Hellcab: A Chicago Holiday Story But Not Your Mother’s Christmas Carol
The set is an old taxi. That’s all. An old Checker taxi, number 4538, with an Illinois license plate. The top is removed and its back wheels are on blocks. […]
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.
Pioneers of German Graphic Design Shows Links to Chicago’s Graphic Design History
Pioneers of German Graphic Design by Jens Müller is a deep dive into the early history of graphic design and demonstrates why Germany (and Austria and Switzerland) are so important […]
Trap Door’s Occidental Express: An Expressionistic Riff on War, Borders, Homeland, Identity
Trap Door Theatre is staging an expressionistic, phantasmagorical tale of eastern European drama. Their new production, Occidental Express, by Romanian-born playwright Matei Visniec, is a sometimes wacky, often chilling, always […]
On the Road: New York Theater, Off-Broadway Is My Way
Third Coast Review went to New York last week—mainly for a theater critics conference. The schedule provided plenty of time for great theater, and I took advantage of that by […]
Artistic Home’s Powerful Wedding Band Portrays a Biracial Couple in 1918 South Carolina
Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White is a powerful drama of black-white relations in 1918 South Carolina, soulfully directed by Cecile Keenan at the Artistic Home. The […]
In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play: Where Clueless Men Misunderstand Female Sexuality
It’s a woman’s play, about an era when women’s physical and emotional needs and desires were not only misunderstood, but completely ignored. Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the […]
Review: Windy City Blues Layers Love and Politics Over the Early Days of Chicago Electric Blues
Note: Windy City Blues has been selected by Spertus Institute for its One Book One Community book of the year. Spertus has several events planned around Rosen’s book. If you […]
On the Road: 1933’s Vision of the Future at the Century of Progress Homes
Tucked away on a stretch of Indiana dunes beachfront are five homes built to showcase innovation and industrial progress for Chicago’s 1933 World’s Fair, the Century of Progress International Exposition. […]
Brecht Deserves a Better Revolution in The Last Days of the Commune at Prop Thtr
Bertolt Brecht is an interesting, if often didactic, playwright. And so it is with The Last Days of the Commune, a play that was incomplete when he died in 1956. […]
The Skin of Our Teeth, an Apocalyptic Madhouse at Remy Bumppo
Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth is the story of the universal family, beset by war and catastrophes but enduring despite all. In a way, The Skin of Our Teeth (written […]
Names Matter in Steppenwolf’s The Crucible, a Fearsome Allegory for McCarthyism
It’s all about the names. Early in The Crucible, set in colonial Salem, young girls caught dancing in the woods name other girls who were involved to save themselves from […]
Steep Theatre’s The Invisible Hand: Greed and Violence in a Pakistan Prison Cell
The invisible hand in Steep Theatre’s new play does not refer to terrorism or ghostly acts of murder. Steep gives us a clue by including a quotation from Adam Smith’s […]