4,000 stories from Newcity Stage
Stephen Sondheim's long, lauded, and continuing career in the lyric theater has given opportunity for discovery as to his compositional demons, and the fire he uses to bully them into delive…
RECOMMENDED Disclosure, before the sharks circle: I like to be amused. I'm generally not amused by art about art, whether it concerns its own making or whether it ruminates on or examines ot…
RECOMMENDED Movement is personal. Our bodies and the way we inhabit them is integral to our identity, our sense of self. And for Billy Siegenfeld, founder of the Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, pe…
Who has time to read websites anymore? All the cool kids in town are too busy reading print magazines (or are we mistaken here?). Luckily you can find us on the same social platforms that ev…
RECOMMENDED The setting starts out so lovely. You walk into Oracle's cozy little cabin of a space off of Broadway and you're greeted with what looks like a charming Tuscan villa. It's the ki…
RECOMMENDED The headlining piece in Giordano's fall program is a commission from Broadway and television choreographer Ray Leeper. Leeper makes commercial dances for music videos and TV danc…
RECOMMENDED Some of the most unsettling characters in horror films aren't the demonic phantasms or unkillable slashers, but the just-real-enough weirdos who inhabit the margins of the narrat…
RECOMMENDED "When you're real, you don't mind being hurt.” This central theme permeates an affable and vibrant staging of Margery Williams' timeless book "The Velveteen Rabbit," which …
RECOMMENDED There is something significant about the prolific writer George Orwell using stories as his vehicle for political action. Orwell, who fought in the Spanish Civil War and suffered…
RECOMMENDED It was a happy coincidence that I happened to catch Theatre de la Ville's "Ionesco Suite" within a day of seeing Strawdog Theatre's production of "Fail/Safe." Both shows traffic …
Two tremendously gifted groups of craftspeople working in different mediums have joined their toolboxes and been set loose in one of the biggest workshop playgrounds in the city. A massive a…
By Hugh Iglarsh If any one play embodies Theater of the Absurd, it's Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days," in which protagonist Winnie chatters away through Act I while buried above her waist in, w…
RECOMMENDED It's been said that life can be more hilarious than fiction. So, what happens when someone has a stroke, their spouse loses their job, and both husband and wife are faced with en…
RECOMMENDED "Etta James. Etta James. I love me some Etta James!" The fabulous Ms. Real (played by the equally fabulous Ruben D. Echoles) proclaims that message more than once throughout Jack…
There was a moment in Akvavit Theatre's US Premiere of "The Frozen on the Square (1982)" when the lonely extras that populate the action were staring out into the black nothingness of…
I don't know what New York City did to Theresa Rebeck to piss her off so mightily, but whatever it was she seems to have really taken it to heart. Of course, that's not quite true. I do know…
RECOMMENDED Playwright Hamish Linklater's first play is being billed by Steep Theatre as "funny." But there was not a single laugh from the audience the night I saw the show. Alright, there …
RECOMMENDED "I was surprised," choreographer Ivan Perez said when I asked how it was to work with the dancers of River North Dance Chicago. "They're very jazz-based and I was surprised how i…
RECOMMENDED Somewhere in the dusky realm between classic and forgettable lies Maxwell Anderson's political tragicomedy "Both Your Houses." Now undergoing a nifty revival by Remy Bumppo, the …
RECOMMENDED At the end of a party I usually feel exhausted. All my energy has been spent. Walking out of Bailiwick Chicago's "The Wild Party" I felt much the same way. Dulled and listless, l…
RECOMMENDED In the first act of "The Crytpogram" the comedic potential of David Mamet's easily recognized, clipped, stylized, supposedly conversational dialogue sometimes pops up from the mi…
RECOMMENDED Loaded with the star power of soprano Renée Fleming, propelled by music director and conductor Sir Andrew Davis' unique understanding of the score, and set in the 1920's framewo…
RECOMMENDED From our youth we are indoctrinated to believe that only the "best" are rewarded. The "best" student gains admission to the premier university. The "best" athlete wins the ultima…
RECOMMENDED A long-growing partnership between Jan Bartoszek, founder and director of Hedwig Dances, and Susana Pous, resident choreographer of the Havana-based DanzAbierta, comes to fruitio…
RECOMMENDED Comedian Shawn Bowers has an intriguing, slightly stomach-churning hobby: he poses as a young, attractive woman (Margie) on dating sites, baiting and then reeling men in for reve…
