6,591 stories from Stage and Cinema
ISOLATION AND INSANITY There's a good reason for no intermission in this devilishly deceptive Belleville. It's taut to a torque as it depicts a young American couple's disintegration in an e…
IT IS WHAT IT IS Set your "expectation meter" in the mid-range and you will probably enjoy The Judy Show: My Life as a Sitcom starring comedienne Judy Gold. However, if you enter the theater…
THE ENSEMBLE IS HOT, THE PLOT IS NOT Sam Shepard loves to level, if not to topple, his characters. In the treacherous course of True West, two brothers exchange identities: The Hollywood hot…
HOUSE THEATRE PULLS A RABBIT OUT OF ITS HAT The House Theatre has, once again, remounted its wildly successful Death and Harry Houdini at the Chopin Theatre " and why not? It's still as fres…
IN PLAIN SIGHT Eddie Carbone (Vince Melocchi) is a good man whose frustration at not getting everything he deserves -Â in this case his adopted niece Catherine (Lisa Cirincione) – c…
IF ONLY IT WENT LIKE THIS MORE OFTEN I can't call Neil LaBute's works timeless, but both his plays and films (In the Company of Men) are a product of our time. As America holds herself to be…
FIRST DISNEYFIED AND NOW ZIMMERMANNED, THIS MUSICAL CAN’T SEE THE JUNGLE FOR THE TREES Not one of the great animations to grace the Disney studio, 1967's The Jungle Book was certainly …
THE BURDEN OF NOT HAVING A GOOD SCRIPT Having now seen Sideshow Theatre's The Burden of Not Having a Tail, I can report that, despite its billing, it did little to prepare me for the apocaly…
SELFISHNESS AND SACRIFICE Alcestis is the old Greek story of a man who allows his wife to sacrifice her life for his. As interpreted by Euripides, T.S. Eliot and others, it has much to s…
BIG LAKE BIG CITY BIG TURKEY Chicago to the broken bricks and bone, playwright Keith Huff was at his storytelling best in A Steady Rain, a big hit about a conflicted cop and his crooked cron…
THE IMPOSTER HITS HYDE PARK HARD Because religious hypocrisy — specifically "affected zeal and pious knavery" — never goes out of fashion, Tartuffe is forever. Continuing and com…
SHOOTING EASY TARGETS As is often the case at Second City shows, an early musical number explains the theme of A Clown Car Named Desire. Reality is filled with disappointment, hardship and b…
FOUNTAIN'S FANTASTIC FLAMENCO FIESTA While classic and modern dance seem to be continually reinventing themselves, Flamenco remains a bedrock of the moving arts. As Forever Flamenco! at the …
HELLO, GORGEOUS Jonathan Tolkin's keen and tremendously funny new show Buyer & Cellar, performed by Michael Urie, imagines what it would be like for Alex More, a young gay man struggl…
THE ISHTAR OF OPERA What if the real historical Jesus was someone quite different from what we've been told? What if he was born a bastard, kept a lover and then married her? What if Mar…
JEKYLL AND HYDE DIRECTION MAKES THE MAGIC DISAPPEAR IN WATSON AND THE DARK ART OF HARRY HOUDINI Writer/Director Jaime Robledo follows up his award-winning smash hit Watson: The Last Great Ta…
A LONG HIKE IN THE THEM THAR HILLS OF SHAKESPEARE Along with its companion piece The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare's late-blooming "romance" Cymbeline is usually treated as a fairy tale. Rightl…
VERDI ON THE VERGE Hearing Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth is a rather disorienting experience, at least at the beginning. The difference is that we're used to Shakespeare's English, even if it is …
LITTLE MORTAL JUMP TURNS OUT TO BE THE BIGGEST THING OF THE NIGHT The lineup at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion begins with the respected and always impressive Hubbard Street Dance Chicago as …
PARADISEÂ LILY My fanaticism with Lily Tomlin started with her 1972 comedy album This is a Recording. I immediately felt a kinship with Ernestine Tomlin, Ma Bell's switchboard operator and…
FLEECING A LEGEND The tickets are free in (re)discover theatre's generously-meant new work by company member Jessica Shoemaker. Their too-fresh offering is an anachronistic, two-act take on …
NOT JUST A GAY BAR ANY MORE It is the unfortunate nature of some gay dramas to hammer home or leadenly evangelize a theme with a heavy hand. You know the sort of thing I am talking about…
MAJESTERIAL MIRREN Although she is a politically neutral monarch, The Queen of England retains the ability to give a weekly audience to a Prime Minister (PM) during his or her term of office…
TITLE Soaked to the skin and wrestling with a flimsy umbrella, I splashed across Eighth Avenue while reading the inscription on the James A. Farley Post Office, "Neither snow nor rain nor he…
PHALLUS IN BLUNDERLAND Who has been accused of being a Sexual Reprobate? Satirist? Socialist? Philosopher? The precursor to Freudian psychology and existentialism? Woman-hating pornographer?…
