704 stories by "Zach Freeman"
RECOMMENDED Vicki Quade, creator of "Put the Nuns in Charge" and co-writer of "Late Nite Catechism," has put together an interactive show filled with Catholic humor. Our Lady of Good For…
Guy De Maupassant's short story on the jewels of one Monsieur Lantin succeeds largely on its thrifty pacing and its economy of detail. By the time you've settled into the notion of Lantin's …
RECOMMENDED Though you can almost always count on Second City revues to deliver plenty of laughs, thematic consistency isn't quite as reliable. "Depraved New World" – the 102nd revue t…
RECOMMENDED Stephen Sondheim has both refined and blurred the sloppy genre that is our current understanding of lyric theater. With patter mimicking actual speech, the blazing speed of varia…
By Raymond Rehayem "I like to leave a play behind," says playwright David Ives. "This play feels very old to me. It's like four plays ago already." The play in question is Ives’ "Venus…
RECOMMENDED Adults with kids: “Dinosaur Zoo” is an interactive puppet show about dinosaurs in the same way that a Hummer Limousine is a car. It's really fun, it's bigger than…
RECOMMENDED If the best way to determine the success of a children's play is by the quiet smiling faces of its audience, then Lifeline Theatre's performance of "Lyle Finds His Mother" hits i…
RECOMMENDED Yes, yet another production of Shakespeare's anarcho-pagan comedy that dares to ask the question: Is there anything less romantic than patriarchy, religion and capitalism " i.e.,…
RECOMMENDED In "Road Show," now playing at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Stephen Sondheim and John Wiedman compress the story of minor American legends Wilson and Addison Mizner into a peripa…
RECOMMENDED When does "innocence" evaporate? When does "inheritance" jump the financial ledger and land onto the behavioral spreadsheet? And how much weight can we grant the still-gestating …
RECOMMENDED "The Killing of Michael X" is that rare piece of art; a complex, genre-evasive production that keeps the viewer off balance for almost its entirety before ultimately delivering o…
RECOMMENDED Theater, like music, enlightens, opens eyes and can connect partakers viscerally to seemingly disparate segments of the population: people who aren't "them," exotic "others" who …
RECOMMENDED Chapatti, an unleavened flatbread, is a staple of South Asian cuisine. Chapatti is also the name bestowed upon the beloved dog of Dan (John Mahoney), the male half of the two-han…
The teen besties of "Ghost Bike" face a fearsome transition: Ora (Aurora Adachi-Winter) is bound for college out of state, while her pal Eddie (Ricky Staffieri) is remaining in the town of C…
By Raymond Rehayem Back in the cathode ray days of my pre-HD childhood, when my father bemoaned my obscure taste in comic books ("What are the X-Men? Why can't you like something popular lik…
"Ithaka" begins with a walk-on appearance by Odysseus (Andrew Saenz), bemoaning the ten years it took him to get home from the smoking ruins of Troy, thanks to the ill will of the gods. This…
RECOMMENDED There is great truth in the notion that the insane do the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Of the several themes in actor-cum-playwright Joshua R…
RECOMMENDED "Life's got its own rhythm," says Ruby (Taron Patton). "It don't always go along with your rhythm." This is the continuous theme of August Wilson's "King Hedley II," directed by …
RECOMMENDED Mozart's penultimate opera "La clemenza di Tito" ("The clemency of Titus") is at long last, finally coming into its own. A work overflowing with the mature Mozart at his very bes…
RECOMMENDED Self-referential by repeatedly remarked upon design, “The Earliest Known Photo of Men Drinking Beer” tries to say in thousands of words seemingly everything the titul…
RECOMMENDED "Nothing is more dangerous than stupid men who think they have a good idea," says a character at one point. The play is based on the true account of a Chicago band of Irish-Ameri…
RECOMMENDED 415. The number of homicides recorded in Chicago in 2013. 46. The number of homicides recorded in Chicago as of January 1, 2014. 266. The price of a pair of Air Jordans, and the …
"The Planetary Defense Force in: Crisis on Planet Earth!" provides the slimmest of sci-fi narrative trappings within which to showcase an evening of the casually costumed cast challenging se…
By Suzanne Karr Schmidt As a relatively recent Midwesterner, I associate Chicago with outdoor festivals, pop-up art shows and street theater. And while the Berghoff's Oktoberfest and the Chr…
RECOMMENDED What do you get when you cross poison ivy with four-leaf clovers? A rash of good luck. What do you get if you cross an artist with a policeman? A brush with the law. What do you …
