SECOND STAR TO THE RIGHT"AND STRAIGHT INTO HILARIOUS DISASTER The La Mirada Theatre's Broadway Series takes a gleeful nosedive into chaos with Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Mischief Theatre's follow…
PLAYING THE CARDS YOU'RE DEALT: THE PILON SHUFFLES LOVE, VALUE, AND IDENTITY Sometimes theater takes you places you never expected " or even wanted " to find yourself. For some, Red Theater'…
HONORING A FAMILY STUCK IN A HOLOCAUST NIGHTMARE Four actors, four moving walls, a wooden table and chairs, and historical projections combine into an extraordinary theatrical experience in …
SHRINKING THE SCALE, NOT THE MAGIC Coachella Valley Classical Voices' recent production of Hansel and Gretel, the beloved 1893 opera by Engelbert Humperdinck, ran this past weekend at Palm C…
THINGS THAT GO BOOM AND JUST RIGHT It's impossible to see a production of Jonathan Larson's Tick, Tick … Boom! without seeing it as a precursor to his Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent. …
SWING ON IN! If you want to have the time of your life, you can't do better than get a ticket for Cirque Le Swing, an immersive supper-club experience that combines a three-course dinner, ja…
Play has always been at the heart of human creativity. It is the impulse that drives both performance and imagination"the desire to transform ordinary experience into something meaningful. W…
THIS BAT COMES OUT SWINGING Back in the nineties when tabloids ruled the world, there was one especially erroneous publication: Weekly World News. Presenting stories so outrageously false ye…
GREEN SCALES AND SHAM I generally count on SpeakEasy Stage for stellar productions of innovative and ground-breaking plays and musicals. But that history, along with fine performances and ch…
CELEBRATING THE INDESPENSIBILITY OF CHICAGO'S CREATIVES Glowing cultural vibrancy and great world cities are so often intertwined they are effectively one. Scan the globe and nearly every ci…
FOWL PLAY: WHEN THE TRUTH TAKES AIM IN THE WILD DUCK Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck, now at Shakespeare Theatre Company's Klein Theatre (in a co-production with Theatre for a New Audience), is…
A TIME WARP TO THE 1970s WOMEN'S MOVEMENT, REFRACTED THROUGH 2025 EYES STILL SQUINTING TOWARDS EQUALITY "Why does it feel somehow like it's all slipping away? And how do we get it back?" Tha…
THE FIRST OPERA GETS NEW LIFE FROM HAYMARKET AND NEWBERRY CONSORT The origins of opera are somewhat obscure and not well-known. Haymarket Opera and The Newberry Consort, two of Chicago's fin…
SWEET, CHARMING, AND BRIMMING WITH LIFE, HELLO, DOLLY! IS MUSICAL COMEDY HEAVEN It's always extraordinary to hear a live orchestra in a musical these days " a rare and exhilarating luxury th…
BLOOD AND GORE HAVE NEVER BEEN SO MUCH FUN " OR TUNEFUL This Halloween season has seemed to be unusually focused on horror movies so it came as a welcome relief for Revolution Stages to prod…
THE BRIDGE FROM THE GREAT WHITE WAY TO TINSELTOWN AND BACK AGAIN The New York Pops' concert From Stage to Screen at Carnegie Hall promised a night of crossover magic last Friday"songs that l…
TOWERING TALENT ELEVATES A MUSICAL AS SCHIZOPHRENIC AS JEKYLL & HYDE THEMSELVES Next up for Halloween, and my second gothic horror in as many days, is Kokandy Productions' presentation o…
SPOOKY CHARM MEETS UNEVEN MATERIAL The Addams Family: The Musical invites audiences into the delightfully macabre world of America's favorite gothic household " and while the show itself can…
The spotlight dims, curtains rise, and behind the scenes, artificial intelligence orchestrates a revolution in theatrical production. While audiences experience the timeless magic of live pe…
When Travel Meets Emotion In the arts, emotion is what connects the performer to the audience. In travel, it's what connects the traveler to the experience. There's a certain poetic parallel…
WHEN INTROSPECTION FLATLINES: DAVID ROUSSEVE'S BECOMING DADDY AF IS MORE LIKE WTF After more than twenty years away from full-length solo work, choreographer and storyteller David Roussève …
STRATEGIC LOVE PLAY SHOULD COME WITH A WARNING As the old love adage goes: Boy meets Girl, Girl interrogates Boy, Boy tries to leave unsuccessfully, Girl and Boy reconvene… oh, wait, this …
WITH DISCO, DRAG AND DESERT DRAMA, PRISCILLA GLITTERS AT PALM CANYON THEATRE The Palm Canyon Theatre's production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a glittery, high-octane joyride packed …
ST. SEBASTIAN PLAYERS HONORS SHIRLEY JACKSON'S EERIE INTELLECT There are more than a few reasons to head over to Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood and catch the St. Sebastian Player's (SSP…
People, especially oppressed people, need martyrs. And Jews, although now considered part of the white establishment by some, have been oppressed for centuries. They have found their martyr …