4,886 stories by "Chris Jones"
Coming this fall to the Royal George Theatre Cabaret: the official world premiere of "Chick Flick the Musical." Promising "heartfelt female friendship and empowerment," this new, 90-minute E…
Sunday night, I watched a kid get bullied in a school bathroom. The time I was attacked myself in a school bathroom, 30-odd years ago, thus came flooding back into my consciousness. This was…
"Headlines don't sell papes. Newsies sell papes," declare the young heroes of the Disney musical of that name. Watching the cheers, whoops and screams that greeted these young gentlemen of t…
Joshua Henry, a Broadway performer acclaimed for his role in "The Scottsboro Boys," will play Aaron Burr in this fall's Chicago production of "Hamilton," it was announced Monday. Henry made …
I fell for Evan Linder's simple, lovely play "Byhalia, Mississippi" when I first saw the piece on a cold night in January. I fell yet harder Thursday night when this story of a struggling, i…
Frederick Douglass, the one-time slave who became a great orator, writer, publisher and social reformer, was a fervent believer in the Constitution of the United States. "Its language is 'we…
This political convention season, as in all political convention seasons, two distinct narratives have emerged. There's the Trumpian narrative of crisis " that dystopic world of murderous il…
LONDON " Harry Potter, now 37 years old and perpetually stressed out, stands with his wife, the former Ginny Weasley, at Platform Nine at King's Cross station. His kids are going off to the …
"Chops," the retro new play at Theater Wit, is the kind of Chi-caw-gow show I thought gone for good. It features three 60ish white guys in a Chicago bar, one apparently the bar owner, banter…
In "The Book of Mormon," the role of Elder Cunningham " the runtlike sidekick to the Type A missionary Elder Price " has turned out to be quite a springboard. A squishy springboard, certainl…
Should all the hate, brutality and alienation coursing through the planet not be enough for you, I give you "Wastwater," a dystopian triptych by gifted British playwright Simon Stephens and …
Opinions abound as to why Pokemon Go, the augmented reality game, torpedoed Twitter, eclipsed Instagram, one-upped WhatsApp, sizzled Snapchat, toasted Tinder and took over the world. In, lik…
Watching Stephen Adly Guirgis' very beautiful play "Between Riverside and Crazy" at the Steppenwolf Theater on Saturday night " so soon after America seemed to collapse under the weight of m…
Chicago, meet your Alexander Hamilton: It's Miguel Cervantes.  Meet your Angelica Schuyler: It's Karen Olivo. And meet your (former) King George III: It's Alexander Gemignani. Origina…
When Profiles Theatre announced its closure last month -- the theater shuttered amid the outcry over a widely shared story in the Chicago Reader wherein several women alleged unsafe and abus…
"Between Riverside and Crazy," the seemingly prophetic 2014 drama by Stephen Adly Guirgis, deals with the unprovoked shooting of an African-American man by a rookie police officer who, in th…
With tickets typically selling on secondary markets for at least $2,000--and some being offered for ten times that amount--Saturday marks the final performance of the original Broadway cast …
The great Abner Mikva, who died Monday at the age of 90, was a congressman, federal judge, White House counsel and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in the coverage of th…
For a lot of actors, waiting tables is what you do when you're not in a show. Brad Zimmerman has turned being a waiter into a show. Ergo, "My Son the Waiter: A Jewish Tragedy," now playing f…
Before the "Hamilton" juggernaut takes Chicago's PrivateBank Theatre offline for the next 3,000 years " bravely shouldering the burden of the westward migration of the George Lucas museum up…
At the end of the Scottish play, the Thane of Fife enters with the head of the Thane of Cawdor: He of the "vaulting ambition," and the complicit spouse, now lacks a skull attached to his bod…
Rolling into a Skokie Dunkin' Donuts " please do not judge " on the way back from the Marriott Theatre's atypically audacious new production of "Man of La Mancha" on Wednesday night, I glanc…
It's the Fourth of July weekend " but not all the pyrotechnics blaze outdoors. Au contraire, some of the rockets are unleashed in unnervingly close quarters. In honor of Independence Day, he…
The Goodman Theatre is to extend its heavily sold production of "War Paint," starring Christine Ebersole and Patti LuPone, for an additional week, releasing hundreds of extra tickets to new …
