4,886 stories by "Chris Jones"
Space is a perennial crisis in the Chicago theater. There's not enough of it obtainable for affordable rent. And when a theater decides to try and make more, the build-out costs tend to be a…
The conceptual director Mary Zimmerman will return to the Lookingglass Theatre next season with a new family-friendly project called "The Steadfast Tin Soldier: A Christmas Pantomime," Looki…
Just 17 days after the filming ended for Stanley Kramer's beloved 1967 movie, "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," its star, Spencer Tracy, died of cancer. Tracy's mortality is very evident in th…
NEW YORK " We may all be fabulous creatures in our own heads but, heaven forfend, we are doomed by the brevity of our individual lifespans to keep repeating the same mistakes. How could any …
"I'd die before you'd put me in a home," says the old Irish lady. "Aye," says her daughter, "hopefully." That's not a slogan you generally read in the mailers for The Mather, The Claire, The…
Vastly improved from its rocky Denver tryout, director Michael Grandage's heavily sold production of Disney's "Frozen" is set to open here Thursday night, replete with richer storytelling, l…
Jerry Mitchell's "On Your Feet," the jukebox bio musical aimed at fans of Gloria and Emilio Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, danced its first conga in Chicago three years ago, and went o…
"It's time to protect yourself " and your friends " from Facebook," read the click-bait headline Monday on Mashable, one of many columns this week decrying how Cambridge Analytica, a firm al…
The new season at the Goodman Theatre includes a new production of Meredith Willson's "The Music Man" from director Mary Zimmerman " I vote Patti LuPone for Harold Hill, but don't hold your …
For a vista of how deeply cynical America has become in this age of division and manipulation, this moment when you don't know whether the news is real or fake, whether your boss is under in…
American Theater Company " the storied Chicago theater company that first staged the Broadway hits "Disgraced" and "The Humans," opened a new musical by the creators of "Urinetown," staged a…
NEW YORK " For anyone who has watched some 40,000 Jimmy Buffett fans shout "Salt! Salt! Salt!" at Wrigley Field or Fenway Park and proceed en masse to move their fins first to the left and t…
Two phenomenal Brits died this week. One, Steven Hawking, seemed to dwell among stars, planets " and black holes " that revealed their secrets only to him. The other, Ken Dodd, stayed firmly…
Chicago Shakespeare Theater's 2018-19 season features a whopping 14 productions " which will include the North American premiere of Jessica Swale's "Nell Gwynn," a hit comedy from London's W…
The Broadway Playhouse has a new show celebrating female friendship in the 1950s and 1960s. And after a long spell outside of the spotlight, the Apollo Theater in Lincoln Park is coming back…
Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd," which opened Monday night, is the final major production at the No Exit Cafe, the longtime Rogers Park home of the Theo Ubique Cabaret The…
Hardscrabble lives, spent in the shadow of Walt Disney World, made up "The Florida Project" " for my money the best movie of 2017, Oscar or no Oscar. "Kingdom," the new drama from Chicago's …
At the beginning of "Hang Man," during the usual friendly announcements about cellphones and emergency exits, an African-American Mississippian climbs up high in the sudden darkness, inserts…
In the mostly barren rehearsal room above 42nd Street, a large bed pulls the eye. What might transpire there, one wonders, as poised and beautiful men and women dance a seductive masquerade …
The podcast is a thing of the moment. If you regularly partake, you likely will know two things. One is that only a very few podcasts are sufficiently well branded to merit the kind of expos…
What do you with a sold-out hit? This is a question that has bedeviled the nonprofit Chicago theater for decades. Consider the conundrum faced right now by the Windy City Playhouse on Irving…
Rough day, Monday? Luckily, by 9 that night, Doctor Patti was in the house. Prescription pad in hand. Or more accurately, in voice. Patti LuPone's sold-out appearances " two in one night " a…
In this image from Sunday night, the Chicago-raised actor Michael Shannon sits in the Old Town Ale House and watches the movie in which he was a star win the Academy Award for best picture. …
It is Andrew Lloyd Webber's Auntie Vi " his Auntie Mame, to all intents and purposes " who inspires the most colorful language in Lloyd Webber's new autobiography: "clotted bollocks on stilt…
The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ayad Akhtar will adapt his autobiographical novel, "American Dervish," into a play. The work, based on Akhtar's experiences growing up in Milwaukee as a fir…
