275 stories by "Nina Metz"
Mordant family dysfunction fuels this 2011 work from Nicky Silver, featuring a patriarch dying of cancer, a matriarch more interested in redecorating the living room than her spouse's termin…
Updated: Comedian Aziz Ansari will perform a surprise trio of shows Thursday night at the Chicago Zanies. Tickets have sold out.Â
Comedian Aziz Ansari has announced a surprise trio of shows Thursday night at the Chicago Zanies. Tickets are on sale now.Â
Since its launch a year ago, the comedy theater Under the Gun has developed shows centered on a premise, such as that of a project next month called "Porn Minus Porn," or staged readings of …
Funny how sticking an actor in the right context can suddenly reveal a physical resemblance.
Los Angeles is full of writers and performers who came up through the comedy ranks in Chicago, and it is not unusual to see many them continue to work their improv chops on stage, usually at…
Los Angeles is full of writers and performers who came up through the comedy ranks in Chicago, and it is not unusual to see many of them continue to work their improv chops on stage, usually…
There is a looseness and also a precision that seasoned improv performers bring to the stage, and it is this combination - disciplined but unpredictable - that can elevate a scene into somet…
The best scene in this two-person sketch show at Public House envisions a conversation between a Disney studio head reluctantly pulled into a meeting with a young woman who wants to discuss …
How good is your memory? Is it shot, like mine? Do you know all your passwords? Can you remember what you did last Tuesday? Now consider the brain power involved in memorizing an entire scri…
One of the weirder, funnier sketch shows I saw in 2009 was a one-man project called "'Sex' Ed Vincent," starring Paul Brittain as the most ill-informed sex education instructor alive. Britta…
There's always been something a bit mythical about the earliest years of Bette Midler's career, when she performed her cabaret act in the basement of the Continental Baths in New York City. …
The premise sounded amusing 10 years ago when word first started trickling out about this show: a musical about the making of said musical.
The premise sounded amusing 10 years ago when word first started trickling out about this show: a musical about the making of said musical.
Knockdown verbal brawls can work especially well onstage, and it is with considerable skill that playwright David Lindsay-Abaire devises this fight card: Who is right and who is wrong in thi…
A quick note to performers and directors working in the Annoyance's smaller theater: If the air vent is on, folks onstage are going to have to project a lot more if they're going to be heard…
Before vampires and dystopias, teen movies weren't defined by life-and-death stakes. Matters were more prosaic, such as: If you give a guy a boombox to hold over his head, will this pseudo-g…
Resentments have a way of lingering like a bad smell. Such is the family dynamic at the center of Stephen Belber's sprightly (if somewhat frustrating) drama about a retired judge " white, co…
Resentments have a way of lingering like a bad smell. Such is the family dynamic at the center of Stephen Belber's sprightly (if somewhat frustrating) drama about a retired judge - white, co…
Is the word "love" being used ironically in this 1989 play by Brad Fraser? As in, none of this is anything close to an exploration of love or why we crave it so deeply, but, hey, let's call …
In an empty room with white walls and just a single wooden deck chair, a man assesses the environment: "Hotter," he says of the room's temperature. "I want her to melt."
A woman shows up at the door of a man she dated - briefly but intensely - 24 years ago. "For one whole summer we were lovers," she says, jogging his memory of that time when she was 17 and h…
A woman shows up at the door of a man she dated " briefly but intensely " 24 years ago. "For one whole summer we were lovers," she says, jogging his memory of that time when she was 17 and h…
"I made the decision to do comedy because I always enjoyed making people laugh,"Â naval reservist Landis Frederick says in a YouTube trailer for this show, "and my experiences with the mil…
"I made the decision to do comedy," naval reservist Landis Frederick says in a YouTube trailer for this show, "because I always enjoyed making people laugh, and my experiences with the milit…
