THE MIRACLE OF LOVE: WINANS STYLE BeBe Winans was on-hand to enjoy a triumphant opening night for his coming-of-age stage musical Born For This, that takes him and his sister CeCe from young…
A FEW BLEMISHES CAN’T MAR THIS BEAUTIFUL DOLL It’s amazing. Were this masterpiece from Broadway’s golden age an actual guy or doll, he or she would be scoring Social Securi…
ANGELS IN AMERICA APPROACHES In two sprawling works written in the 1980’s, Tony Kushner brought alive the American national scene of the 1980's and early 1990's, mixing raw naturalism …
OUT OF PLACE Well, that was pointless. Entertaining to a point, but pointless. I had a feeling about two minutes into At the Old Place that something was wrong dramatically. A woman shows up…
A MARRIAGE MADE IN HELL Tom Jacobson's latest play, The Devil's Wife, is a droll take on old European tales regarding evil demons and feckless wives. Here, the Devil, in the guise of rich la…
UNDER INSPECTION Michael Urie pops and sparkles as Ivan Alexandreyevich Hlestakov, a foppish but penniless out-of-work clerk who gets mistaken for the Czar's inspector by the corrupt officia…
BLUES WITHOUT NOTES It takes a play to raise a village. Here it's East Harlem, a killing field with 8 homeless shelters, 36 drug and alcohol treatment centers, and 37 mental health treatment…
ENCHANTED FORGIVENESS Shakespeare Orange County (SOC) has used local community members alongside professional actors to reinvent Shakespeare as a way to offer thoughts about inclusiveness an…
SOMETHING SILLY; NOT QUITE ROTTEN BUT HARDLY FRESH What is it about William Shakespeare that inspires lesser authors (namely, everyone else) to try to take him down? George Bernard Shaw spen…
A SWEET SAMPLING OF ANIMAL CRACKERS, ALBEIT A BIT DAY-OLD One can easily see why Animal Crackers was a Broadway hit from 1928-1929, followed by a successful movie version. Start with the zan…
CURE YOUR POLITICAL HANGOVER WITH CULTURE CLASH Founded in 1984, L.A.'s very own veteran satirical Latino comedy troupe, "Culture Clash” (Herbert Siguenza, Ric Salinas and Richard Mont…
TAKE A GRAND TOUR WITHOUT LEAVING YOUR SEAT Pageant of the Masters, now in its 83rd year, is a singularly unique entertainment that has perfected the art of tableaux vivants ("living p…
ROOM TO GROW In a way Scott McPherson's Marvin's Room is a perfect play. It's like a well-ordered house, comfortable, professionally decorated, where everything works. The story is straightf…
DOMESTIC DISRUPTION From the start, a classic curtained proscenium conceals the utter disorder that detonates on Steppenwolf Theatre's sprawling mainstage. Hir, now in a Chicago premiere,…
MARY‘S POPPIN’ OUT ALL OVER Not just the quintessentially "practically perfect" nanny, Mary Poppins is a kind of cosmic cure. Given the state of our disunion, we probably need to…
BOOGIE WOOGIE BUGLE GIRLS OF THE U.S.O. Deanna Durbin is all but forgotten now, but there was a time when her movie musicals were so popular, they were said to have literally saved Universal…
BIGOTRY AT THE BURLESQUE Some swan songs will never sound sweet. Take the fade-out of female impersonators in Elizabethan drama. Or the final white thespian to wear blackface. Or"well, witne…
TRIPLE-LAYERED CAKE Thirty-something Jen (Shannon Lucio) is torn. She wants her deceased mother’s best friend, Della (Debra Jo Rupp), a talented but struggling baker, to create her …
JACQUES IN THE BOX I think if I had been alive and living in New York in 1968, I would have been beguiled by Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Eric Blau and Mort Shuman tra…
MY SHOW, THE NUT Dear Mr. Ted L. Nancy: You are a funny letter writer. In fact, you are the best letter writer who reads his own letters in a show with an actress reading replies to his lett…
MY DAUGHTER, THE CABARET SINGER This year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival has given me new hope for the art of cabaret: Black and White in Paris offered standards dripping in style; Psy…
AIDA GETS THE AID IT NEEDS There are two beautiful reincarnations with Moonlight's production of Aida, a 2000 Disney outing that never would have seen the light of day were it not for the ce…
HAPPY DAY'S JOURNEY INTO LOVE It's a dramatic "one-off": The same Connecticut domicile supplies the site of two enormously different plays by the same author. If Eugene O'Neill imagined a da…
FALSETTOS ON THE BIG SCREEN FROM BROADWAY: EVEN UP CLOSE, THERE’S NOT A FALSE NOTE The musical masterpiece Falsettos follows Marvin, who struggles to create a tightknit family out o…
A KURT WEILL COMEBACK Here's another triumph worth the wait. Recently revived, City Lit's London Assurance took 120 years to return"hilariously"to a Chicago stage. Even more inexplicably abs…