FOR THE RECORD With only a matinee remaining today, it’s soon to be history, but this River North Dance Chicago is offering some stunning steps at the Harris Theater in their annual fa…
A NEST OF VIPERS Don't stop the presses. Yet another blatant spin-off (if not rip-off) of August: Osage County has splattered on the boards. What the world needs beyond peace and prosperity,…
SNUFFING OUT SNOBBERY Preferring acting over setting, Gale Childs Daly's joyously theatrical adaptation of Charles Dickens' coming-of-age masterpiece uses six actors to play almost 40 charac…
GONE BUT NEVER SILENT Commemorating the 75th anniversary of "Kristallnacht," the terrible nights of November 9-10, 1938 when Nazi thugs unleashed their most public assault on Jewish life and…
COMPASSION PLAY Forgetting the ineptitude of Larry Kramer's 1988 farce Just Say No, it's ripe to revive his 1985 masterwork about how a health crisis defined the gay community–as much …
A TITLE THAT LIVES UP TO ITS NAME The circus has rolled into Rosemont again, and the fall classic is worth running off to join (it moves to the United Center after Allstate Arena). This 1…
FAST, FURIOUS AND FUNKY Ending tonight at the Harris Theatre, the latest balletic blast from the newly renamed Giordano Dance Chicago delivers six hyper-kinetic pieces. This generous outpour…
REINVENTING ROCK A huge West End hit for over a decade, this compilation jukebox musical does for Queen what Mamma Mia! did for ABBA, Buddy for Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and Jersey Boys …
BOYS WILL BE MONSTERS William Golding's 1954 cautionary thriller depicts a world on the edge of nuclear war. But when a plane crashes, a tiny portion of humanity is given a do-over. Tragical…
A PUPPET IN THE WILDERNESS In The Table, a curious creation now on its first U.S. tour, three members of the U.K.'s Blind Summit puppet theater depict a garrulous Bunraku-style hand puppet, …
INDIAN NIGHTS Earlier this fall the Joffrey Ballet revisited the uneasy birth of modern dance with a kinetic revival of Stravinsky's still-shocking, century-old Sacre du Printemps in all its…
THE STANDARD FOR STORYTELLING It's a coup just to get the theatrical rights to this juicy work, the late, great Paddy Chayevsky's Oscar-nominated 1956 screenplay. But it's sensational to pul…
A ZOMBIE MUSICAL THAT NEEDS BRAINS There's something wrong with a show that demands you be drunk. On opening night the howling fans of this cult phenom, now in its fourth incarnation (if tha…
LOVE IMITATES ART Ironically, the real-life love affair celebrated on film and in the theater by co-creators Glen Hasard, an Irish composer, and Marketa Irglova, a Czech songwriter, fizzled …
FRIENDS DISCOVERING BENEFITS Familiarity needn't breed contempt. An old-fashioned "coming out" drama can reinvent the wheel with charm enough to distract from any cloying sense of déjà v…
ROMANCE MEETS REALITY Written early but published posthumously (1817), Jane Austen's most comical novel, Northanger Abbey, works equally well as a literary satire and a psychologically probi…
CLUELESS CORRUPTION Much has been said about Neil LaBute’s work at Profiles, but there's so much that can't be given away about Wrecks (2005), a 70-minute solo show by the ever-cont…
THE TALE OF A LOVE THAT LINGERS TOO LONG Freud said that an unfinished task is never forgotten. But the inability to forget is nothing to the life-long longing of an aborted romance. For nov…
A REAL BEAUTY Reality T.V. meets classical ballet and the latter wins: The stars of the CW's Breaking Pointe have teamed up at Chicago's Auditorium Theatre through Oct. 6 to produce a dazzli…
PANACHE, YES"PASSION, LESS If a story's strong enough, you just need to rekindle the plot. Edmond Rostand's timeless love story celebrates the one-sided love between the famous 17th century …
CHANGE ON A TRAIN Schematic, predetermined and sometimes improbable, Cheryl L. West's ambitious family saga Pullman Porter Blues blends blues ballads with convenient confessions in order to …
VERDI UNLEASHED A DOMESTIC TERRORIST Written in 1845 and seldom seen since, this early opera by Giuseppe Verdi (whose centenary we celebrate) was a promissory note to be redeemed over and ov…
A TRAIN TO NOWHERE It's not enough reason for Joan Allen's Chicago comeback. She returns to her ensemble-thick roots on the Steppenwolf stage after a 22-year absence during which, among othe…
A SMOKING SAMOVAR It's a different kind of "spring fling," much m0re fitting for September when the season has faded fast. The latest installment in the Joffrey Ballet's "Masters of Dance" s…
BON APPETIT! A welcome return engagement (which is now part of the prestigious Broadway in Chicago subscription lineup), TimeLine Theatre Company's revival of its 2010 original work To Maste…