Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was in fine form when it made its annual return to the Auditorium Theatre March 8-13 bringing classic Ailey repertory, a Paul Taylor piece, recent work by …
Under Lookingglass' auspices, the hot-blooded and poetically infused romanticism of Federico Garcia Lorca's "Blood Wedding" is transposed onto the American Dust Bowl. With its bountiful folk…
Monday “The Matchmaker” at Goodman Theatre. Thornton Wilder’s madcap romance and the inspiration for “Hello, Dolly!” returns to the city of its creation.�…
RECOMMENDED A grease of misery pervades the fast food industry"the ceaseless cycle of uniformly geometric machine-molded meat simulants over the grill in a world where parallelepiped potatoe…
Mercy Street Theatre's "Burn," a play written by Ian Michael James, is defined in all ways by its potential: Sam (Alex Gudding) wishes he could've had a life to lead, Al (Scott Olson) might …
Like every television show ever made about life in New York City, Alena Smith's “The New Sincerity” occurs in an improbably excellent piece of real estate: a split-level loft apa…
RECOMMENDED How does one secure the throne when a whole throng of people stands in the way? Kill them all! And then kill some more folks for good measure! Or, so it goes in Shakespeare’…
One test of a chic woman's mettle is how many ways she can deploy her scarf: casually slung over a shoulder, knotted loosely or tightly around the neck, folded, fanned or flounced. This is t…
By Irene Hsiao From its roots as a small tap-dancing studio on the corner of Hubbard and LaSalle, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago has become one of the companies that defines contemporary dance…
As an allegory for sectarian disputes of all kinds, "In A Little World of Our Own," the breakout work from Northern Irish playwright Gary Mitchell, is easy enough to grasp without a backgrou…
RECOMMENDED In dance, the body speaks a language that transcends the need for speech in a mode that depends on the universality of the flesh, uttered in dialects of technique. Joe Goode Perf…
Before you ask: no, this is not an adaptation of "Midnight Cowboy” the film. It's an adaptation of the 1965 book on which the film was based. Still, any adaptation would be incapabl…
It’s a Saturday night at Tritriangle gallery in Wicker Park. The main room, filled lengthwise with rows of folding chairs mostly filled with attendees, face a video projection on th…
RECOMMENDED Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater makes its annual return to the Auditorium Theatre March 8-13 with customary abundance: ten big dances from 1958 to the present, and every night…
Early on in "Rolling," jilted journalist Valerie digs at Sarah Koenig, beloved creator of "Serial." While at first it seems like a put-on, as we spend more time with Val the jab begins to ma…
It’s of substantial note, with over three decades in dance and a record of international program outreach, including multiple programs to and at the time not-so-friendly China, that th…
RECOMMENDED One of the most powerful capabilities we possess as humans is the ability to make decisions. Our decisions, no matter how big or small, can change the course of our day or derail…
In Chekhov's "Three Sisters," written in 1900, the universal goal is to be in Moscow. In Mikhail Bulgakov's "Zoyka's Apartment," written a quarter-century later, there's hardly a character w…
RECOMMENDED Chicago Shakespeare Theater's “Othello” is a man's play in a man's world. It opens with Iago and Roderigo, average white dudes in baseball caps and leather jackets, t…
By Noel Schecter The darkest days for Michael Patrick Thornton began in the immediate aftermath of the spinal strokes that left him paralyzed and comatose for three days in 2003. ThorntonÂ�…
RECOMMENDED Herding cats. Like most overused metaphors, there’s good reason you hear it thrown around so much. One would be hard-pressed to find any individual who works at a non-pr…
RECOMMENDED One of the noblest services a theater can render is to capably revive an unjustly dismissed work. Raven Theatre has helped right an old wrong with this poignant production of Wil…
RECOMMENDED Reviewing "Marnie & Phil: A Circus Love Letter" at the Actors Gymnasium is difficult. Not because the plot is particularly complex or because there's a difficult-to-articulat…
RECOMMENDED Perhaps best known for the heroine's waltz song, which arrives in the first act and isn't quite equaled for sparkling melody thereafter, there is still much music to savor in thi…
RECOMMMENDED One night, Richard Hannay, a dashing thirty-seven-year-old Londoner with a fine pencil mustache, finds himself so filled with ennui that he does what any other reasonably bored …