125 stories by "Mary Wisniewski"
This show is alive. For the two hours spent in the tiny Bucktown theater, you can imagine you have stepped into a Toulouse-Lautrec painting"drinking absinthe and watching the can-can.
Lennix, known for his work on television's "The Blacklist" and "Dollhouse" and movies like "The Five Heartbeats" and "Ray," is a busy man around Chicago these days. He's going back on stage …
Too much of Tom Stoppard's absurdist, existential tragicomedy about two minor Shakespearean characters has been trimmed from this production, which is too bad, because the play is brilliant …
This is a moving, beautifully written and honest play that discusses generational conflict"between old ideas of "purpose" and spirituality and new ones, between the need for truth and the ne…
This play sees the contradictions at the heart of this country"the tragic infrastructure under its noble façade. Monticello won't look the same when you think of all the people who were m…
You don't come to "Richard III" for history"you come for spectacle and gore, and Chicago Shakespeare delivers.
In presenting the words of real people talking about America's troubled education and criminal justice system in her 2015 play "Notes from the Field," writer and actress Anna Deavere Smith f…
The social media world is a "cool" place (in Marshall McLuhan's term)"you have to fill in the details. The story might work better in a cooler medium, like television.
In its Chicago premiere, "Champion" has strong vocal performances, exuberant dancing and a creative, multi-level set by Allen Moyer, which uses projected images of real newspaper headlines a…
The actors are telling a story that never finds its way, and leaves too many unanswered questions.
It's January in Chicago, and we must somehow survive it. You could go to Miami, but not everyone has the time. So here's a closer source of heat"a dynamite production of "Anything Goes" at P…
Both the poetry and the genre-defying nature of "Illinoise" made it a favorite of Tony Award-winning choreographer Justin Peck. Peck worked with longtime friend and collaborator Stevens to c…
It's a sweet story, beautifully performed, about a friendship between two teenage girls. One of them is a mermaid or selkie who takes care of whales.
This story has remained popular for 180 years because Scrooge is all of us, hurt by the world, trying hard to be tougher than we really are. Sometimes, we need to lower our defenses and reme…
The moment Rebecca Spence steps on the Court Theatre stage as Eleanor of Aquitaine, the atmosphere changes. Here's something special.
This new production of "Twelfth Night," directed by first-generation Jamaican American director Tyrone Phillips with a mostly Black cast and reggae music, captures the spirit, the language, …
The monster in "The Night of the Hunter" is not a vampire, or a werewolf, or any kind of supernatural, European fiend. He is a true American type and scarier than any Halloween monster, beca…
The talented cast sells every song and bawdy joke for all they're worth, and you'll have a good, silly time.
Trap Door opens its thirtieth season with an early play by one of the twentieth century's kings of strange"Polish surrealist writer, artist, photographer and drug-adventurer Stanislaw I. Wit…
This could be anywhere and any time in the modern era, with people being turned into numbers, and their stories into "cases."
There's a danger of being caught in the folds of time"you need friends, celebration and human contact to pull you free. So grab a friend and go see "Revolution""it's time to get weird togeth…
A dinner party is a great device for theatrical conflict. There's nothing like too much wine and miscommunication to draw all the poisons out of the mud.
Majok is back in Chicago, getting ready for a production of her 2020 play "Sanctuary City," at Steppenwolf Theatre, where it will run from September 14 through November 18. Majok says she's …
"Next to Normal," with music by Tom Kitt and book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, is not up to the challenge and complexity of its subject.
In a Northwest Side warehouse, you can visit the apartment of a Mexican family, anxious because the father has been deported. Or a multi-generation Filipino family, about to cook supper. The…
