A bad marriage " I hear " can feel like a trap. Slamming the door on a lousy union can be cathartic. Even if you have no idea what awaits you on the other side. But here's something to think…
City of Chicago is to officially announce Monday that $1 million has been secured in new funding to support the 2019 Year of Chicago Theatre initiative that officially begins this week, in t…
Mother with teenagers " a demographic famous for ignoring its own fragility " invariably worry about them. But African-American mothers, innumerable data points confirm, have particular reas…
Now in its Chicago premiere from the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, Florian Zeller's "The Father" is a play about dementia, that late-in-life affliction that can take down a giant personality,…
When the next big artistic job opens up in Chicago theater, I've got a name for the recruiters: Vanessa Stalling. In show after show, Stalling keeps making the case that her directing work i…
When the name of your theater company is Broken Nose Theatre, the temptation must arise to live up to your own billing. If not broken noses, bruised cheeks, tired calves and a whopping heada…
Nina Simone seemed happy in the 1980s, singing in Ronnie Scott's swinging London jazz club, a resident European star in front an adoring audience, wowing with the incomparable diversity of h…
If they gave out awards for acting with your eyeballs, Matt Crowle would have no competition whatsoever. He can throw 'em back into his head, cross 'em nine ways to Sunday and, in a particul…
"Howard Schultz " more bitter than his coffee," tweeted the TV screenwriter Warren Leight on Wednesday, part of a torrent of social-media abuse, much of it from Hollywood, aimed at the forme…
To watch Ayad Akhtar's "Junk," an exciting, ambitious play about the glorification of hostile takeovers and the human costs of leveraged buyouts, in its 2017 Broadway premiere at New York's …
You can make a killing in the theater, but not a living, goes the theatrical cliche. The playwright Steven Dietz, whose work never has been seen on Broadway, has achieved precisely the rever…
The ambition inherent in Christina Anderson's heady, poetic and ambitious new play at the Goodman Theatre is right there in its title: "How to Catch Creation." That's quite a challenge. To m…
Tickets are to go on sale at 10 a.m. Feb. 15 to "Hamilton: The Exhibition," the latest high-profile project involving Lin-Manuel Miranda and the creative team behind the hit Broadway musical…
In the worlds of science, journalism, tech, business and politics, hypothesizing is a whole lot sexier than offering proof. Come to think of it " and Anna Ziegler's terrific new play at Cour…
Life teaches us that the funniest people we know often have been through the most personal trauma. You can see that with professional comedians, of course, and it can lead them into trouble.…
Over the years, Chicago's famous storefront-theater community occasionally has turned the lens upon itself. But in every such case that I recall, these shows have romanticized the struggles …
In 2004, a group of terrorists demanding independence for Chechnya descended upon School Number One in Beslan, Russia, taking more than 1,100 people hostage. By the time the so-called Beslan…
Hidden away in boxes and barns " or merely hanging in sumptuous plain sight " the gorgeous chandeliers and fixtures of the Uptown Theatre have been vacationing these past few years in Barrin…
Griffin Theatre is no longer planning to move into a former Chicago police station at 1940 W. Foster Ave., said Ald. Pat O'Connor (40th) Wednesday in a note to neighborhood residents. Griffi…
The longtime Chicago actor Michael Shannon will star alongside Audra McDonald in a Broadway revival of Terrence McNally's famous two-hander, "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune," it was…
A major new musical about Michael Jackson " set on the cusp of the iconic but controversial singer's "Dangerous World Tour" and dealing more fully with his complex legacy than previous endea…
Broadway luminaries will gather at 24 W. Randolph St. in Chicago on Feb. 8 to celebrate the renaming of a theater, currently known as the Oriental, after one of their own " James M. Nederlan…
Now 37 years old, Michael Frayn's "Noises Off" is not only one of the funniest English-language farces of the 20th century but far and away the best comedy ever written about the perils of p…
Everyone is named Jones in Will Eno's "The Realistic Joneses," which I last saw on Broadway in 2014 in a production starring Michael C. Hall, Marisa Tomei, Tracy Letts and Toni Collette and …
"I just don't feel gay anymore," says one of the central characters in "Dada Woof Papa Hot," a play by Peter Parnell with a terrible title but an honest desire to probe a particular time of …