4,886 stories by "Chris Jones"
When Candace Chong Mui Ngam's "Wild Boar" premiered in Cantonese in the playwright's native Hong Kong in 2012, the South China Morning Post described the play as "exploring how urbanites rea…
The Chicago Tribune, it was announced Nov. 17, will be leaving its namesake tower on Michigan Avenue in the second quarter of 2018 after a run of 93 years. The stage set will remain. But the…
Chicago's big downtown theaters are humming with eclectic fodder for the holiday weekend: Budgets and stamina permitting, you can choose from "Hamilton," Jimmy Buffett's "Escape to Margarita…
What should you be doing for your holiday entertainment pleasure? Let's ponder a little of the old, the new and the shifting sands of seasonal change. Some old favorites are expanded, moved …
In the early 1620s, a couple of aging actors named Henry Condell and John Heminges set about the task of publishing, in a single, bound volume, all of the plays of their late and beloved pal…
In the moist, all-American burg of Big Cherry " the setting for the new Tracy Letts play "The Minutes" " the rambling and esoteric agenda of the town council is filled with the patter of par…
As long as Hollywood has hired playwrights from New York or Chicago, which is as long as there has been Hollywood, these transplanted, bought-and-paid-for scribes have written plays about th…
There's a scene in "Lady Bird," this fall's remarkable coming-of-age movie by Greta Gerwig, where the title character, a complicated Sacramento 17-year-old encapsulated by Saoirse Ronan, fin…
"Work is a dirty word out here," says the charming, guitar-strumming, Jimmy Buffett-esque central figure of the new musical "Escape to Margaritaville," a "Mamma Mia!" for Parrotheads. This s…
After Donald J. Trump became president of the United States " which, you may recall, actually was a massive surprise to most of us " the amount of analytical bloviating about the reasons for…
Over the years, especially Stateside, Oscar Wilde's fin de siecle satire "The Importance of Being Earnest" has been turned into more of a hootenanny, replete with Lady Bracknell played in dr…
"I find ecstasy in living," wrote the American poet Emily Dickinson, "the mere sense of living is joy enough." So let us begin with that, dear reader, let us just let that sentence lie there…
"Your wedding," observes the central character in the Broadway comedy "Significant Other," "is my funeral." You may know the feeling: Your best friend ties the knot with someone she or he kn…
Think you've seen "42nd Street" before? Not with jazz-funk orchestrations and a rock drum set and a truly diverse cast, you haven't. Not with an ABBA-like synthesizer underpinning "We're in …
Lin-Manuel Miranda spent Saturday in Chicago, unannounced and mostly in the company of Jimmy Buffett. Each man has a show currently in Chicago: Miranda's "Hamilton" is in the midst of a long…
Whither contemporary dance in the golden age of the podcast? Can it fuse? Those provocative questions present themselves at the beginning of "Rooming House," the interesting and experimental…
"Once, not long ago," says a character in a weird new Broadway musical, "a group of musicians came to Israel from Egypt. You probably didn't hear about it. It was not important." But the pre…
If, as reportedly is its intent, Netflix finds a way to expunge Kevin Spacey and his character of Frank Underwood from the final season of "House of Cards," how will that make America feel? …
People who've been around Lin-Manuel Miranda and "Hamilton" for many years tend to share something interesting: total confidence in the power of the arts to effect meaningful and substantial…
Dewey Finn, the interloping pedagogical hero of "School of Rock" and a character first created by Jack Black, is a tricky, shifty dude to play when live on stage. This Mary Poppins of substi…
Court Theatre said Monday that its executive director, Stephen J. Albert, would be leaving his job in the fall of next year. Albert, 66, has been with Court, a storied non-profit theater wit…
The board of directors of Writers Theatre said Sunday that they have engaged "an experienced human resources consultant" to investigate a claim of sexual harassment made against the Glencoe …
Finding Jimmy Buffett on a hot Saturday night in July means a trip deep into the beer belly of Wrigley Field. Past Huey Lewis and the News, supportively rasping about the power of love. Thro…
Perhaps something terrible befell America in the middle of the 1980s. A self-inflicted wound from which the nation has yet to recover: Healthy enterprise, the marriage of capital and labor, …
"Without 'Newsies,' nobody knows nothing." Darn right, Jack Kelly. More power to ya', and to all the boys of the only Disney musical in the history of the world to venerate collective bargai…
