AFTER THE FALL IS OVER A Midwest premiere by Northlight Theatre, Amanda Peet's topical domestic drama The Commons of Pensacola isn't exactly about Bernie Madoff's unimprisoned wife nor how h…
YOU’LL GET THIS GOAT Martin is an architect at the top of his profession; he and his wife Stevie and their son Billy live at, or on, the crest of civilization: rich, successful, smart,…
SUNSET ASSISTED DYING Samuel D. Hunter, Victory Gardens Theater ensemble playwright and recent recipient of a MacArthur "genius" award, specializes in tender tales of gutsy outsiders, spunky…
HERE'S CHARLEY This Sunday, September 21, Musical Theatre West will begin the Reiner Staged Reading Series fifth anniversary season with a one-time only performance of Where’s Charley?…
STRANGE BUT WATCHABLE BEHAVIOR Let's see if I got this right. A tongue-in-cheek bio-musical and pseudo-adventure tale about John Broadus Watson"wannabe preacher-turned-behavioral scientist-t…
HEAVENLY DAY Samuel Beckett’s 1960 two-hander Happy Days presents a life in hell: Winnie, a middle-aged lady half-buried in an apocalyptic wasteland, is awakened and put to sleep by a …
BEYOND SAVING The title of the Loft Ensemble's world premiere presentation asks the question, Will You Save Them? Unfortunately the answer is, "I can't." While the production is not complete…
TALESPINNING AT ITS MOST LITERAL Running only through this weekend, Joffrey Ballet's captivating evening, Stories in Motion, delivers three richly imagined dance narratives, complete with st…
ALL YESTERDAY’S PARTIES A projection reads "1,000,000 Years B.C.," and the countdown (count up?) begins; that’s a lot of numbers to scroll on a stage bare of performers, and it&#…
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN As a child, I always hated clowns. At best they were weird; at worst just plain scary. And, to top it off, they weren't even funny, at least not to me. Why then w…
HARD DRIVING COCK GOES DEEP Love may be "a many-splendored thing" but as Pat Benatar sang it's also a "battlefield." In Mike Barlett's Cock, making its Los Angeles premiere at Rogue Machine,…
A FORCED FRENZY Some well-meant productions make you feel bad because you care so little. That's perilously close to what transpires in Chicago Shakespeare Theater's louder-than-life revival…
MORE D'OH THAN WOO-HOO The intelligent minds behind The Simpsons already had over 51,000 spectators (over three nights) in the palms of their collective hands before they sat down to write T…
THIS WICKED MAGIC SHOW WILL CAST AN ENCHANTED GODSPELL Teddy Bear's; Fanny's; Trinity Place; 132 Bush; the Plush Room; The Mint; Josie's; the list goes on and on. Time was when San Francisco…
DRAMA IN THE MARKETPLACE Trade Practices, which launches HERE's 2014-2015 season, takes the audience on a tour into the bowels of the corporate world where deals are negotiated, promises are…
REALITY THEFT Twisting a devious course over a mere 80 minutes and across Lookingglass Theatre’s nearly barebones thrust stage, this puzzle play by Lucas Hnath (whose equally treachero…
ASPHYXIATING Neither the excellent quartet playing quality pieces that are at times rousing, nor Karl Ruckdeschel's lovely period costumes, are enough to make Solitary Light, with music and …
VIDEO WILL OUT Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy becomes, appropriately, a 115-minute, one-act opera by Ernest Bloch, a dour offering first produced in 1910 at the Opera-Comique in Paris.…
THE CAT'S MEOW MEOW: PURRRRRFECT When you hear the words "performance art," do you envision a motionless Marina Abramovic allowing a 10-foot boa constrictor to wrap itself around her head? W…
ALBEE SEEING YOU AT THE RENBERG On the surface, Edward Albee's The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? is about a middle-aged architect, Martin, who has a zoophilic love affair that threatens to destroy…
INTO THE FOLD Recently divorced, and abandoned by her beloved three-legged dog, well-respected origami artist Ilana has fortified herself in her studio. Surrounded by paper, Chinese take-out…
SHINING NEW LUMIERE ON A FABLED CLASSIC Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera created a sensation when it was first unveiled as a serialization in the French newspaper Le Gaulois fr…
THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A CITY As artist, poet, and actor Tony Fitzpatrick prepares to leave Chicago for New Orleans, he presents his theater piece, The Midnight City: a personal convers…
A FLAT-FOOTED RACE In April 2014, lawyer and LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling was banned from the NBA for life and fined $2.5 million by the league after private recordings of him making ra…
GROUNDING GENIUS IN LIFE Lucas Hnath is a curious writer who likes to pit truth against fantasy to see which captures the most actuality. His Isaac’s Eye, now in an enthralling Midwest…