Presented as a police interrogation interrupted by flashbacks and talking-head interjections, "Thicker Than Water" delves headlong into the story of Andrea Yates and the 2001 murders of her …
It doesn't take much squinting at the screen to see that Shaggy in Hanna-Barbera's "Scooby-Doo" franchise has all the traits of a stoner. In this parody from Hell in a Handbag Productions, t…
Part family drama, part comedy of unresolved masculinity, "Parachute Men" is an unexpectedly buoyant, if ultimately only skin-deep, look at three young men kinda, sorta, barely keeping it to…
The underlying premise in Warren Hoffman's new play is loaded with all kinds of provocative tentacles. He's offering a backstage look at what happens in the administrative offices of predomi…
In the not-so-distant future, honey is the only sustainable crop, which means the bees themselves require a federal law enforcement agency of "beeholders" to … well, to oversee something, …
What is any self respecting coffee shop if not a homing beacon to the young and somewhat adrift? Offering employment to some. And for others, perhaps the reassuring feeling that you've left …
"You are becoming entrancing to me," Gustav Klimt says to a model sitting before him. And then quickly, under his breath: "Trouble." The late-19th century Viennese painter, most famous for h…
A group of prehistoric pals seem to be getting by just fine hanging out on the savanna until one night lightning strikes and sets a spear aflame. Suddenly this Stone Age tribe has access to …
Jack the Ripper's final victim is believed to have been a young prostitute named Mary Jane Kelly. She was just one of many women in late-19th century London who found themselves without a hu…
The cast and crew of "Chicago Fire" work a long season " 10 months in all, and plenty of it outside in whatever weather the city throws at them " but the hiatus is turning out to be a busy o…
Profiles Theatre, the small off-Loop company which was recently the subject of a long Chicago Reader cover story documenting allegations of intimidation, sexual misconduct and stage combat g…
Aiming satirical barbs at the NSA isn't a bad idea for a show. But the material actually has to be a satire to work. "Tapped: A Treasonous Musical Comedy" proves that it is possible write an…
For 10 years, the Improvised Shakespeare Company has been blazing an Elizabethan trail through the city's improv scene, where comedy shows rarely see such longevity. The reason it hast did l…
Watch enough nature documentaries and you'll hear no judgment from the narrators, even when the footage shows a mother animal rejecting her baby fawn or pup or chick. It happens, the calm vo…
Like a hyperactive kid just back from theater camp, Shirley Lame (pronounced le-MAY) takes the stage to sing classic Broadway duets all by her lonesome. Embodied, to the hilt, by Rebecca Soh…
Once upon a time, back in the analog days of the '70s, David Mamet gazed upon the mating habits of the young and single in his play "Sexual Perversity in Chicago," and in "Double Text," a br…
Last weekend, tucked away in the Northwest Side offices of a company that makes socket screws and industrial fasteners, a small film crew assembled. The retro, dusty ambience of the place…
Nobody wants to give (or receive) bad news. Including: Your show is a stinker. For those of us who neither perform nor work in theater, there are few barriers to sharing an honest opinion am…
John Ball's 1965 novel "In the Heat of the Night" " about a black police detective named Virgil Tibbs stoically pushing back on bigotry while helping law enforcement in a small Southern town…
"You're a nobody and you suffer like a nobody," a character is bluntly informed in "The House of Blue Leaves," John Guare's breakout play, first seen in 1966, which stuffs all sorts of ugly,…
Snubfest, the annual event featuring sketch comedy, stand-up, storytelling and solo performances rejected by other festivals, returns in June with "Saturday Night Live" alum Tim Kazuri…
Chicago improv veteran and "Pitch Perfect" screenwriter Kay Cannon will be back performing a special one-night show in Chicago Saturday at iO Theater. Among those scheduled to join her on st…
A one-act festival of 10-minute plays "incorporating an element of nudity" was announced today by Stage 773, the Lakeview venue. If you've been around Chicago theater long enough, either as …
A woman sits in the waiting room of an obstetrician's office, while her female partner is in another room being inseminated, and a young couple nearby can't help but tell her how brave she i…
Playwright and TV writer Tanya Saracho, who launched her career in Chicago, has been named showrunner for the new Starz series "Pour Vida," which is currently in development. According to a…