MERRY PRANKSTERS' MEDIEVAL MELTDOWN Cheeky, goofy and sassy as it "cocks a snoot" at a literary legend, this irrepressible import from Kneehigh, a brassy Cornwall theater, should be injected…
BLING BRINGS CLOSURE Now playing at Chicago's downtown Storefront Theatre, The Jewels, TUTA Theatre's world premiere adaptation of a story by Guy de Maupassant, is not to be confused with Th…
ABRACADABRA! In a welcome and overdue debut at Chicago's Auditorium Theatre, this weekend Houston Ballet offered two performances only of their sumptuous three-act ballet Aladdin, an Arabian…
SONDHEIM'S SWAN SONG? In one edifice"Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier"you find the beginning and possibly the end of Stephen Sondheim's stellar career. The Courtyard Stage is hosting…
FUR A GOOD TIME, CALL MASOCHISM ON PARADE David Ives' two-person fetish comedy, Venus in Fur, is a sexy crowd pleaser and an actors' tour de force exercise. The play casts a spel…
(SOCIAL) MEDIA MADNESS Gay playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (contributor to Glee and Big Love) may have stumbled with his over-the-top dark comedy Say You Love Satan–produced in Chica…
LIES ARE HARD TO LIMIT Are some lies lighter than others and thus lesser? Charles Van Doren will always be tainted for knowing the answers in advance in the 1959 Geritol quiz show scandal. S…
DANCING WINTER AWAY Erupting only through Sunday, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago has devoted its spring series to four eclectic-to-dynamic works from 1989 to 2001 by Czech choreographer JiÅ�…
THE RHAPSODIC SIDE OF STALKING Stendhal wrote a story once about a man who also wrote a story as a way to force himself to fall in love. It seems an impossibly pure task. Passion carries tha…
SOUL MATES FROM 167 YEARS AGO "Oh, we have paid for our children's place in the world. We have paid again and again." This assertion of achievement rings terribly true after two and a half h…
THE FORCE OF FORGIVENESS What's too ugly or scary to process, let alone to confront, in real life is grist for the mill of theater, such as how a gun appears and death comes out of nowhere. …
STEPS THAT SOAR Produced by Moya Doherty, the dynamo behind Riverdance, director John McColgan's well-crafted spinoff just launched its U.S. premiere at Chicago's Oriental Theatre before con…
BAPTISM IN WORDS Seminar, Theresa Rebeck's utterly engaging one-act, is all about the wonders and terrors of writing. Both in the author's dazzling dialogue and the fascinating issues she co…
HAPPY IN THEIR SECOND HOME It's its second annual homecoming, the much-anticipated, event-filled Alvin Ailey American Theater arrives at the Auditorium Theatre, as well as to community venue…
CHERCHEZ LA CORPSE Sometimes truths get told that only murder can out. The quaint, perhaps anachronistic, setting for David Alex' problematic two-act drama, just premiered by MadKap Producti…
WHEN THE BRASS RING IS JUST ANOTHER NOOSE The siren song of the bitch-goddess “success” croons loud and clear in this cautionary, modern melodrama. Golden Boy, Clifford Odets' 77…
FRANCE TRIMS ITS 1% WITH THE GUILLOTINE 2014 has been as good to 1859 as it was to the late 18th century. Christopher M. Walsh's adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel"a saga of unexpected her…
A SEXUAL CAGE FIGHT The punning title"Cock"is a heavy clue on what to expect. From the moment you enter, you know you won't confuse this 80-minute tour de theatre with anything else. Profile…
RACIAL PROFILING AND YOU Smoothly staged by Jessica Thebus for the Goodman Theatre local premiere, the blame game reaches Olympic proportions in Tracey Scott Wilson's wicked two-act troublem…
NASTY NESTING DOLLS In Steppenwolf's new show, it’s the specifics that startle. There's enough grit here to repave Chicago's countless February potholes. But, despite its well-rooted s…
A ROSE WHO EVENTUALLY BLOOMS Gypsy is as much a celebration of the addictive insanity of show business as a chronicle of the checkered childhood of super-stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Stephen Son…
STATE OF THE STEPS Playing (in every sense of the word) through Feb. 23, Joffrey Ballet's three-part showcase of Contemporary Choreographers delivers some (happily) bloodless cutting-edge mi…
IT DOESN’T GET MORE GOLDEN THAN THIS Hot stuff on a cold night! Just released as a companion piece to Black Ensemble Theater's runaway hit It's All-Right to Have a Good Time: The Story…
PLAYING GOD AIN'T FOR AMATEURS Following his return from a decade in exile in Siberia as a dissenter against the Romanov order, Fyodor Dostoevsky intended his second novel, written as much t…
ANATOMY IS NOT DESTINY Bursting with more arguments than solutions; cerebral, metaphorical and personal (sometimes simultaneously); Sarah Treem's two-act, two-person drama is also two plays:…