William Osetek, the director of the highly entertaining new production of "Chicago" at the Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrace, has been trying to get the rights to this most deliciously …
What " beyond a better understanding of the social and economic consequences of English phonology " does Eliza Doolittle actually get from Henry Higgins? That question has long hung over pro…
Writing an appreciation of Martha Lavey is far from easy, not least because Lavey, whose death this week at the age of 60 plunged all who love Chicago theater into a deep state of mourning, …
The sudden exit of a spouse can clear the stubborn male mind, as can the well-timed slam of a door. Thus scholars and students have argued for years over whether Henrik Ibsen, the author of …
A quiz for you, theater-loving reader: When was the last time a professional Chicago theater company produced "Chicago," a musical that burnishes the city's scandalous reputation each and ev…
Most works of art dealing with the post-traumatic stress suffered by those who served and saw action overseas have dealt with the war in Vietnam or the wars in Iraq. The so-called Greatest G…
An indefatigable, unstinting and intellectually voracious artistic director who reinvented Chicago's most audacious and aggressive theater for a new era, Martha Lavey wrestled the Steppenwol…
If you are one of those people who know every note of "Jesus Christ Superstar," the anthemic rock opera penned as a concept album by a couple of pimply upper-class Brits named Andrew Lloyd W…
The rights holders of the sitcom "Three's Company," which aired on ABC from 1977 through 1984 and starred the late John Ritter as a man who lived with two single women and pretended to be ga…
Alas for imperial Russia and the family of Czar Nicholas II, the 17-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna was murdered in 1918 by the Cheka, Vladimir Lenin's secret police. But since p…
So when William Shakespeare wrote Sonnet 18, he must at some point have screamed to himself, "Shall I compare thee to a ... What? What? What's the word? What the flippin' heck are thou more …
Malted milk balls, chocolate bars, sweet jars and other candied treats of all delights are stacked high in the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. You'd expect that " right? " at a musical called "Charli…
In 1980, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Canadian government concocted a bizarre but ultimately successful scheme to rescue six American diplomats trapped in Tehran, following the fa…
As the redoubtable Bette Midler seamlessly transitioned from the perils of a chronic onstage coughing fit to the received joy of yet another standing ovation the other night, United Airlines…
The gleaming white teeth of Adam Jacobs have done many sparkly trips around the rialto since their owner opened on Broadway atop "Aladdin," the most frenetic and intentionally cartoonish of …
Moss Hart. Jerry Adler. Alan Jay Lerner. Trevor Nunn. Bartlett Sher coming in 2018 on Broadway. Most directors of major productions of "My Fair Lady," it's fair to say, have come from a back…
Spring has sprung in Chicago. High time, then, for a Stephen Sondheim revue. Porchlight Music Theatre is obliging, not with a revival of "Putting it Together," nor "Side by Side by Sondheim,…
How did a Yiddish playwright born the youngest of 10 children in Kutno, Poland, the child of Hasidic Jews who frowned on secular education, come to write a lesbian love scene so thrillingly …
When it comes to credible depictions of small-town Pennsylvania, "Groundhog Day the Musical" is about as veracious as a woodchuck named Phil is a qualified rodent meteorologist. This British…
Three artists with strong connections to Chicago are at the center of a planned spring 2018 revival of "Carousel," the much-beloved musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Jessi…
Which is the biggest tourist attraction in the Midwest? For years, that honor has gone to Navy Pier with about 9 million visitors a year. On Travel & Leisure's 2014 list of America's most-vi…
The two young people who flail around in the first act of Bathsheba Doran's compassionate and ultimately complex play, "The Mystery of Love & Sex," which opened Thursday night at Writers The…
Chicago Shakespeare Theater announced most of its 2017-18 season of theatrical productions Thursday " including the first programming at The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare, its newest indoor th…
The quest is not exactly investigative journalism worthy of a Pulitzer Prize, but determining how long a commercial show plans to stay in town can take some serious detective work. Take, for…
To a large extent, "King of the Yees" is the kind of young play that a talented, smart and very funny writer such as Lauren Yee needs to write before she can move on to the greatness that su…