WHEN UNIONS RULED THE EARTH Outrageously overdue for revival (the last one was at Marriott Theatre in 2004), this irresistible 1954 Broadway classic harks back to a time when producers could…
CHICAGO CAD MAKES BAD LOOK GOOD Sassy and brassy Pal Joey is a wondrous rouser that spins the tale of a roué gone rotten in Depression-era Chicago. Porchlight Music Theatre gained the ex…
SEVEN CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF A PLAY Undernourished as this commissioned play may feel, it is, in fact, the last of the "Elliot Trilogy" by Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes (bookwriter for In the Hei…
ALICE FALLS THROUGH AT LOOKINGGLASS "I miss myself." That's the plaintive cry from the titular character of Still Alice, adapted from Lisa Genova's book, and presented by Lookinggla…
A FISH OUT OF WATER Ten years ago, the Tim Burton film Big Fish with Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney, based on Daniel Wallace's 1998 "novel of mythic proportions," charmed audiences with its…
THEATER OF CRUELTY (TO THE AUDIENCE, THAT IS) A blast from the past, this 1963 curiosity from the once-living Living Theatre is a tribute to author Kenneth H. Brown's total recall and recrea…
COMPRESSED CRUELTY IN A SMALL STRINDBERG SHOCKER August Strindberg, the "father of modern psychological drama," told his publisher that Creditors, a drama that he prized as much as he did hi…
YOU GOTTA HAVE FAITH The adventurous playwriting of Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the successful "Brother/Sister Plays" (In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size, and Marcus),�…
A FAMILY HAUNTED BY ITSELF Even among dysfunctional clans " an apparently exhaustible topic for today's theater " Jason Grote's self-haunted family in Maria/Stuart gets laurels for looniness…
THE FUN IN FRAUD Famed impresario P.T. Barnum banked on one cynical truth: No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. The undisputed master of the “…
BREAKOUT IN THE OUTBACK There are so many ways to glitter and be gay in American Musical Theater: La Cage Aux Folles depicts the unexpected bourgeois normality in a near-marriage of boa-wrap…
YOU HAVE TO MEASURE CAREFULLY At the core of this dark and fascinating tragicomedy is a situation seething with modern irony: Can you be both above the law and beneath contempt? Angelo, a se…
SMOKIN' Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller " you may not recognize who they are but you sure know what they wrote: “Love Potion #9,” “Bossa Nova Baby,” “Kansas City.…
MAY THE RAP BE WITH YOU Before Othello: The Remix it was only Shakespeare's comedies that received the Q brothers' trademark, rap-happy revision"Funk It Up About Nothin' and The Bomb-itty of…
THE NEXT STEP(S) It's an impressive lineup for this respected Chicago company's annual "Spring Series""not just the always impressive Hubbard Street Dance Chicago but, here and elsewhere, th…
A DEATH IN THE UNION Hershey Felder has already regaled audiences at the Royal George Theatre with his uncanny and heartfelt recreations of George Gershwin, George M. Cohan, Frederic Chopin,…
WRITHING INTO REVELATION Alas, it's over " and way too soon. Luna Negra Dance Theater's 2013 spring program celebrated works by two contemporary Spanish choreographers: guest artist Ferna…
A TRUE SPRING FLING Returning to new glory and restoring golden memories after many happy visits to Chicago, Alvin Ailey Dance Theater just unleashed an unprecedented two-week, three-program…
A TISSUE OF SONGS An ambitious and sporadically powerful entry in Steppenwolf Theatre Company's fourth annual "Garage Rep," this 2005 musical by John LaChiusa is a Rashomon-like puzzle whose…
SOME THINGS, BUT NOT EVERYTHING, IS ILLUMINATED "With writing, we have second chances," declares Jonathan Safran Foer in Everything Is Illuminated, his well-received and dauntingly complex f…
WINTER FLUFF "We're all in the gutter/But some of us have our ear to the ground." If you find this limp lyric endlessly repeated in this silly-ass, pun-crazed musical instantly amusing, read…
MUSIC'S MANY BRIDGES It's a proven power at the Black Ensemble Theater: No disease is so deadly, no crisis so catastrophic that a song can't cure it within twenty bars. Add 20 more songs tha…
STORIES IN A SPIN CYCLE If ever the cliché "the plot thickens" justifies itself, it's in this relentlessly inventive 1996 work by Australian playwright Andrew Bovell; anacondas after their …
25 SAINTS A 75-minute exercise in dead-end disaster tautly directed by Susan E. Bowen, this new work by Pine Box Theater ensemble member Joshua Rollins tightly fits the theater company's act…
PARADOXICAL DUALITIES It's brainy almost beyond endurance and savvy in its approach/avoidance strategies of gaming love. Happily, Itamar Moses' Completeness at Theater Wit is also engrossing…