6,591 stories from Stage and Cinema
HYMN-DINGER Sweet lovin' Jesus, Del Shores is back, and he's brought a band of gospel singers with him. In This Side of Crazy, writer/director/producer Shores introduces us to a Southern fam…
THERE'S ARSENIC AND LACE; BUT IT DOESN'T FEEL OLD Serial murder, euthanasia, slasher psychopaths, bodies buried in a crawl space, face-lifts for people trying to change their images, the cya…
I DON'TÂ FEELÂ YOUR PAIN Lately a chronic lack of empathy"sensitivity to the feelings of others"threatens to become a liability as great as any budget deficit. Compassion has never felt …
AFTER THE FLOOD Until the Flood lasts only 70 minutes. But its concentrated running time delivers a devastating drama. A ton of truth-telling now on tour at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, this 20…
SOPHISTICATED SWING FROM KING ELLINGTON Some shows are just pure pleasure, delivering unpretentious delight with no plot to process or points to proclaim. Much like Ain't Misbehavin', …
YELLOW JOURNALISM, BLUE PLANET " UNCERTAIN FUTURES Propaganda has always existed. It's when people promote and publicize their agenda utilizing biased or misleading information, a perfect to…
SHEP IN TIME When I think of the late Sam Shepard, his plays Fool for Love, True West, Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class usually come to mind. I was totally unfamiliar with Killer…
IF THE GLOVE FITS… On the heels of Leaving Neverland " the jaw-dropping 2019 documentary that explores the sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson " comes the world premiere of a …
A SHIP THAT REMAINS DOCKED Sting's musical The Last Ship has been in a shakedown cruise since it opened in Chicago six years ago. Based on last night's star-studded opening night at the Ahma…
A TREE GROWS IN THE ANTILLES In 1990, eight years before he wrote Ragtime, Stephen Flaherty composed an eclectically exotic score for this one-act fairy tale. It's the forthright story of…
PLENTY OF WATTAGE, EVEN WITH AN OBSCURE STORY Cirque du Soleil is back with its latest touring show, which opened last night, January 21, at Dodger Stadium. At its best, Volta provides all t…
BYOC: BRING YOUR OWN CANTEEN In an effort to spark dialogue on Trump-era immigration, The Road Theatre Company has mounted a revised version of Carlos Lacámara's Nowhere on the Border, a …
WHAT WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME MEANS TO ME Given the barrage of nasty nightly news, I don't doubt that Americans are champing at the bit for a large slice of patriotism as they watch…
SIMPLE PLEASURES IN THIS FEAST The Shakers have a song in their hymnal that reads: 'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free 'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And w…
LONELY HUBRIS "I want it all." "The sky's [not] the limit." "You only live once." "You can't take it with you.": We're fascinated by all the pride that precedes a fall. We can conditionally …
ROCKING THE BOAT When we enter the theater, we see two women in a small fishing boat. It's surrounded by huge buckets depicting the shallows of an inlet in the Alabama delta. Overhead nettin…
TOUCHING BUT TRAPPED IN A TIME WARP Stop Kiss was a big 1998 hit at New York's Joseph Papp Public Theater. In 2000 it arrived in Chicago in a tepid local premiere by the Naked Eye Theatre Co…
MY WHITE NIGHT I first saw Lillias White when she made her Broadway debut in Barnum in 1981; I've been watching her work for almost four decades since, and I promise you she never fails to b…
A LIGHTHOUSE SPILLS ITS SECRETS Isolation forces intimacy on its inhabitants, if only by its process of elimination. It can also foster secrets: Scattered souls protect their privacy by keep…
MIXING IT UP For over four decades, The Groundlings has proved itself to be one of the premiere comedy troupes in the nation, creating more stars than the Big Bang. Performers showcase mater…
AN AMAZING INCIDENT Meet Christopher, a wannabe bloodhound who has significant social, behavioral and communication challenges; we assume the unnamed disorder is on the autism spectrum, but …
NOT A SEVEN-COURSE DINNER, BUT FILLING JUST THE SAME While on a Midwest lecture tour, arrogant and overbearing critic and radio commentator Sheridan Whiteside slips on an icy doorstep, injur…
DANCING AROUND ADOLESCENCE It happened with You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, that peculiar, often cloying, problem of adult actors playing unfledged kids. There's an unavoidable condesce…
LOST IN AUSTEN All of Jane Austen's novels are built on the same premise. A woman meets and marries an eligible man after a series of usually comic difficulties. But Austen extracts a remark…
HAIL, CAESAR! Shakespeare's 1599 history play has, of course, had many lives " conservative as well as wildly interpretive " which has kept the slain Dictator of Rome in the forefront of our…
