1,038 stories by "Johnny Oleksinski"
RECOMMENDED An unexpectedly satisfying pleasure of The Neo-Futurists’ “44 Plays for 44 Presidents,” which opened on Saturday night at the Neo-Futurarium, is the piece’…
I’ve little patience for dramas that paint scientists, mathematicians, and the like as cold, unfeeling androids. Such an empty storytelling approach is too uninspired and dishonest to …
By Johnny Oleksinski The Broadway-bound “Kinky Boots” strutted its first public steps here in Chicago this morning. The musical, based on the quietly released 2005 British film o…
With Collective Theatre’s inaugural production of Katori Hall's “HooDoo Love,” the new company has brought the extraordinary playwright, at last, to Chicago. Well, it’…
 RECOMMENDED The unprecedented rise of E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey” series could not have happened five years ago. The trilogy, which is essentially an overdrawn r…
RECOMMENDED The provocatively titled new pornography play “Dirty,” at The Gift Theatre, is not really about porn. Onscreen smut may be the shiny outer shell of rising star Andrew…
An epistolary novel, a story told in letters"or “snail mail” for my millennials"is an especially gnarly beast to dramatize because of the unique romantic confidence a letter carr…
RECOMMENDED Playwright August Wilson, who sadly and prematurely passed away in 2005, was a master craftsman of both character and situation. Throughout his Pittsburgh Cycle, ten plays chr…
The onslaught of modernized Greek tragedy Chicago has played witness to this year has consisted largely of caked-on, imposing stylistic touches, absent of purpose or urgency. To be sure, the…
RECOMMENDED Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan are rolling in their distinguished graves. And rolling more aggressively than ever before, thanks, in no small part, to the theaters of Chicago. A gu…
RECOMMENDED The abbreviated length of New Zealand playwright Gary Henderson’s “Skin Tight,” being given a Chicago premiere by Cor Theatre, resonates long after the “q…
The character with the most dialogue in Moisés Kaufman's "33 Variations" does not utter a single word"Music. Personified in TimeLine Theatre Company's Chicago premiere production by a stati…
The monologuist is, perhaps, the most naked of all stage performers. Whether his presentation is fictional, non-fictional or a hybrid of the two, the intrusiveness of barebones interaction w…
