Review: No Names by Greg Hewett Is Just Plain Lazy
Some debut novels confidently announce a fresh, fully realized voice. Others are a little uneven and wear their amateurishness obviously. I’m afraid Greg Hewett’s debut No Names belongs to the […]
Review: Steppenwolf’s Fool For Love Perfects Sam Shepard’s Haunting Work
The script of Sam Shepard’s romantic drama Fool For Love begins with the stage direction, “This play is be performed relentlessly, without a break.” The superb actors at Steppenwolf Theatre […]
Review: TUTA Theatre’s The Long Christmas Dinner Brings Refreshing Sadness to a Saccharine Season
The holidays are a weird time for critics. We stand by mouths agape as an entire nation, again, infantilizes itself with saccharine songs and schmaltzy movies. Critics in December who […]
Review: Theater Above the Law’s Grimm Exhausts You With Style
Who would’ve thought two 19th-century German nerds could cause such a stir? When Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm compiled their nation’s folklore in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales they sparked two centuries […]
Review: Information Without Substance in Let The Scaffolds Fall by Shaun Rouser
Short stories exist in the literary world somewhere between the novel and the dirty joke. Their readers want the accouterments of a novel delivered in the most expedient, gut-punchy way […]
Review: American Blues Theater’s Misery Delivers Laughs but Is Light on Screams
Misery might be the Stephen King novel best suited for a theatrical adaptation. Not only because its single-bedroom setting makes it decidedly stage-sized, but also because its two main characters […]
Review: Surreality Abounds in Field of Flesh, a Weird But Muddled Interactive Performance
Let’s simplify and take all the phrases critics could use for Field of Flesh—surrealist, experimental, avant garde, etc.—and put them under the umbrella term “weird theater.” You know, it’s the […]
Review: Laurie Metcalf Stars in Little Bear Ridge Road, a Powerful Comedy-Drama With Some Things To Say
In Chicago theater, the return of a great—not to mention famous—ensemble actor to the Steppenwolf Theatre Company is an event exciting enough to register on the Richter scale. Particularly when […]
Review: A Few Bad Apples Can’t Sour Three Sisters, Chekhov’s Masterwork, Presented by Invictus Theatre Company
Melodrama gets a bum rap. It’s silly, the cynics say, unrealistic, it’s too much. But when melodrama is done well there’s nothing else like it. The genre appeals to the […]
Review: Frame of Reference Elevates an Already-Popular Story with Gods & Monsters Adaptation in World Premiere Production
Some properties exist on a Wheel of Fortune spinner of adaptations. The Producers was a movie, then a musical, then a movie. Mean Girls lived the same life. Beetlejuice has […]
Review: The Lies of the Land Is a Lopsided But Informative Read
Like many history books, Steven Conn’s The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America For What It Is—And Isn’t is a showcase of and argument for nuanced thinking. In his […]
Review The Brightest Thing in the World by About Face Theatre—Realism to the Point of Cringe
Romance is difficult enough in real life, but it’s damn-near impossible on the stage. Balancing the fictive chemicals of genuine-seeming attraction is a science to challenge our best artists. Success […]