ASHES TO THEATER It's the spectacle that keeps on giving: No longer sprawling the width of the Neo Futurarium's stretched-out stage or concentrated in Theater Wit's proscenium hall, The Ruff…
A HOLIDAY CLASSIC PUT TO SONG: ONE THAT WON'T SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT While it may seem a bit premature to call the 1983 movie A Christmas Story a "classic," the near- universal popularity of the…
LET THEM SING AND WE'RE HAPPY Given the daylight deprivation that comes with December, music works like light to dispel the darkness. This musical couldn't be brighter:Â Â White Christma…
SWOON LAKE Sir Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake has flown into town and it's a rapturous reimagining of Tchaikovsky's beloved ballet. While productions based on the popular Petipa-Ivanov 1895 revi…
A GOLD RUSH NATIVITY You could call it a second coming of Christmas from our Golden West. Delivered with the grit and gusto of 19th century raconteur Bret Harte, The Christmas Foundlin…
CAN FROZEN MELT YOUR HEART? Direct from Broadway, Disney's Frozen officially kicks off its national tour at the Hollywood Pantages after a tryout in Schenectady, NY, and it's the hygge snowb…
A MELLOW YULE Back in the day velvet-toned Nat King Cole practically owned Christmas. His TV specials characterized by what his recreator Evan Tyrone Martin calls "bold simplicity." His trad…
A WELL-MEANING YULE CONFECTION THAT'S A BIT DIFFICULT TO SWALLOW For dogged seekers of sentimentality for whom The Gift of the Magi or It's A Wonderful Life are insufficient tins…
ELF-DEPRECATING HUMOR PAYS OFF It's hard to go wrong with this script, as writer a David Sedaris's biting wit, which has made him an NPR favorite for years, delights the cynic in us all. Whi…
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SATIRE Has it really been 40 years since Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9 was first presented? The biting satire is so topical " containing cross-dressing, gay relationships…
ODDBALL OUTCASTS It pays homage to the goofy compassion exhibited by claymation holiday specials, especially the iconic classic where the inhabitants of the Island of Misfit Toys are rescued…
GET YOUR SOUL SALVAGED The minute I sat down at the Lounge theatre and saw the rundown bar on the stage equipped with a few tables, a jukebox and several guitars hanging on the walls along w…
DOESÂ GROUNDHOG DAYÂ BEAR REPEATING? At the center of San Francisco Playhouse's first regional premiere of Broadway's Groundhog Day the Musical is the brilliant, perfectly cast Ryan Drum…
PUNK'D In many ways, Gregory S. Moss's 1980s-themed punkplay feels like a dream. Props and seasons are generically labeled. Flights of fancy are realized like make-believe. Even the era itse…
CHRISTMAS AS A CIRCUS There's a beloved poem behind these multiple circus acts in one act: Clement Moore was never that fond of his famous 1837 poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas (better known…
NOT AS KEYED UP AS IT SHOULD BE The Geffen Playhouse has really been on a roll under the newest Artistic Director Matt Shakman. There are many more interesting scripts, and many more chances…
CYNICS UNITE These days when directors revive a classic, they have to decide whether their approach will be either to modernize the play or mount it as a period piece, true to the spirit of …
REAPPRAISING A CASH COW Consider this a kind of conditional mea culpa: In past reviews of Goodman Theatre's A Christmas Carol, I've faulted the production's trivialization of Charles Dick…
THE PLOT THIN-ENS Can lightning strike thrice? Over two decades later, it's happened again " a third collaboration between author/director Eric Simonson and the world-famous, nine-member Lad…
JUMP FOR JITNEY It is an incontestable fact that every play August Wilson wrote justifies being looked at again and again. It has been fascinating to see how the moral, political and emotion…
DÉJÀ VU MEETS GROUNDHOG DAY "Birth was the death of him": Terse to the point of cruelty, Samuel Beckett devours the human experience in six words, repeatedly juxtaposing graves with …
CHICAGO OPERA THEATER UPS THE ANTE AND PUSHES THE LIMITS The bad news: Everest and Aleko, Chicago Opera Theater's engrossing double bill at Millennium Park's Harris Theatre, clos…
AN EDWARDIAN WAKE-UP CALL You can't keep a good play down. Produced under the pseudonym of K.G. Sowerby, the Edwardian drama Rutherford and Son was a huge hit in 1912 " until the playw…
HELLO TO GOODBYE The Musical Theatre Guild should be proud of this fine, coherent, splendidly cast reading of The Goodbye Girl, with principals Wendy Rosoff and Will Collyer charismatically …
OY VEY A barrage of human suffering " anti-Semitism, racism, anti-Muslim hostility, misogyny, LGBT closets, slavery, Japanese-American internment camps, miscarriages, PTSD, death, and a lite…