1,031 stories by "Johnny Oleksinski"
Last night on the “Colbert Report,” hunky actor James Franco told the host he’d be performing in a yet-to-be-announced Broadway revival of “Of Mice and Men.” Th…
By Johnny Oleksinski White planks. What I'm staring at with the mischievous grin of a shifty-eyed child is a field of neatly lined-up boards with both a silver shimmer and the scratched-at e…
By Johnny Oleksinski Steppenwolf Theatre Company has announced a 2013-2014 season replete with world, national and local premieres, shying away from last year’s roster headlined by Bro…
Victory Gardens Theater announces its 2013-14 Season: the Co-World Premiere of Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, the World Premiere of Marcus Gardley's The Gospel of Lovi…
She Kills Monsters/Buzz22 Chicago RECOMMENDED Buzz22 Chicago may be the least-known of the three storefront companies showcased in this year’s Garage Rep, but for sheer creativity, inn…
AMERICAN BLUES THEATER EXPANDS TO A FOUR-PLAY 2013-2014 SEASON, INCLUDING AWARD-WINNING WORLD AND CHICAGO PREMIERES, ANDTHE RETURN OF AN ANNUAL SOLD OUT HOLIDAY HIT Â The American Blues Th…
RECOMMENDED The performance world struggles with fame in all its many mediums. Lady Gaga perceived the glamour of "The Fame" and the gnarling villainy of "The Fame Monster;" TV satire like R…
RECOMMENDED When taken apart song-by-song, the musical catalogue of Black Ensemble Theater’s uplifting new show, "From Doo Wop To Hip Hop," is radically diverse in genre, era, rhythm, …
WOMEN PLAYWRIGHTS AND DIRECTORS HEADLINE GOODMAN THEATRE'S 2013/2014 "DREAM" SEASON A BLUES-INFUSED NEW WORK AND A REVIVED MUSICAL CLASSIC BOOKEND THE LINE-UP OF WORLD PREMIERES, GOODMAN COM…
Crystal methamphetamine is the drug of the moment in fiction. On television, the meth-fueled "Breaking Bad" has won critical accolades for its dizzying calamities propelled by Bryan Cranston…
Northlight Theatre announces the first selections of its 2013-14 season: including a World Premiere by Christian O'Reilly, Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles and Neil Simon's Pulitzer Prize winner L…
The World’s Stage series at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, among the best and boldest importers of international work in the city, has provided a season of struggle, iron wills and trium…
RECOMMENDED Three plays currently playing in Chicago urgently grab hold of prescient national issues both imperative and sickening: “Teddy Ferrara” at the Goodman Theatre, “…
Recreating Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" painting is the beginning and the end of the originality in Don Nigro's new play; the Den Theatre's treatment simplistically bangs the nail on the hea…
There is a compulsion today to jam a play’s relevance down the audience’s throat"spicing up classical texts with easily digestible contemporary settings. Too often though, what w…
Glancing above and around the stage at Lookingglass Theatre Company on Saturday night, one could spy a handful of animal topiaries of varying size and species"giraffe, rhino, bird"a kind of …
By Dennis Polkow The gargantuan music dramas of Richard Wagner are by and large a world inhabited by gods and heroes ruled by magic and fantasy. The one exception is "Die Meistersinger von N…
RECOMMENDED When the cable goes out and you begrudgingly dial your service provider’s help line, who do you imagine is idling on the other end? My mind conjures up a grimy McCormick Pl…
By Johnny Oleksinski “I never thought I’d go back to this play. Ever, ever,” emphatically states PJ Paparelli, artistic director of American Theater Company. He’s tal…
Throughout Reginald Edmund’s “Southbridge,” which opened in a world premiere on Saturday night at Chicago Dramatists, my mind repeatedly wandered to author Toni Morrison. M…
RECOMMENDED With "Phantom of the Opera" having celebrated the all-time record of twenty-five years on Broadway last week and two local venues going head-to-head with Andrew Lloyd Webber offe…
Even the best political satire has its limits. A constantly shifting Second City revue or a four-minute cold open on “Saturday Night Live” hits the spot like little else. But bri…
RECOMMENDED “Sweet Charity” is the pet name neurotic accountant Oscar Lindquist (Jarrod Zimmerman) gives Charity Hope Valentine (Tiffany Topol), a dance-hall hostess he’s f…
RECOMMENDED “You can’t put your hands together in Minsk. You can’t drum.” How can that be true? The element that most bores into the audience at Chicago Shakespeare T…
Playwright Ruth Margraff’s “Stadium Devildare” is a caffeinated dystopian fiction wherein politics, sport and theater have become indistinguishable from one another. Corpor…
