704 stories by "Zach Freeman"
‘Tis the season for gothic tales and Grey Ghost Theatre obliges with Evan Chung’s original adaptation of “The Book of Spectres.” These ancient tales were orig…
RECOMMENDED As a sketch towards the end of this gentle send-up of Chicago makes clear (with a self-referential punchline), Second City has been making audiences laugh (and casting directors …
RECOMMENDED Giants walk the earth. We tend not to notice. Until they fall. The explosion in communications technology that occurred in the twentieth century created a truly unprecedented new…
RECOMMENDED “That’s Weird, Grandma…” You know you’ve heard the phrase, though just what it connotes has always remained a tad unclear. (Sometimes itR…
RECOMMENDED As they've opted to open with a brief narrative recap ("Once upon a time, all the folk were free…"), it's clear that writers Nathan Allen and Chris Matthews are well aware that…
RECOMMENDED "I love Hollywood. Of course I do…" declares Nora Dunn's opening character, a gregarious eighty-seven-year-old Hollywood type discussing her behind-the-scenes involvement in th…
RECOMMENDED "Sweet Child of Mine" is a short, entertaining theatrical piece by Bron Batten and her parents Jim and Linda Batten. It mixes the boundaries of live performance, "home videos," s…
RECOMMENDED In 1979, Hank Williams Jr. released the song "Family Tradition" in which he demands of the listener: "Stop and think it over / put yourself in my position. If I get stoned and si…
By Joshua C. Robinson In the 1860s, George Pullman, a pioneering businessman, created a new position on trains that carried with it an embroiled dichotomy: the Pullman Porter. Pullman only h…
Say you're a musical actor. And say your brother happens to be one as well. Say that both of you are actually really good at this whole musical acting thing. Now, suppose that you want to wo…
The Plagiarists current production of “King Ubu” is an updated version of “Ubu Roi,” Alfred Jarry’s revolutionary social satire and the godfather of all ensuing…
Rumor has it that the Irish cast in the original production of Tom Murphy's booze-drenched, pub-set "Conversations on a Homecoming" consumed real alcohol throughout the course of this roughl…
They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but in Babes with Blades Theatre Company’s premiere of Eric Simon’s “Bo Thomas and the Case of the Sky Pirates,” the two …
Once in a weird, waning moon, something very strange occurs. It comes on suddenly, like the regurgitation of a warm shot of whiskey, and wreaks tender-footed havoc on those willing to sit th…
RECOMMENDED An architecturally surreal house is the setting: bedrooms, neon lights, a kitchen. As the center spotlight comes up, a beautiful middle-aged woman, with a hint of fatigue on her …
RECOMMENDED In his time, Shakespeare's plays, particularly his comedies, were meant to entertain the masses. These early situational comedies (yes, sitcoms) were borderline interactive, with…
Fans of Harold Pinter are sure to be interested in Proud Kate Theatre Project's stripped-down production of “The Dumb Waiter,” currently playing at The Alley Stage in Buena Park.…
RECOMMENDED In August of 1998 Camille Paglia, social critic and dissident feminist, released an essayist's interpretation of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” that cast the th…
RECOMMENDED You'll stand the forty-five-minute drive from the city. You'll stand the insufferable traffic and overpriced tolls. You'll even stand the thrumming engine roar of a low-flying ai…
By, Joshua C. Robinson Switch Committee"David Schwartzbaum, Ryan Nallen, Alan Linic, Dave Karasik and Collin Dahlgren, best friends and iO Chicago graduates"perform their own version of the …
RECOMMENDED Jason Robert Brown's well-crafted two-person musical "The Last Five Years" (actually more of a mash-up of two one-person musicals) tells a fairly uncomplicated story of a relatio…
The carefully executed and evocative opening scene, a brilliantly subtle little bait-and-switch, promisingly sets "Invasion!" up to be an ever-shifting piece of all-engaging theater, asking …
RECOMMENDED Before Rudy Hogenmiller became the artistic director of Light Opera Works in 2005, he had been a song-and-dance man on stage for more than thirty years. One of the shows that Hog…
 RECOMMENDED In the field of Computer Science, when you're studying algorithms and network connections and artificial intelligence, there are a few actual human names that get committed t…
Taking a pop-culture film phenomenon and transforming it into a new Broadway musical is no easy task, to be sure: the myriads of misfires significantly outweigh the occasional hits. The l…
