"Cardboard Piano," the current show at the TimeLine Theatre, begins with a carefully planned sexual encounter between two teenagers in a church. On New Year's Eve. Such a locale for a rendez…
One day before "Hamilton" opened on Jan. 11, an openly gay rapper and progressive activist named Kevin Fret was killed as he rode through San Juan. CNN reported that Fret's death was part of…
Die young and there's a fuss. Die at 97 and, even when you've enjoyed an iconic showbusiness career, you've likely to have been forgotten. Not Carol Channing. Even though her final tour as D…
The arrogant, self-loathing theater critic " is there another kind? " at the heart " if he had one " of Conor McPherson's "St. Nicholas" is a man of opinions. Strongly held views are de rige…
With his body draped in the Puerto Rican flag, his emotions struggling to get through the song named "Hurricane" and his presence celebrated all across San Juan, "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manue…
With one foot in "Harry Potter" and another in "Dear Evan Hansen," the new tween-oriented musical faithfully based on the 2005 fantasy-adventure book by Rick Riordan has plenty to please fan…
Broadway announced some stunning financial results over the holidays: "Wicked" pulled in $3.4 million in a single week; $2.6 million thawed the ice at "Frozen"; $3.7 million circled back to …
The actress Carrie Coon is joining the Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble, the storied Chicago theater announced Wednesday. "I'm thrilled," said the 37-year-old star of "The Leftovers" on HBO, "Fa…
Conor McPherson's "St. Nicholas" is a play about a theater critic " an irascible, caustic, mostly detestable Dublin scribe of the old, pre-Facebook school. So it was not, perhaps, surprising…
Scandinavia gave us hygge, the Danish term for chilled-out spiritual contentment. But if you're a fan of great TV shows like "The Bridge" or "The Killing," you'll know that dramas with origi…
No sooner are seasonal festivities over than Chicago theater opens back up for business. There are scores of winter openings. But here " in alphabetical order " are 10 shows to look forward …
Happy New Year! Here are some of my wishes for 2019. Chicago's officially designated Year of Chicago Theatre has real and lasting impact: What does the Year of Chicago Theatre mean? In essen…
This was 2018 in Chicago theater. "Joseph" camped it up in Las Vegas, upsetting family audiences at Drury Lane. Kelly Felthous lit up suburban musical theater. E. Faye Butler finally got to …
In the 1950s, Chicago pretty much invented improv. Decades later, a wildly innovative Chicago performance group called Manual Cinema imagined another daring idea, one that would combine the …
Most purveyors of sleight-of-hand trickery are attracted either by the grand illusion, like David Copperfield, or close-up card sharking, like the late Ricky Jay. Jamie Allan, who bills hims…
Isaac Gomez wrote "La Ruta" for the women of Ciudad Juarez. There is work yet to do on this talented 27-year-old writer's new drama with music, which I saw Friday night at Steppenwolf Theatr…
On the day after the Chicago Plan Commission approved renovation plans for the Uptown Theatre, the non-profit TimeLine Theatre Company was to announce Friday it has purchased for itself a ne…
Chicago Shakespeare Theater said Thursday that is is postponing its planned summer production of a new musical adaptation of the 1971 Disney movie, "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and will instea…
There is only one way to solve the intractable mess known as Brexit and her name is Mary Poppins. And Lin-Manuel Miranda, the un-Trumpian personification of sunny American benevolence, is th…
From sex offenders to amoral business people and nervous autoworkers to self-involved rock stars, Chicago theater was home to some spectacularly vivid characters in 2018. Here's our annual t…
In 2005, a crowd gathered at the University of Chicago's Reynolds Club to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the invention of improv. No less an authority than the university archivist had de…
What qualifies someone to be a woman of soul? It's debatable, of course, given that soul music intertwines with jazz, gospel, disco and rhythm and blues. It's a genre with subgenres like fun…
Despite the gentle, bucolic, fair-weather reverie implied by the famous title, director Joe Dowling's truly eye-popping new production of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at…
Ever since Gregory Peck, the Tom Hanks of his moment, starred in the film version of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" in 1962, the small-town lawyer Atticus Finch has been a symbol of Am…
Wither forgiveness in a year of constant American division? That question was at the core of many of the best Chicago shows of 2018 as this theater-loving city explored questions of guilt, p…