A bare-walls storefront production of Jonathan Larson's iconic "Rent" by Theo Ubique and "London Wall," a full-throated Griffin Theatre Company revival of an obscure British play from 1931, …
Housed on the former sales floor of a furniture store and located behind a grand new bar, Steppenwolf's new 1700 Theatre is designed to offer opportunities for more casual theatergoing, show…
In January 2015 I reviewed Nick Payne's remarkable play "Constellations" on Broadway, where it starred Ruth Wilson and Jake Gyllenhaal. I was struck by how richly this brief drama explored t…
"SpongeBob SquarePants," an animated television show about a yellow poriferan who lacks a digestive system but still manages to work as a fry cook in an underwater town called Bikini Bottom,…
Early in "Soups, Stews, and Casseroles: 1976," the new knotty-pine-kitchen play by Rebecca Gilman at the Goodman Theatre, a character named Kyle is watching election returns. A young, union …
Laurie Metcalf is in the bar. The very nice Steppenwolf bar. So is Anna D. Shapiro. And Jon Michael Hill. And Jonathan Berry. For a number of reasons, this suggests some changes at the 'Wolf…
In 2007, the actor Dennis Kelly found himself playing Belarius, a character in "Cymbeline" who, in the play's final moments, must give up boys he has raised as his own. The courtly, old-scho…
What will it take to solve Chicago's debilitating agonies with guns and other forms of violence? If you've ever despaired and then fantasized about a team of superheroes swooping down in the…
Come fall, Chicago will be treated to "Graeme of Thrones," a British parody of you-know-what TV show, the addictive one famous for its nudity, violence and throbbing drama. Slated for the Br…
Here's what's hot. Solo shows. Consider: Max McLean, an actor with a long and successful track record of commanding the stage alone, returns this summer to the Mercury Theater with his lates…
Some Broadway in Chicago subscribers are up in arms " as once was Alexander Hamilton. This contemporary duel is over season subscribers' inability to purchase additional tickets to the Chica…
Just months after the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, actor Laurence Olivier released his movie version of "Henry V" to war-ravaged, cinema-loving Britons. The neophyte director was par…
If you are a fan of "Carpool Karaoke" and the other excellent shtick to be found on "The Late Late Show With James Corden," then you largely have "One Man, Two Guvnors," the current show at …
Sam Zell, the Chicago real estate magnate and former controlling shareholder of the Tribune Co., plays a key role in "The Body of an American," the play by Dan O'Brien about Canadian photojo…
Would you buy two years of theater tickets " say, 20 different shows " just to get tickets to "Hamilton"? That's the current ask by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Wash…
The writer-performer Dael Orlandersmith is to be the first artist in residence at the Goodman Theatre's new Alice Rapoport Center for Education and Engagement, a new suite of classrooms, reh…
Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued a pair of proclamations on Wednesday, one in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and the other recognizing the two decades of…
In this age of binge-watched "Game of Thrones" and the George Lucas Museum of Endless Narrative Arts, it's probably not surprising that nobody seems to want to do just one of Shakespeare's h…
Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews once staged a lesbian love scene outside of a hotel elevator, passionate kisses that were intended to amuse Mike Nichols, and only Mike Nichols, until the ele…
The planned Broadway musical about Harry Houdini remains stalled. But the House Theatre of Chicago's intimate, illusion-filled tribute to the justly celebrated scion of Appleton, Wis., is ba…
Although now a staging area for the high-priced eateries and towering condominiums of the West Loop, Chicago's Haymarket Square has a history of blood. On May 4, 1886, " 130 years ago " a ma…
Ah, the grim lot of the Disney Princess: Drawn by a man, saddled with an improbably perfect figure, Americanized, commoditized, sanitized and morally burdened with assuring successive genera…
It's "Death of a Salesman" meets "Fifty Shades of Grey"! That would, at least, work as an accurate elevator pitch for the bizarre new for-profit attraction in the Royal George Theatre's caba…
Did you know Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy all wrote their own versions of the Bible? Ah! The ego of the refined mind! Hello, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas, Charles a…
The Five Lesbian Brothers aren't siblings but a downtown performance company in New York known for ensemble-driven satires involving copious and garish amounts of blood, nudity, sex and othe…