On the Road: At the Jersey Shore, Spring in Springsteen Country
The calendar says it’s spring, even though the weather doesn’t. But it was time to hit the beach anyway. That is, the Jersey Shore. We spent four days last week […]
Nancy S. Bishop is publisher and Stages editor of Third Coast Review. She’s a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and a 2014 Fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. You can read her personal writing on pop culture at nancybishopsjournal.com, and follow her on Twitter @nsbishop. She also writes about film, books, art, architecture and design.
Steep Theatre’s Birdland Is a Fast-Moving Story of Rock Stardom and its Consequences
Paul (Joel Reitsma) is a rock star, with rock star habits and ego. He’s now in Moscow, nearing the end of a long tour and faced with going home to […]
Two Great Playwrights on the Cusp of Their Careers: Philip Dawkins’ The Gentleman Caller at Raven Theatre
Tennessee Williams has been a local favorite for decades, ever since December 27, 1944, when Claudia Cassidy, the fearsome Chicago Tribune theater critic, said Williams turned the theater “into a […]
Playwright for the Trump Era? It’s Politics and Money in Brecht’s Round Heads & Pointed Heads at Red Tape
Round Heads and Pointed Heads is a cavalcade of political events and characters, woven loosely (very loosely) into a Brechtian story of politics and money. Red Tape Theatre’s new production […]
Disturbing Theater, 20 Years Later: How I Learned to Drive Is About Drinking, Driving and Sexual Abuse
How I Learned to Drive isn’t a play for the squeamish. It’s a disturbing and ultimately sad story about pedophilia, sexual abuse, drinking and driving. It illustrates how the predator […]
Tension Builds as Ambiguity Becomes Retribution in hang at Remy Bumppo Theatre
We sit through 60 minutes of ambiguity and tension—about what? When hang finally reveals (almost reveals) its essential point in the final 25 minutes, we are caught up in the […]
What’s Cooking at Third Coast? It’s Smoky Spicy Chicken Tortilla Soup
I love soup and tortilla soup is one of my favorites. When I’m in the Loop around lunchtime, I like to go to the Frontera Grill counter on the seventh […]
Through the Elevated Line at Silk Road Rising: Immigrants in the Strange Land of Chicago
Through the Elevated Line at Silk Road Rising is a play about a stranger in a new land. We meet Razi Gol (Salar Ardebili) as he arrives from Iran. We […]
Swashbuckling Is in Style in Boho Theatre’s New Adaptation of Cyrano
Cyrano, the new adaptation of Edmund Rostand’s poetic Cyrano de Bergerac, by Michael Hollinger and Aaron Posner, is lean and hilarious. The man with the famously large nose is played […]
Everything You Need to Know About Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day
Here’s a wrapup on the basics about St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago. Learn about the famous dye-the-river-green act, including when and where to see it. (It takes 40 pounds of […]
City Lit’s Picture of Dorian Gray Misses Wilde Glitter With Flawed Adaptation and Casting
The Picture of Dorian Gray, the only novel by the brilliant Irish playwright and poet, Oscar Wilde, is loaded with Wildean bon mots. It is one of the most quotable […]
Participating in Student Walkout Tomorrow? Here’s Info on Your Rights
Chicago and Illinois high school students will join a school walkout at 10am CT Wednesday to observe the one-month anniversary of the school shooting that killed 17 students in Parkland, […]