A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC; A VERY SHORT RUN; A MOST ACCOMPLISHED CAST Get ready for the wit, sophistication, and gentle eroticism of this most worldly and elegant of American musicals. The story …
DON'T ARGUE WITH ME, I HAVE CANCER As the play begins, two women are asleep in hospital beds in a shared room with a curtain drawn between them. A tightly wound young woman, Karla (Halley Fe…
FLYING WITH BROKEN WINGS It’s amazing. Thousands of billions of electronic messages are delivered every month globally, but it doesn’t feel like a small world after all. For many…
FOOTLOOSE AND FANCY FREE Based on the 1984 film Footloose, this eponymous musical opened on Broadway in 1998. Both adaptation and jukebox musical, in which songs sometimes land willy-nilly w…
THE EFFECT OF GOOD THEATER “You know, maybe someday you will be pretty,” says Beatrice to her teenage daughter Tillie. Gee, thanks, Mom. Ah, mothers. The Glass Menagerie. Ord…
A THUG BECOMES A MUSE "Fish out of water" humor meets showbiz stereotypes—that's the gag-winning formula in the 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway, starring John Cusack, Jennifer Tilly…
ALONG CAME THIS SPIDER Defying torture and humiliation in a Latin American prison, two cellmates—seeming enemies—build a passionate friendship and a larger loyalty. Hollywood vis…
FACING FATALITY It's the last play written by John Millington Synge. This Irish minstrel-playwright died in 1909 at only 37 after penning stunning beauties—Riders to the Sea and his…
A STUNNING RECLAMATION OF OUR 16th "AND BEST"PRESIDENT Right now—bar none—the most stirring chronicle on a Chicago stage is Shattered Globe Theatre's enthralling 155-minute Th…
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT One of the brilliant things about Oliver Cotton's Daytona, is how his dialogue both reveals and conceals at the same time. "Billy, are you in trouble?" Joe (George Wyne…
WHEN MEDICINE GETS SICK "First, do no harm." A no-brainer, this unarguable warning in the Hippocratic Oath apparently defies and defines the medical profession in 2017. Mercy Killings …
AULIS WELL AT THE GETTY Check out the production of Euripides' Iphigenia in Aulis by Chicago's Court Theatre, and you'll see why I rave about theater in the Windy City. Guided by the scholar…
BECOMING A "MAN" A brand-new musical about the past intersects the present with a vengeance. A world premiere from Permoveo Productions and Pride Films & Plays, The CiviliTy of Albert…
ACCOMPLISHED ACCOMPLICE Rupert Holmes’s Accomplice is the wittiest and most accomplished fooler play since Ira Levin’s Deathtrap. Each time you think you know what is unfol…
SYMPATHY FOR SCUMBAGS How can two white-trash lovers—"small town nobodies," as the press release puts it—"search for meaning at the height of the Great Depression"? Patronize a s…
A PRETTY WOMAN GETS AN INDECENT PROPOSAL" AND IT'S A MUSICAL! Some marriages get tested before they tie the knot. That's trenchantly the case with naïve fiancés Jack Singer and Bet…
HE WHO LAUGHS AT LAST LAUGHS BEST Barney Cashman is a neurotic, shlubby, well-intentioned if somewhat misguided seafood restaurateur who feels his life and marriage have become too predictab…
IN HARLEM'S WAY "One never knows, do one?" That's the favorite catchphrase of Fats Waller (1904-1943), an irrepressible master of music. The 285-pound, cherubic-cheeked jokester genius is th…
WHERE DO YOU GET ORFF..? There are some entertainments that bear repeating: Los Angeles Master Chorale has visited Carl Orff's pagan-fest, Carmina Burana, under each of their music …
UNDERCOOKED AND INNUTRITIOUS Yes, disruption continues to roil the stage in 2017. Old-fashioned make-believe dwindles into its opposite: dis-illusionment. The latest test case: Robert O'Hara…
LIFE IS AN ABSURD BUSINESS It’s an absurdist masterwork, yet it is rarely produced in the States. A disquieting parable which warns against the herd mentality, Eugène Ionesco's three-…
TUESDAYS WITH ELIZABETH IN A NOT SO PRIVATE PALACE Peter Morgan is the proverbial fly on the wall: Commanding the realm of royal fiction and other historical speculation, this British writer…
SHE WHO CAN’T BE TAMED Clinton Leupp may not aspire to self-help guru status, but his upcoming appearance as Miss Coco Peru in The Taming of the Tension is driven by a definite sense o…
TOO MANY SAILS AND NO RUDDER How have the mighty fallen! It's hard to believe that, 17 years after The Weir fascinated Steppenwolf Theatre audiences, not to mention all-absorbing Chica…
TOUGH LOVE GONE HAYWIRE Some people"hey, that could be a song title!"say Gypsy is the greatest Broadway musical ever written. And, calibrators of showbiz greatness, these folks may …