Most anyone who ever has been a teaching artist in an under-resourced urban school will tell you much the same thing. On rough days, the job feels like an exercise in impotence, given how th…
It's fall showtime! Before we offer up our seasonal deluge of made-in-Chicago attractions, let's take a look at what is headed our way from Broadway " or, at least, is making that claim. Won…
Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor of Chicago on Feb, 22, 2011. Four days later, he showed up at a neighborhood theater. His appearance made national headlines; the attendant publicity helped ma…
They've impressed us at TimeLine. Knocked us out at Victory Gardens. Made us chortle at Second City. Blown us away at the Lookingglass. They're a diverse crew but they all are into truth and…
Fifty years ago, the political activist and anarchist Abbie Hoffman, a co-founder of the Yippies, was arrested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Along with other members…
A neglected play from the 1980s that truly is much richer than I, for one, had ever realized, Barbara Lebow's "A Shayna Maidel" is, on its face, the single-set story of the reconciliation of…
After a whopping 15 years in "The Lion King" " yes, you read that right " the song-and-dance man Kenny Ingram is back in town, playing Big Daddy Brubeck in "Sweet Charity" at the Marriott Th…
In a turnaround from recent history, Chicago's Goodman Theatre dominated the 2018 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award nominations, with multiple nods for its widely acclaimed productions of Suzan-…
How did my parents arrive at the moment of my birth? Some of us seek and find the answer to that question as small children. The rest of us, especially if our folks' trajectories through lif…
A one-man laugh factory known for one-liners delivered through the romantic gauze of memory, and one of the last human connections to the golden age of American comedy, the playwright Neil S…
In October, Elaine May will appear on Broadway in a revival of Kenneth Lonergan's "The Waverly Gallery," a play about an elderly gallery owner in Greenwich Village. The 86-year-old May " hal…
If you have stared at the roof of a Chicago taxicab over the last few days, you may have been surprised by what you saw: An actual advertisement for the Chicago production of "Hamilton." Unt…
In 1966, Mike Nichols wrote an article in Life magazine. "We had a theater in Chicago in a former Chinese restaurant," he wrote. "One day, a young girl wandered in " because she lived on the…
Restaurant criticism is different from other forms of cultural reviewing. For one thing, we all have to eat every day. For another, we have an inevitably intimate relationship with anything …
Samantha Barks, the truly formidable young star of "Pretty Woman: The Musical," achieves something close to a miracle at the Nederlander Theatre. With the help of her savvy director, Jerry M…
Fifteen years after opening on Broadway, and four years after it first played at the Mercury Theater on the Southport Corridor, "Avenue Q" is a long-running hit all over again in Chicago. "W…
The last time I saw a bona fide warm-up comedy act at a musical was back in the 1990s at the Royal Palm Dinner Theatre in Palm Beach, Fla. ("Are you ready for 'La Cage Aux Folles'? Did you h…
A former Weather Girl is to headline the cast of "WaistWatchers the Musical," which is coming to Chicago's Royal George Theatre this September for an open run. Martha Wash " one half of the …
Even in this golden age of the unfathomable and illogical tweet, it seemed bizarre. With deft abbreviation skills, a bit of snark and a pragmatic disregard of punctuation, former Arkansas Go…
The Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Amy Morton will direct a Broadway revival of David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross." Only there's a difference. All of the characters will be women. The …
David Cromer is returning to the Broadway stage. The Chicago-honed, Tony Award-winning director will be part of the cast of Kenneth Lonergan's dark comedy "The Waverly Gallery," slated to op…
The Pride Films and Plays production of "Holding the Man," the stage adaptation of a famed 1995 memoir by Timothy Conigrave, is a low-budget affair with barely a set, let alone sophisticated…
Benjamin Rauhala, a young musical director in New York, was flying home from Disney World in 2015 when he had a three-word idea: Broadway princess party. Especially if you have a budding one…
After a 14-year run and 22 full productions, Chicago's Polarity Ensemble Theatre is calling it quits. In a statement Monday evening, the off-Loop theater company cited increased production c…
"Can We Trust Facebook and Twitter?" asked a click-baity headline in The Wall Street Journal this week. No, is the obvious answer, given all the evidence of nefarious Russian interference. T…