4,000 stories from Newcity Stage
Nicky Silver's scripts are always a little bit absurd, focused on the dynamics of close personal relationships and absolutely brilliant. Over the past couple of years, AstonRep Theatre Compa…
There is a generation of theatrical composers who have now been raised on the sounds of "Rent." And not unlike those young playwrights who have for years been trying to emulate David Mamet's…
By Elle Metz On a warm, sunny Tuesday night, the founders of a new theater company have retreated into the cool, dark Jackalope Theatre in Edgewater. The large storefront windows are covered…
In the world premiere of Juan Francisco Villa's "Don Chipotle" it's difficult to distinguish between the real and the fantastical. And while that may work for Cervantes in "Don Quixote," it …
Nikolai Gogol wrote a short story entitled “The Overcoat” in the mid-nineteenth century about a Russian bureaucrat whose cloak is ratty and in need of replacement if his career i…
RECOMMENDED From Homer J. Hickam's memoir, to a Universal Studios film, comes a musical retelling of an ageless, American story of the right, and the ability, to rise above one's circumstanc…
A dark and occasionally funny thriller opens the twenty-seventh season at Profiles Theatre. At first glance, Beth Henley's "The Jacksonian," a surreal Southern Gothic tale, seems like an ide…
RECOMMENDED There's a scene in Myla Goldberg's "Bee Season" where a character explores a storage locker. Instead of finding the typical packrat arrangement, he discovers a museum of trinkets…
RECOMMENDED Strawdog Theatre Company lives up to the theme of their twenty-eighth season, "The Tipping Point," by thrusting audiences into the basement kitchen of an English aristocrat just …
RECOMMENDED Aliens and hillbillies in a musical together. That's what you get when you go to see "It Came from Kentucky" at The Annoyance Theatre. Initially, you might think that this is a p…
RECOMMENDED "This House Believes the American Dream is at the Expense of the American Negro" is a lengthy title for Zachary Baker-Salmon's well condensed, seventy-minute adaption of the hist…
RECOMMENDED Harold Pinter's plays often seem longer than they are thanks to the fact that he intentionally calls for prolonged pauses and silences within his scripts. Because of this, those …
I'd like to offer an analogy that I think Joan Schenkar, the rare American playwright at the European-leaning Trap Door Theatre, would approve of: "The Universal Wolf" is theater as ouroboro…
"Dirty Dancing" is undoubtedly one of my favorite films. I remember watching it in grade school for the zillionth time with one of my best friends and getting in trouble for jumping off of h…
Back in my college days, I attended a sizable number of history and political science lectures as a Theatre and Poli-sci double major. I would have been thrilled if any of those lectures had…
RECOMMENDED Earlier this year Newcity ran a story about the opening of the Windy City Playhouse and the launch of their first season. In it, artistic director Amy Rubenstein called it "the g…
RECOMMENDED Before the performance of "In Love and Warcraft" began on Sunday night, one of the show's actors explained Halcyon Theatre's philosophy of radical hospitality: the cast, crew and…
RECOMMENDED For the most part, The Inconvenience's sixth annual "The Fly Honey Show"'s blatantly burlesque and abounding pop cultural references can make it feel specifically millennial. How…
RECOMMENDED I've never been one to keep a consistent journal, but judging by the expressive content of the readings at Under The Gun Theater's new monthly show "#TBT," my infrequent entries …
Under The Gun Theater is rife with catchy concepts. Their "Comedy Against Humanity" show was so popular that – despite an informal agreement – Cards Against Humanity objected, fo…
By Elle Metz On a bright stage in a dark room at The Annoyance Theatre in Lakeview, two men, bouncing slightly on their toes, peer into the audience. Seventeen people"mostly young and casual…
By Hugh Iglarsh At a time when pop culture often seems like the only game in town, First Floor Theater's annual literary festival is a refreshing reminder of drama's richer possibilities. Fo…
RECOMMENDED Experimental music venue Constellation and experimental dance venue Links Hall have shared the same roof for several years, but their most captivating entente may well be in the …
RECOMMENDED Harold Pinter’s plays famously hint at something ominous below the surface of dialogue that poetically chases itself around but ends up nowhere (“They believe in me.&…
The premise of The Public House Theatre's "Ready for Hillary: The Musical" is simple, if wacky: On the eve of the 2016 presidential election, candidates Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, an…
