KILLER THEATER Recreating in part the pivotal Civil War battle fought 150 years ago this July, Lifeline Theatre's labor of hate, powerfully staged by Matt Miller, is as cinematic as theater …
WAR IS CONCENTRIC SLICES OF HELL Just as America seems to be expanding rather than concluding our deal with the Devil in the Middle East, Sideshow Theatre Company's Chicago premiere–a …
LOONY TUNES IN EVERY WAY You could call this two-act, two-actor, two-hour romp Irma Vep meets Singing in the Rain. A charming trifle that's also a stunning tour-de-deuce, Porchlight Music…
WHERE BLARNEY GOES TO DIE Who'd have guessed that a 90-minute Irish play would be set in a bar where everyone gets sozzled and crocked much sooner that an hour and a half could ever allow? B…
HEROISM AND ESTROGEN Well worth seeing, this stylized 100-minute tour de theatre nonetheless requires"and rewards"an informed audience: It needs eager theatergoers already aware of the story…
AN ARAB ZELIG Supple, swift and slippery, this 80-minute, four-character satire by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (translated by Rachel Wilson-Broyles) skewers Islamophobia and its many mutations. Its…
ISOLATION AND INSANITY There's a good reason for no intermission in this devilishly deceptive Belleville. It's taut to a torque as it depicts a young American couple's disintegration in an e…
THE ENSEMBLE IS HOT, THE PLOT IS NOT Sam Shepard loves to level, if not to topple, his characters. In the treacherous course of True West, two brothers exchange identities: The Hollywood hot…
FIRST DISNEYFIED AND NOW ZIMMERMANNED, THIS MUSICAL CAN’T SEE THE JUNGLE FOR THE TREES Not one of the great animations to grace the Disney studio, 1967's The Jungle Book was certainly …
BIG LAKE BIG CITY BIG TURKEY Chicago to the broken bricks and bone, playwright Keith Huff was at his storytelling best in A Steady Rain, a big hit about a conflicted cop and his crooked cron…
THE IMPOSTER HITS HYDE PARK HARD Because religious hypocrisy — specifically "affected zeal and pious knavery" — never goes out of fashion, Tartuffe is forever. Continuing and com…
A LONG HIKE IN THE THEM THAR HILLS OF SHAKESPEARE Along with its companion piece The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's late-blooming "romance" Cymbeline is usually treated as a fairy tale. Rightl…
FLEECING A LEGEND The tickets are free in (re)discover theatre's generously-meant new work by company member Jessica Shoemaker. Their too-fresh offering is an anachronistic, two-act take on …
GAY PRIDE AND PREJUDICE The Pride is an invaluable offering for Pride Month, or any other for that matter. Deeply textured and perfectly enacted, this Olivier Award-winning script by Brit…
EVERY NIGHT A FULL MOON Looking back on his life and sounds from his death in 1976, Chester Arthur Burnett, now forever called Howlin Wolf, is the complex crooner at the heart of Jackie Tayl…
SHIPSHAPE PRODUCTION TAKES SAIL Still subversive as it both condemns and confirms class snobbery, this smash hit from 1878 fuses Romeo and Juliet and Punch into a role-reversing romp where l…
KISS ME, COLE Just the songs are blessing and bounty enough in A Cole Porter Songbook, Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre’s all-singing, much-dancing salute to Broadway's suavest purveyor …
EXQUISITE SHARDS OF GLASS Never has the title of Tennessee Williams' early masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie, been so thoroughly embraced by the set designer. Grant Sabin takes the name of th…
A THUNDEROUS EVENT The "thunder" in Dragon's Thunder comes from huge kettle drums, prominently featured in a pounding competition between a Dragon and a Tiger. (Both win). It's one of 14 lyr…
THEÂ TITLE CHARACTER ISÂ TOO PURE FOR PEOPLE, BUT THIS PURE PRODUCTION IS FOR EVERYONE Of all Moliere’s comedies, The Misanthrope (1666), now gloriously and faithfully revived at C…
SCULPTED TO PERFECTION Dance should never be dull: That's the acting credo of Boris Eifman's kinetic Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg, now erupting across the huge Auditorium Theatre stage th…
THE PLAY’S NOT REALLY THE THING, THE PRODUCTION IS Further earning a proud name, Chicago Shakespeare Theater has produced Henry VIII for the first time in professional Chicago theater …
SECONDS WHICH SHOULD BE SKIPPED, NOT SPLIT Within the messy, overwritten and frustrating new script, If You Split A Second, is a potentially interesting premise: In an instant of unthinking …
PLEASE, SIR, I WANT SOME MOOR Alas, this is mainly a review of record: This is the final weekend to savor the triumphant revival of the Joffrey Ballet's Othello. Originally given its world p…
PORTER IS THE ONE WHO CARRIES THIS SHOW H.M.S. Titanic, they say, was unsinkable, but the S.S. American " the setting for Cole Porter's Anything Goes, his biggest hit before Kiss Me Ka…