118 stories by "Francis"
July has traditionally been a quiet, laidback month in Chicago theater, with the major Equity houses wrapping up their current seasons with lower-profile offerings and the storefronts alread…
Oh, it's June. And it's Pride Month. So there are plenty of gay characters jaunting around onstage in Chicago. In some years, this has mildly annoyed me " as an out and proud gay man, I woul…
I've had a love affair with the great Latin American cities since those first visits a couple of years ago to Mexico City, and then Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Being Filipino, the shar…
One of the things I love so much about Chicago storefront theater is the astounding intimacy that the audience has with the actors. A lot of it has to do with the performing spaces " many of…
I thought I would never say this at the risk of shaving points off from my classy broad image, but I boarded a tour bus at Navy Pier on Sunday afternoon. But this was not just any tour b…
Back in 2010, I caught the Tricycle Theater's ambitious, staggering, and nearly eight hour production of The Great Game: Afghanistan in Washington DC during its US tour. Comprised of…
It has been quite the exciting, eclectic grab bag of theater openings this Chicago spring (or non-spring, after the cruel tease of two days of 80 degree weather this week, it's now back to t…
Two weeks ago, as I entered The Public Theater's LuEsther Hall for David Byrne's world-premiere musical Here Lies Love to thumping disco beats, a seductively enveloping haze, and the eerie g…
Yes, after an almost four month hiatus, I'm back. I decided to take a break from posting for a couple of reasons: after twelve years, I switched jobs and wanted, no needed, the time to a…
Where did those twelve months go? It just seemed like yesterday when I was washing the champagne and various other substances out of my hair (yep, that was quite the 2011 New Year's Eve shin…
The December holiday theater season in Chicago has usually been a tepid grab bag of plays about Scrooge, George Bailey, Santa Claus, and all forms Rudolph, naughty, nice, and red-hosed. …
After a flurry of blogposts in September and October, this month has been quiet. Yep, dear avid blog readers, you know I'm back on the business travel grind and this time it's a weekly commu…
So many plays, so little time! Thank goodness for projects that allow me to work from home. Here's a rundown of shows I saw the past couple of weeks:
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (Bailiwick…
I had only been gone a year (having skipped the 2011 version due to continuous business travel), but the Chicago International Film Festival suddenly feels like a true film festival. Thanks …
A wise old queen (drag, not royal) once told me that if you stick around long enough, you will see everything start to come back again: fashion, music, ex-boyfriends who dumped you in front …
For some people October is about going on long drives to see the changing of the leaves, while for others it is about spending weekends prancing around apple groves or pumpkin patches. F…
When I met a cute twentysomething guy a couple of weeks ago at an event and he asked me how old I was, I quickly answered "37". Oops, I'm not 37, but I guess I'm already at that age when a l…
I saw Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses right after it transferred to Broadway in 2002, after a much-heralded off-Broadway run that began two days after the September 11 attacks. It was one of …
As you my dear readers know, despite my penchant for outsized theatricality, I am also a sucker for brainy plays (cue Tom Stoppard, Frank Galati's adaptations of Haruki Murakami). I love…
As a Chicago cultural connoisseur, I really had high hopes for the International Exposition of Contemporary/Modern Art & Design, known around town with its less convoluted nickname of Ex…
I know it sounds so cliché, but this year, time did fly by, like Dreamliner-speed fly by. After a blur of a difficult summer, I've suddenly found myself in early September and right sma…
I am back. Finally. It has been a beatch of a summer between 15 hour workdays for weeks on end, lingering physical wear and tear, and a distressing week-long business trip into the dark unkn…
Like many other savvy theatergoers in the city, I was breathlessly anticipating Chay Yew's first season as Artistic Director of Victory Gardens Theater, which despite being one of the best-f…
I was just telling one of my friends the other week how it seems like there have been a noticeably higher number of musical productions in Chicago this half-year. At one point several we…
I'm a classical music dabbler. I don't profess to have the ability to be conversant about Mahler's "Symphony No.5" or Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" in the same way I am about August: Osag…
