THE BEAST DOESN'T CHANGE WHEN KISSED: A HAPPY ENDING Fairy tales may seem ready for ditching into the dustbin of abandoned narrative, taking all their happily ever afters, glittering princes…
ALICE IN ANDERSONVILLELAND Fall down the rabbit hole of the thoughtfully absurd Alice by Noelle Krimm, directed by Bilal Dardai. This performance"a reprise of the popular 2004 staging"showca…
STOREFRONT SHENANIGANS Have you ever heard of Bad Settlement Theatre Company? Well, don't worry about it if you haven't. Up until the opening of House Theatre's production of Season on the L…
THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A CITY As artist, poet, and actor Tony Fitzpatrick prepares to leave Chicago for New Orleans, he presents his theater piece, The Midnight City: a personal convers…
A JEWEL OF THEIR SOULS The Gift Theatre's production of Othello " their first Shakespeare, and my first exposure to this company " is a gift indeed. The doubly minimal set, combined with the…
BUILD-A-BEAR NARRATIVE In this year's Spring Spectacle, Redmoon provides some characters, some comedy, some cruelty, their trademark whimsy, and ornate production values, but the chronologic…
NUDITY IS AS NUDITY DOES For the sake of argument ("arguendo"), let us consider g-strings as tools of oppression, and pasties as violations of our First Amendment rights. This was the perspe…
WHEN PLAYTIME IS OVER Somewhere between "Once Upon a Time" and "Happily Ever After" there is a very adult world of tests, losses, disappointments, and grief. Despite this, we assert our agen…
WAY BETTER THAN A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE Redmoon's seasonal performances are not events or even experiences, but passages to a fleeting world of contemporary fable, complete with masks, mu…
TO KNOW, KNOW, KNOW HER… Singer, comedienne and anti-glam diva Sandra Bernhard thrives on delightfully toying with her adoring throngs. I remember the first time I saw her on the David Let…
A CHORUS FELINE A prolific author and auteur, Rainer Werner Fassbinder exulted in display of the seamy and hypocritical side of the post-war German bourgeoisie. He directed forty films, wrot…
THE SPECIFIC ENIGMA OF A BUNNY A play is generally defined as "a staged representation of a story " see: DRAMA." A circle ensues, because drama is explained to be "a piece of writing that te…
HAND IN HAND TO HELL’S ANGELS Deceit and destruction reign in Wayward Productions' hell-bent for leather staging of Richard III, which has been reimagined as biker gang mayhem in a …
THE HORROR OF SELF-DENIAL FUELS INVENTIVE STAGING Chicago Opera Theater has teamed up with Long Beach Opera in California to produce a delightfully disturbing presentation of Philip Glass' a…
THEATER FOR SOCIAL CHANGE With fifty-two murders to date in 2013 as I write this review " over a murder a day " the death toll in Chicago seems as ubiquitous as it is tragic. Collaboraction …
FEARFUL SYMMETRY In Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, inspired by an actual 2003 event involving occupying soldiers in Iraq, a slain tiger takes center stage and discusses from…
PIÑATA FULL OF DARKNESS Don't be concerned if you don't receive an invitation to Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party " the Steppenwolf's revival production is still an event not to be mis…
A SPECTACULAR AND FASCINATING JOURNEY IN WHICH THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY SEEM Cameras have evolved from room-sized camera obscuras, to the box-like contraption of the nineteenth century, to the…
WHEN THE DECONSTRUCTION OF COMEDY BUILDS LAUGHTER Jeff Garlin, comedian and star performer in HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, appears in his one-man show Closer Than I Appear at the Steppenwolf …
MEMORIES MAY BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH Freshly Fallen Snow, by Chicago Dramatists' resident playwright M. E. H. Lewis, builds its plot upon a recent scientific advancement:Â the possibi…
“SINCERE EFFORT” BY A NOSE IN THE FIFTH Sam Shepard's Geography of a Horse Dreamer offers the lyric combination of the rough and ridiculous we expect of Shepard, with eponymous t…
A HEALTHY DEBATE George Bernard Shaw observed that, "The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image o…