ANOTHER SCHOOL FOR WIVES It's a huge reversal. For generations the sole route for a successful show was from Broadway to Hollywood–from musical to movie. For young theatergoers today t…
BETRAYED BY THE KISS OF BROADWAY In the small confines of the No Exit Café in Rogers Park, one might have expected a more intimate, low-key version of Jesus Christ Superstar, especially con…
PATHETIC PAYBACK Some plays all but ambush their audience–dramatic Trojan horses that promise laughs and deliver the opposite. Aesthetically treacherous, they lure innocent onlookers i…
GRASP THIS HAMMER WHILE THE IRON IS HOT! Considering the popularity of fantasy epics The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, it is a wonder that more theaters aren't performing them. Whil…
THE OTHER CHICAGO FIRE No question, this 20-year-old tragedy is not as sexy a Chicago calamity as either the historic three-day blaze of 1871 or this year's centennial of the foundering of t…
A PORTABLE COMMUNE SELF-DESTRUCTS This weird show is a strange but stirring entry in Steppenwolf's three-play "Garage Rep" series: Red Tape Theatre's The Walk Across America for Mother…
LAST CHANCEÂ TO GET THIS WORK Get ready for this 1920s-era feel-good musical, complete with extravagant dance numbers, glittering costumes and an unlikely love story between a wealthy play…
SOPHOCLES, ANCIENT BENDER OF GENDERS This "free translation" of Sophocles' timeless tragedy about a sister against the state is only 75 minutes long. Even so, Antigonick manages to alm…
SMART DRAMA REVEALS POLAR ATTRACTION A world premiere production, Mat Smart's The Royal Society of Antarctica at The Gift Theatre is easily one of the year's best new plays. Smart, who worke…
FINDING JUST A BIT In his solo show, playwright Nicholas Guest describes his life and travels around the world. He's accompanied by Hillary Smith on the cello and by Tony Carafone on the…
MUSICAL THEATRE WEST KNOWS HOW TO SUCCEED Reams can and have been written about the glories of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. With music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, and b…
THE SCOTTISH TRAGEDY: NEVER SAY DIE You can't kill the Scottish tragedy. Written 408 years after Macbeth, Dunsinane is the Shakespeare sequel we never knew we needed. Now on tour at…
KEEP WANDERING Always charming and energized, The Bats (the resident company of The Flea Theater) put forth yet another valiant effort, this time with the world premiere of The Nomad, with b…
OPT OUT OFÂ A PLOT THAT'S NOT The real "sweeter option" is to miss this altogether. A new work written by company member John Henry Roberts and hyper-directed by Marti Lyons, The Sweeter O…
YANKEE DOODLE DUD Of all the plays inspired by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Yankee Tavern has got to be one of the worst. Steven Dietz's play, which takes place in New York C…
FAME BY DAY, A CLOSET AT NIGHT This retrospective 2010 drama by British playwright Dylan Costello is so well meant, you want to forgive it for its good intentions. But–well–don't…
DEFINITIVE DATES ON INDEPENDENCE DAY In this 95-minute one-act called Four, half the "dialogue" seems unspoken but not unfelt. The audience is literally just along for the ride. Christopher …
NEW MUSICAL IN RIGHT DIRECTION, BUT NEEDS TO UNLOCH MORE Fostered completely under the roof of the Chance from conception to premiere, Loch Ness is a new musical developed specifically for t…
A PASSION PLAY FROM PLACID Like a baby on a breast, Lifeline Theatre thrives on adaptations of "coming of age" novels. Like many memory-rich predecessors, Jessica Wright Buha's clear and pre…
SHRINK, ENLARGE THYSELF! Christopher Hampton's dramas are marvels of complicated construction, starting in the past and finding us fast. A retelling of the "creation myth" of psychoanalysis,…
DARK DOINGS IN POSTWAR PARIS Now in an appropriately driven local premiere by Chicago Opera Theater, Tobias Picker's two-and-a-half hour opera from 2001 delivers a bleak harvest of shame. Th…
A VICTORIAN TALE FOR TODAY Jackie Robinson was not, it seems, the first black baseball player in the major leagues. Long before 1946, Moses Fleetwood Walker was a catcher for the Toledo Blue…
ON SOLID GROUNDLING Writer/director Marc Palmieri puts together an entertaining piece of theater with his comedy The Groundling, about Bob, the middle-aged owner of a successful landscaping …
DOOMSDAY THERAPY The peculiar premise behind Matt Lyle's lifestyle comedy, now running in a moderately intriguing Midwest premiere by The Ruckus, is that for some folks the end of the world …
REAWAKENING A TIMELESS BEAUTY Costa Mesa's Segerstrom Center for the Arts once again proves itself as one of the country's most exciting dance centers by presenting Alexei Ratmansky's all-ne…