NASHVILLE NIGHTINGALES If winter needs warming, Honky Tonk Angels should heat up happy crowds at the No Exit Café in Chicago's Rogers Park. The bubbly good time delivers a mix of downhome d…
HEAVEN MEANS HELL In King Charles III, now playing Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Mike Bartlett imagines what would happen if a king dares to act like one"and opposes a Parliamentary proposal …
PICKING UP OUR PIECES The neatly punning title of The Second City's 105th Mainstage Revue, The Winner…of Our Discontent, implies an anti-Trump evening. But, unlike SNL, there's little rage…
LA LA LAND STARTS WITH OOH-LA-LA BUT LANDS HARD In some ways, La La Land promises to be a moving, old-fashioned romantic musical that plays around with old techniques and presents t…
A SWEET AND SOUR “TWIST” In the month of December, Goodman Theatre simply goes schizoid. On one end of its block-long Dearborn Street lobby is the Albert Theatre, where the sacre…
DETECTING LOVE At first Christopher John Francis Boone seems a defective detective: A 15-year-old math whiz, this only child has Asperger's Syndrome. The anomaly is enough to push adolescenc…
CRUMPET COMES CLEAN For 8Â boffo holiday seasons at Theater Wit, Mitchell Fain has been better known"and locally famous"as Crumpet, the irascible, impish and subversive Macy's elf in David…
IMPRO FOR THE HOLIDAYS -dad- Family sucks. Spending time with the people you moved away from is so un-American, so anti-Manifest Destiny, such an embarrassing parochial guilt-trip, that it&#…
THE BEAST DOESN'T CHANGE WHEN KISSED: A HAPPY ENDING Fairy tales may seem ready for ditching into the dustbin of abandoned narrative, taking all their happily ever afters, glittering princes…
TO "MAKE CHRISTMAS GREAT AGAIN" You can't keep a good elf down. Very loosely based on the 2003 film starring Will Ferrell as a love-seeking non-elf named Buddy, Barney the Elf repurposes …
SHAKESPEARE'S TOTAL SLAUGHTER It's a daunting statistic: In the 37 plays written by William Shakespeare, there are 74 onstage deaths. (The demises of Ophelia, Cordelia and Lady Macbeth, amon…
I'M DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS WITH A BETTER SCRIPT I suppose it’s possible that Irving Berlin's White Christmas might succeed with audiences. Possible, that is, if they are w…
GALATEA GETS HER PLAY The source has finally come into its own: Overshadowed by the thunderous success of My Fair Lady, its musical spinoff, Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw's superbly penned,…
SCROOGE GETS SAVED WAY TOO SOON AND FAR TOO EASILY Goodman Theater's holiday happening has now reached the age of 39 (which, of course, is where Jack Benny stayed the rest of his life). A ve…
EVERYONE LOVES SHE LOVES ME Fathom Events is partnering with theater streaming service BroadwayHD to offer the Roundabout Theatre Company production of She Loves Me in cinemas nationwi…
A HIGHLY ORGANIZED ENCHANTMENT Playwright Alan Knee called Sir J. M. Barrie "the man who was Peter Pan." If so, it was an author's compensation as much as creativity. James Barrie was a shy …
A JEALOUS WIFE WITH BAD GUN CONTROL You can't keep a bad/mad woman down. Not to be confused with A Doll's House, where Ibsen offers an almost feminist defense of a vastly underestimated wife…
STILL BANGING FOR THE BUCKS The incredibly basic concept behind Stomp, a phenom now in its third decade, remains: "Make a rhythm out of anything we can get our hands on that makes a sound." …
"RESOURCEFUL, GRACEFUL""AND RUTHLESS Corporate corruption"it's not just an oxymoron. We associate it with crimes in the suites–but there's also a trickle-down contamination: Compromise…
METHANE DEPOSIT A new play opened at the Geffen this week. It is called Icebergs, and it was written by Alena Smith. It was directed by Playhouse artistic director Randall Arney. It is a sho…
EVERYBODY LOVES SHE LOVES ME I'll be the first to admit that it may be impossible to create a bad production of the 1963 jewel-box musical She Loves Me. This perfect show, based on the 1937 …
LEAPING INTO FALL If dance can define, this recital was its own dynamic dictionary: Running through this weekend, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's 39 Fall Series is a celebration in steps. At …
BEYOND COMPARE In the past five years, I have encountered only a handful of fresh-to-the-scene classical soloists who completely enraptured"those who combine the old-school magnetic quality …
"THE VERY BEST WE NEVER HAD" After reviving the Bard's stirring chronicles in Tug of War, Chicago Shakespeare Theater has mounted another history play. Except this one reveals future history…
LOVE STORY Watching 1984 live, in a roomful of high school students, my biggest surprise was how long two minutes lasts. I’m a hateful person now, and as a teenager even more so, but d…