4,000 stories from Newcity Stage
RECOMMENDED Chicago meets another world-class contemporary company this fall in a mixed-rep program from Philly's delightful, knockout Ballet X. Like other great companies making fresh, reso…
RECOMMENDED Lucas Hnath is not concerned with getting it right. He's concerned about getting it true. From the outset of his devious new play "Isaac's Eye" he states that this story is fille…
RECOMMENDED Tony Fitzpatrick is moving to New Orleans, and his friend Stan isn't happy. That about sums up the premise of "The Midnight City," currently playing at the Steppenwolf Garage. It…
One and one and one is indeed three, but peppering a production with such notable equations doesn't add up to much when the play being staged is less engaging than this failed math pun I'll …
By Loy Webb There is a contagious energy that fills the room upon meeting Definition Theatre Company (DTC). One look at their bright hopeful eyes, erect self-confident posture, and fiery pas…
They say the clothes make the man, and so I think can a space make the theater company. For years, Red Tape Theatre was safely ensconced in a cavernous and decrepit old gymnasium attached to…
RECOMMENDED Cerqua Rivera brings together their full ensemble of collaborating musicians and dancers to the Ruth Page Center for their fall concert. Composer Joe Cerqua and choreographer Wil…
RECOMMENDED Happydog performance company was formed when three artists"Chicago-based designer Annie Novotny, Portland-based choreographer Muffie Connelly and New York dancer Leslie Cuyjet"em…
RECOMMENDED "An armed society is a polite society," goes the old NRA slogan. Perhaps, but it's also an insane society, as demonstrated by Nick Jones' play "The Coward," receiving its Midwest…
RECOMMENDED "She was ruthless. She was evil. She was a theater critic, for God's sake!" Delivered in the baritonal vocal stylings of Chicago's own national treasure Alene Robertson, this pro…
Which graduate of our public school system hasn't read the CliffsNotes for Melville's "Moby Dick," along with Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet" and "Beowulf?" With "The Whaleship Essex," sa…
I missed "reasons to be pretty" when Profiles Theatre debuted it Chicago back in 2011. What many consider to be playwright Neil LaBute's best work, the show presents the fallout from a man's…
By Hugh Iglarsh Before the black gold of petroleum became the driving force of business and empire, it was whale blubber that lit the lamps and lubricated both the machinery and the ambition…
RECOMMENDED Given that "West Side Story" is often considered the greatest musical ever written, odd that its predecessor "On the Town," the first show to unite choreographer Jerome Robbins a…
RECOMMENDED I once lived next door to an aspiring young arsonist. On either side of the house I shared with a different kind of flame, two homes were gutted with fire before the kid was caug…
RECOMMENDED In case you were wondering, yes, you read the title of this show correctly. It's called "Methtacular!"And I must say that the title is a very apt one, as Steven Strafford's one-m…
RECOMMENDED In a way Chekhov is a lot like Nirvana, in that it's really easy to forget how great he was when you've been inundated with a century of increasingly pale imitations. If Chekhov'…
Chosen as the inaugural production of Cole Theatre, Mike Leigh's "Ecstasy" begins with a naked Jean (Maura Kidwell) and Roy (Joel Reitsma), in her run-down London flat. Whatever they've just…
By Raymond Rehayem Look, up on the Northwest Side, it's the Fifth Annual ChicagoFringe Festival. What was once the very outskirt of the Blue Line is now an emergent theater hood per festival…
The creation and delivery of a historical play presents very specific challenges. The story of the life of any individual, no matter how private and quiet it might seem to others, is a fulso…
RECOMMENDED I arrived at City Lit Theater's space to see Black Button Eyes Productions' "Coraline" a complete Neil Gaiman virgin. I'd heard that the novelist's 2002 horror/fantasy novella wa…
Preachers normally ask for a call and response of "Amen" or "Hallelujah." But in the church of the future, where people give themselves to the great "architect," people happily chant in comp…
RECOMMENDED The best time to be in the city is, unquestionably, the summer. These are the months that remind us why we endure such brutal winters (aside from sheer Midwest obstinacy): Chicag…
In the early nineties, a dancer with the Joseph Holmes Dance Theatre named Keith Elliott was, like many artists of the time, losing friends and colleagues to complications caused by HIV/AIDS…
RECOMMENDED Friday night with thirty minutes to go before the doors to the Neo-Futurarium open, a line already snakes down Ashland and around the corner onto Foster. With patrons ranging fro…
