4,000 stories from Newcity Stage
RECOMMENDED To some extent, every Cirque du Soleil show is dreamlike. Writer/director Michel Laprise's "Kurios"Cabinet of Curiosities" is the first I have seen that makes that scenario expli…
RECOMMENDED Chicago worships its food, from the temples of fine dining to the red-cooler bar tamales. Every resident has food woven inextricably into their life story, whether it's joyful, n…
RECOMMENDED Follow the fluorescent yellow paint on the floor through a dark, winding corridor, and you'll find yourself immersed in the ethos of the secretive gay bars of the 1970s. A few la…
With the rowdily interactive dinner theater show "We Gotta Bingo" Chicago Theater Works throws itself into the Belmont theater district with gusto, launching a new space (near Stage 773 and …
What better way to pass the dog days than with Shakespeare's canine comedy? This early, patchy and problematic work " whose dramatic summit is the appearance of Crab, the melancholic mutt " …
RECOMMENDED Mind-numbing with its soft-rocky up-tempo songs and pop-ish ballads, the 1973 and 2014 Tony Award-winning "Pippin" continues to charm all save the occasional music lover. If any …
By Loy Webb "This is turning into a therapy session," says actress Angela Alise as she wipes the tears from her eyes. "Which it always does with Erasing the Distance," Erasing the Distanc…
RECOMMENDED The Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s annual summer summit of tap and percussive dance classes, workshops and performances culminates this weekend when the masters strut their…
RECOMMENDED Walking into the MCL Chicago space for "VAMP: A Music Comedy Drinking Show" is like walking into a raucous house party that's just getting started. A four-piece band (Doc McCullo…
Improv is a skill. Being able to successfully improvise a storyline to music while drinking is an even greater skill. That's the challenge the cast of “Buzzed Broadway” takes on …
RECOMMENDED A brand since 1984, in Chicago since 1987 and in their current digs on Belmont since 2007, ComedySportz has clearly hit on a winning formula, proudly maintaining the title of lon…
RECOMMENDED Something tells me old Anton might have rather enjoyed "Stupid Fucking Bird" if his body had aged as well as his work. Sideshow Theatre Company's lofty yet godless (re)vision of …
RECOMMENDED With four mismatched chairs on the stage of Rivendell Theatre's cramped Edgewater space, Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell's "[title of show]" is set within environs which contribute to…
RECOMMENDED Watching Tennessee Williams' classic portrayal of lust and longing in New Orleans under the Wisconsin stars, on an especially hot and humid night, adds an extra element of authen…
RECOMMENDED Ever the crowdpleasers, the folks at Hell in a Handbag follow the touchy and pushy "Miracle!" with a loving tribute to Bette Midler, a longtime ally and prominent cultural icon i…
RECOMMENDED "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." Ralph Waldo Emerson's words sum up life's most difficult struggle…
By Aaron Hunt Chicago Summer Opera advertises itself as another of our city's startup, storefront, non-profit operatic enterprises; its title promises a spoonful of gastronomical respite as …
Rarely in my experience has a play that starts so well gone so flat by the end. The opening scenes of "A Perfect Ganesh" are perfectly hilarious, from the moment old friends Kitty (Jeannie A…
RECOMMENDED The idea of a musical tribute to Gertrude Stein is, on its face, overwhelming. Anyone with passing familiarity of the late poet's propensity for playful and often anarchic verbos…
RECOMMENDED Starting a show by making audacious promises to the audience"you will laugh, you will be amazed, etc."is usually a misguided path to disaster. But host/MC Don Hall came off as mo…
RECOMMENDED I'm writing this twenty-four hours after the final blackout and "Grand Concourse" is still making me unsettled. Set in a Bronx soup kitchen run out of the basement of a Catholic …
By Loy Webb "I choose to reflect the times and situations in which I find myself. That to me is my duty. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?" A poignant question raised by th…
RECOMMENDED Given that its first scene contains a teenage girl scheduling an abortion and then her boyfriend showing her a gun"one that might as well come with a giant neon “Chekhov…
RECOMMENDED You know what "Men of Soul" is? It's a whole lot of fun. The newly put together musical revue of hits from the sixties through the early nineties is an evening's worth of nostalg…
RECOMMENDED The show opens beautifully, with the witches translated into chic young hipsters who, perhaps having tired of yoga, are now into necromancy. They fuss about with rune stones and …
