4,000 stories from Newcity Stage
RECOMMENDED As far as voyeurism is concerned, theater tops film hands down. The former's brutal pleasure lies in the squirm-inducing feeling that not only is what you're witnessing inescapab…
RECOMMENDED Loneliness, at its worst, clamps down, feeling like a black box from which there is no escape. The claustrophobia of loneliness can sometimes feel so inescapable that dying of it…
RECOMMENDED John Neumeier’s reimagining of “Sylvia” blesses the stage with images not often seen in story ballet: those of powerful, independent women en pointe. According …
RECOMMENDED To be a teenager is to be a creature of extremity. Not only your body but your emotions and ideas and opinions are expanding with the rush and fury of a newborn universe"your own…
"Well, it's a relief to finally see something cheerful," Gwen said, as they exited out to the street. "Yeah," said Eleanor. "Though it ended weirdly with the traditional gender roles." "What…
By Kevin Greene Robert Louis Stevenson's novel "Treasure Island" is so ubiquitous in the sphere of popular culture that it's possible to feel as though you've read it without ever having act…
Last Sunday's afternoon matinee of Gioachino Rossini's "Cinderella" ("La Cenerentola") at the Lyric Opera set me musing. Why would Lyric director Anthony Freud schedule a romantic feminist d…
RECOMMENDED Twenty-five years after it first premiered at the Goodman, Scott McPherson's "Marvin's Room" is still relevant because people are still dying"slowly, painfully, dragging their fa…
RECOMMENDED The strings that tie mothers to daughters are knotted, twisted and forever looping. Severing those strings is an impossible feat, though many spend their lives trying. Untangling…
With a title like "The Black White Love Play," it's not surprising that a song entitled "No Matter What Race" is featured, gets a reprise, and also gets sung during the bows. What is slightl…
Honeybees throughout the world are disappearing. Entire hives lose their populations almost instantly, and beekeepers' careers, not to mention our food supply, are threatened. Seemingly, pla…
Sensuous excess comes to life in Christina Rossetti's 1862 poem "Goblin Market," with proliferation of rhymes, synonyms, luscious lists of fruits and "figs to fill your mouth." It's easy to …
RECOMMENDED This little operetta dinghy overcame modest box office and, proving the critics right for once, sailed away with the 2014 Tony Award for Best Musical. No small feat in an era whe…
RECOMMENDED Cantastoria is not a terribly familiar theatrical form, but it is a legitimate one, and one that is appropriately suited to bringing the poetry of Charles Baudelaire to those of …
RECOMMENDED Willy Russell, playwright of "Educating Rita" and "Shirley Valentine," wrote the book, music and lyrics for the folk cantata "Blood Brothers," which ran for twenty-four years in …
RECOMMENDED Horror is a mighty genre, stealing you away from the present like no other genre can, activating the primal instincts that follow fear and focusing your attentions like a laser o…
Frank Chaves, artistic director of River North Dance Chicago, steps down this December after twenty-three years leading the contemporary jazz company. In 2005 Chaves was diagnosed with syrin…
RECOMMENDED Remember banker's boxes? Those white, cardboard, 10″H x 12″W x 15″D storage bins that arrived flattened, to be unfolded and refolded until they took a shape tha…
RECOMMENDED When you review a show, you have to take into account what the producing company is shooting for. "Scream, Queen, Scream!" – three vignettes by playwright David Cerda, is t…
RECOMMENDED With the fall season at hand and Halloween right around the corner, it's easy to think of haunted houses as being the top destination to get a good scare. However, First Folio Th…
“I’ve had company for over thirty years now. It was very much about recreating work of my own,” Stephen Petronio says of his new five-year project “Bloodlines.R…
RECOMMENDED With a splash of commedia dell’arte, a spoonful of Restoration comedy, and pounds of clowning, director Barbara Gaines has exploded the up-and-downstairs Mozartian confecti…
RECOMMENDED There are a lot of things about "Direct from Death Row: The Scottsboro Boys (An Evening of Vaudeville and Sorrow)” that are huge in scope, aside from its title. The play co…
By Loy Webb Children have some of the most imaginative and exciting minds. Give them a cardboard box, they'll create castles fit for any king and queen. Give them a blanket, and as it's wrap…
RECOMMENDED John Steinbeck is the most Wagnerian of American novelists. He loves to dilate on cosmic themes. He permits himself loose speculation on big ideas – Guilt, Free Will, Forgi…
