4,886 stories by "Chris Jones"
The Goodman Theatre's production of "War Paint,"Â the new musical that stars Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole and paints the story of the famous rivalry between cosmetics giants Helena …
"The Bardy Bunch: The War of the Families Partridge and Brady" has found that Chicago loves it not. Last call for "Cheers Live On Stage" is Sunday. "Helldrivers of Daytona" played all of one…
In its manifesto, the new Chicago Theatre Workshop declares itself a revolutionary musical-theater company dedicated to creations that "challenge our perceptions of art and music." I am thri…
Following the departure of half the cast of the critically acclaimed Second City e.t.c. revue "A Red Line Runs Through It," the venerable Chicago comedy theater has shuffled its creative man…
Attention Parrotheads! Next fall, Chicago will see the pre-Broadway tryout of "Escape to Margaritaville," the new musical celebrating the mellow musical catalog of Jimmy Buffett, the phenome…
I had never thought that much of "Bare: A Pop Opera" " a musical from 2000 dealing with sexual expression, confusion and betrayal among the senior class of a co-educational Catholic boarding…
No arts group in the city has done more than Steppenwolf for Young Adults to tackle the agonizing, relentless, quotidian problem of gun violence in the city of Chicago, a scourge that feels …
Aside from being a stage and screen actor of justifiably great repute, Jeff Daniels also is a prolific playwright. Most of his works have premiered at his folksy hometown theater, the Purple…
I only saw the inside of the Chicago police station at the southwest corner of Racine Avenue and Monroe Street once. It was 1993. I was living a couple of blocks away in a very different Wes…
Nicholas Colasanto, the much-loved actor who played Coach Ernie Pantusso, a bartender on the first three seasons of "Cheers" on NBC, once told The Associated Press that his character was alm…
There are narrators both reliable and unreliable, and then there are narrators who are dead. Annabel, the lively central figure in Melissa Ross' promising-but-incomplete new play at the Gift…
Catherine of Aragon " divorced. Anne Boleyn " noggin chopped off. Jane Seymour " not the actress, died in childbirth. Anne of Cleves " divorced. Kathryn Howard " head chopped off. Katherine …
The murder of a Nebraska teenager in a cornfield is at the center of "Bobbie Clearly," the dark and ambitious new play by the Chicago scribe Alex Lubischer, staged with great overall intensi…
If Chicago had a more robust commercial theater sector, the Broadway show "Hand to God" is the kind of attraction that could have run here for an entire season. At once a grizzly thriller, a…
An Australian friend of mine used to edit the Down Under edition of "Rolling Stone." I was surprised to hear she had quit such a seemingly glamorous job, but she said that, one day, she had …
On Saturday, Sept. 24, I went to Steppenwolf Theatre and reviewed David Rabe's "Visiting Edna," a long, harrowing play about cancer and its marauding invasions into the body of an ordinary A…
The hero of "Fly by Night," the indie-vibe 2014 musical from New York's Playwrights Horizons now in its intimate Chicago premiere at the Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre in Rogers Park, makes san…
After setting its sights on moving to a new home in the former Trumbull Elementary School in the Chicago neighborhood of Andersonville, and investing a great deal in the process, the TimeLin…
I think my disappointment at "The Bardy Bunch," the expansive but mediocre new parody show at the Mercury Theater that imagines the Partridge Family and the Brady Bunch as the Montagues and …
With another six hours of stage traffic " cascading through "Henry VI, Parts 2 and 3" and "Richard III" " adapter and director Barbara Gaines has concluded her fervently anti-war take on Sha…
On March 24, 1962, at Madison Square Garden in New York, welterweight boxer Emile Griffith killed a man in the ring. If you were around back then and a boxing fan, you likely watched the dea…
Although David Rabe's deeply disturbing new play " a howl of authorial anguish, really " is fundamentally about an ordinary American mother and her equally quotidian son, the distinguished A…
At some point, in the dim and distant past of Washington, D.C., the profession of politics could be pursued without resorting to personal destruction. Or " to put that another way " senators…
Do the great James Burrows and the scribes behind the NBC sitcom "Cheers" ever question whether their professional lives had lasting meaning? Twenty-three years after America stopped cold fo…
Barack and Michelle Obama wave goodbye to their guests, smile at each other, put on their pajamas and yawn. The first lady heads toward bed. But first, the president of the United States pau…
