustrating biographical Broadway musical about Motown's hit-machine the Temptations, takes its title from a 1966 record, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." But it could just a…
Despite twice hosting "Saturday Night Live" " appearances in 2004 and 2015 that surely were helpful to his rise " the President of the United States is no longer a fan of the late-night come…
She tells her mom she's leaving her husband. And her kids. And the boring Midwest. Being older and wiser about life, this Midwest mother immediately senses that her grown-but-troubled daught…
A working Chicago actor at the age of 95, Mike Nussbaum gets a lot of deserved attention. He's not slowing down, either. America's oldest professional actor is slated to appear as the graved…
Can a play be sympathetic to the plight of the displaced white, working-class workers of America while also holding that same group fully accountable for its defensiveness, myopia and well-d…
"Hands on a Hardbody" opened on Broadway in a crush of shows in the spring of 2013. I remember thinking (a) that the show would never get the attention it needed to survive (b), that it was …
The Loop theater presenter Broadway in Chicago announced its upcoming subscription season Monday. New shows headed to Chicago include the national tours of "Once On This Island," the disco-e…
Chatting with a friend in another row Wednesday night, I inadvertently blocked the aisle of the James M. Nederlander Theatre, briefly impeding a heavyset man heading to his seat for "A Bronx…
Scott Ellis, whose body of work reveals him to be a softie, knows better than any other Broadway director how to key into the inner emotional lives of theater people. And he's also keenly aw…
"I'm with the musicians," said Riccardo Muti on Tuesday, delighting the striking musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for whom he was offering unequivocal support. Wait a minute. Isn…
Got a bachelorette party in your near future? Planning a girls' (or boys') night out? Looking for a full-throated, multi-generational, warm-spirited night on the town? "The Choir of Men," no…
I kept thinking Monday night that it is mere happenstance " likely combined with some clear-eyed life choices " that you can find Kelli Harrington, a name unknown to most Chicagoans, perform…
Calogero Lorenzo Palminteri " a son of the outer boroughs of New York City, otherwise known as Chazz and now 66 years old " visited Chicago recently to talk about his life, times, and "A Bro…
Exit Michael Jackson. Enter Britney Spears. Moving rapidly, Broadway in Chicago has filled the spot vacated by the cancellation of the pre-Broadway tryout of "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough"…
Coming this spring, hard on the heels of opening day at Wrigley Field: A new Chicago-born stage musical, officially encouraged and approved by the Chicago Cubs and produced by a former state…
The new high school musical "Be More Chill" needed to take it own advice: Chill out, kids. And fear not your own truth! If all of its overplayed, insecure, overwrought, dial-in-the-red-zone …
What do working-class Irishmen in the final throes of middle age talk about in the pub? You know, with a good pal. The kind with whom you can let down your guard. If your answer to that ques…
It's 1992. A young white man named Steve meets a young African-American man named Eric on an empty D subway train in New York City. The white man is going home to his mother in Riverdale; th…