THE FRIEND IN THE DARK Did you ever drive alone across a big, flat stretch of country at night? You and your headlights and the asphalt spinning beneath like a long speckled treadmill " …
FINDING CHEEZBURGER AT THE THEATER In a not-too-distant dystopian future in which lolcats are humans' only form of communication, the epic LOLPERA " a lolcat pop opera " links our memes…
THE GIFT OF SPEECH There is no possibility of love or happiness in Enda Walsh's play The New Electric Ballroom, produced by Rogue Machine, winner of 2010 and 2011 Ovation and L.A. Drama Crit…
A MISSIONARY'S POSITION At rise: A critic is writing when the doorbell rings. The critic opens the door and reveals Savannah, a perky, Southern, cheerleader-type with pamphlets in her hand. …
A WELCOME MATT In Matt Soson's new dark comedy The Lights Are Off, a college dorm room becomes a hotbed of sex, violence, drug dealing, and explorations of identity. The play centers on room…
A FRAGILE PRODUCTION STILL RESONATES Stepping from the bustling, sunny streets of Lincoln Park into Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre feels like traveling back almost a century into the sepia-ton…
THIS IS LIFETIME TV AS THEATER In Megan Hart's first full-length play This is Fiction, Amy (Aubyn Philanbaum) is on the verge of signing the contract to publish her first book when she panic…
THE VANYA EXPERIMENT The wunderkinds of American theater, Annie Baker and Sam Gold, ages 31 and 34 respectively, follow up their earlier collaborations, among them Ms. Baker's remarkably suc…
CAMPY LAUGHS FROM BROAD CHARACTERS Playwright Zsa Zsa Gershick is best known for her GLAAD and NAACP award-winning play Bluebonnet Court, a drama with humorous moments. With her latest w…
ATTEND THIS PLAY Go see Language Rooms now. I bought a ticket with no intention of a review, but Yussef El Guindi is far and away one of the most exciting new playwrights I have heard in yea…
A MUSICAL DIVIDED CAN STILL STAND How I adore Musical Theatre Guild, which is presenting a full-out, highly professional concert staging of the 1975 musical Shenandoah. MTG offers the chance…
LITTLE-KNOWN CHICAGO DISASTER BECOMES TOWERING MUSICAL Eastland: A New Musical is the Lookingglass Theatre's stunning meditation on one of the most terrible disasters in Chicago history: On …
ABBA-DABBA-DO Delivered by an exuberant and attractive cast of young singers and dancers, Dancing Queen is an all-singing-all-dancing, high-energy nostalgia show that tries to churn its audi…
A TRIUMPHANT FLY TO BUZZ ABOUT I won't try to tell you the plot of Anger/Fly, other than that a fly lands in soup and the world ends. In Theatre of the Absurd, plot is rarely the point " and…
DIME STORE PROPAGANDA One of the problems with watching a play that has an agenda, political or otherwise, is the difficulty of enjoying with a good conscience even those parts that work; kn…
THESE MUPPETS ARE NOT FOR PUBLIC TELEVISION There is something disconcerting about watching an R-rated Muppets show. After all, for decades the Muppets television shows and movies have been …
CAST DIVES IN HEAD FIRST TO MAKE pool (no water) FLOAT If you’ve been wondering whatever happened to all those experimental communal collective consciousness theater pieces that made N…
MAGNIFICENT CHARACTER ACTOR ON THE BUMPY ROAD TO DAMASCUS When Andrew Weems enters the stage to perform Damascus, a solo play he also wrote, the 4th Street Theater immediately fills with his…
A RUDE AWAKENING In his 2011 Northwestern commencement address, Stephen Colbert told alumni that they may have been told to follow their dreams, but that sometimes dreams can change, especia…
A HAPPENING OF THE HIGHEST THEATRICAL ORDER The Flea Theatre's young resident acting ensemble, The Bats, is re-mounting their production of These Seven Sicknesses. If you're looking for …
NO WAY The current production of No Way Around But Through, a world premiere play by Scott Caan, contains many ingredients that explain why L.A. has little to no reputation as a fountainh…
GUESS WHO'S COMING TO THE WEDDING DINNER? Immediate Family, written by Chicago actor and playwright Paul Oakley Stovall, is part sitcom and part dysfunctional family drama, garnished with ra…
A MYTH ADVENTURE In retelling Euripides’ Medea, Luis Alfaro stirs mythology, mysticism, vengeance, raw passion, the immigrant's plight, and unfathomable traditions of cultures past int…
REAPPLYING MAKE-UP ON THE SAME CORPSE Your enjoyment of The Addams Family, now on its National Tour, will depend largely on your expectations. If you are a discerning musical theater aficion…
SHOULD YOU GO TO HELL? Sarte said that Hell is other people, but playwright Ethan Coen proposes that watching other people experience hell is supposed to be hysterical. Coen's Almost An Even…