In May of last year, the venerable actor Stacy Keach suffered a mild heart attack while he was on stage opening night starring in "Pamplona" at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. Keach made a gallan…
The actor John Mahoney, a longtime Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member and a performer known to millions for his work on the NBC sitcom "Frasier," died Sunday at the age of 77. Mahoney had b…
No American playwright has risen faster than Dominique Morisseau: She's now among the most produced names at regional theaters and she's on her way to Broadway with "Ain't Too Proud," a show…
The ascendant Paramount Theatre in Aurora now plans to muscle in on the big Chicago business of new, pre-Broadway musicals. In 2019, the nonprofit theater west of Chicago will join with the …
In the final moments of "Ragtime," the beautifully scored 1998 musical from Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, there is a vision of how America could be: unified in diversity, learning from h…
After more than 33 years and an eye-popping 13,000 reviews, the long-standing Chicago theater critic Hedy Weiss has parted company with the Chicago Sun-Times. The paper told staffers that Fr…
These are the worst of times for awards shows. The ratings for the Grammy Awards last weekend were off a staggering 24 percent from the previous year. The Oscars, which are about to highligh…
Not since "War Horse," now five years ago, has a Broadway production of a contemporary drama gone out on the road and played a big Chicago venue. People respond more readily to musicals; str…
Work by African-American artists has figured prominently in three bold, strong shows, all of them at long-established but smaller Chicago theater companies, none of them in any way predictab…
I met an out-of-town friend for a drink after the Porchlight Music Theatre production of "Merrily We Roll Along" on Tuesday night. "Where would you like to go?" he asked, meeting me in the l…
Will Davis, the artistic director of the American Theater Company, does not shy away from a challenge. Take, for example, what he attempts with the Chicago premiere of Basil Kreimendahl's "W…
In the summer of 1984, President Ronald Reagan made a little joke. "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever," he said,…
The House Theatre of Chicago has pursued a 12-year love affair with the famously warring Hatfields of West Virginia and McCoys of Kentucky. This Chicago theater, known for its innovative ori…
The German equivalent of the crime of the century took place on March 31, 1922, on a small farm in rural Bavaria. On that night at the Hinterkaifeck farmstead, the farmer, his wife, their wi…
There's a Broadway story about "The Lion King." Julie Taymor, the conceptualist genuis, first wanted, in Act 2, to take Simba and his crew to Las Vegas. After they picked their chins up off …
In Dee Rees' superb movie "Mudbound," which scored four Academy Award nominations on Tuesday but not its deserved best picture berth, there is a flashback sequence wherein a young United Sta…
"Do you remember the Mariel boatlift?" asks playwright Rogelio Martinez over a bowl of tomato bisque on a damp Tuesday. "That was me." At the time of the mass exodus of Cubans from the port …
A new Broadway musical will be based on "Tootsie," the 1982 Hollywood hit from Columbia Pictures about a struggling actor who disguises himself as a woman to secure a role on a soap opera, o…
Not only was every seat taken at the Pride Arts Center Sunday afternoon, but also so many tardy people were trying to squeeze into the former North Broadway speakeasy that a couple of gentle…
"Cal in Camo" at the intimate Rivendell Theatre begins with a new mother, Cal, sitting in a kitchen and desperately trying to overcome a loathed and invasive device and pump milk from her br…
If you like the films of Noah Baumbach or the plays of Annie Baker, and if your favorite movie of 2016 was "Manchester by the Sea," I suspect you'll really appreciate "Five Mile Lake," a tho…
Attention broken-hearted lovers of Elvis! A new live show, co-produced by Authentic Brands Group and Elvis Presley Enterprises and penned by one of the creators of "Million Dollar Quartet," …
"I've just come from the Women's March," said an Arthur Miller-loving friend whom I'd run into in the lobby of the Court Theatre on Saturday night. "And now, look, here I am at 'All My Sons.…
"She the People," a new revue featuring five women, with the subtitle "A Girlfriends' Guide to Sisters Doing It For Themselves," arrives at Second City even as the unfettered new mainstage r…
David Peter Reimer, who shot himself in 2004, was a Canadian man whose penis was damaged beyond repair when he was a baby during a medically necessary circumcision gone terribly wrong. A psy…