Chicago on Foot: We Tour the New Old Post Office and You Can Do the Same
We Chicagoans have memories of the old post office. You know, the building you drive through on the Ike when you’re heading into the Loop? The one where you walk […]
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 Bluesky at @nancyb.bsky.social. She also writes about film, books, art, architecture and design.
Review: Ghostlight Portrays a Chicago Family Tragedy That’s Healed Through Theater
Chicago-based actor Keith Kupferer is your ultimate every-man performer. I’ve seen him in many stage roles over the years (The Humans, God of Carnage, Support Group for Men, Cake) but […]
Review: Tuta Theatre Stages an Experimental and Mystifying Play, Attempts on Her Life, With Style and Flamboyance
Seventeen unrelated scenes. Six actors playing nameless characters. Joy and celebration, sadness and grieving, terror and violence. But no discernible plot. Attempts on Her Life, an experimental play by Tuta Theatre, […]
Review: Three Crows’ The Danish Play Focuses on the Life of a Poet and Resistance Heroine in WW2 Denmark
The Danish Play by Three Crows Theatre is a human and relevant story about the Danish Resistance during World War II. The anti-fascists in Denmark are a small but determined bunch […]
Review: The Prodigal Daughter at Raven Theatre Portrays an Ambitious Young Women in 1919 Chicago
The Prodigal Daughter, now on stage at Raven Theatre, is the third and final installment in the Grand Boulevard Trilogy by playwright Joshua Allen. The commissioned work is the third […]
Review: Lifeline Theatre’s Native Son Tells the Sad and Stirring Story of Bigger Thomas
The tragedy of Bigger Thomas has had many iterations since Richard Wright’s novel Native Son was published in 1940. Set in 1939 Chicago, at least two film versions and several […]
Review: City Lit Stages T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral in a Church Sanctuary With a World Premiere Score
Murder in the Cathedral is a solemn play, drawn from the works of master poet and Nobel-Prize laureate T.S. Eliot. The 1935 verse play is now on stage at City […]
Review: In Young People’s Theatre’s Last Stop on Market Street, a Boy Named CJ Learns About Life and Friendship
Last Stop on Market Street, now being staged by Young People’s Theatre of Chicago, is a children’s story with lively music and song and dance performed by six talented actors. […]
Review: At Steppenwolf Theatre, The Thanksgiving Play Fails at Satire, Succeeds at Silliness
The American theater business and society in general offer plenty of opportunity for criticism of “wokeness” and efforts to satisfy all sides—both in the arts, in other nonprofits and in […]
Review: Christina Ramberg’s Female Torso Imagery at the Art Institute Reminds Us of the Glory Days of the Chicago Imagists
Christina Ramberg, a Chicago artist who devoted many of her paintings to images of the female torso, cinched in and bulging out of feminine undergarments, is celebrated in a new Art […]
Feature: Collaboraction Theatre Recreates 1955 Mississippi Murder Trial in New Film, Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till
Collaboraction Theatre, which makes social change its mission, has created a powerful film based on the 1955 Mississippi murder of Chicago’s Emmett Till and the subsequent trial of two men […]
Review: At Goodman Theatre, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone Portrays Black Struggles 50 Years After Emancipation
The entire flow of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is set in the kitchen of Seth and Bertha Holly’s boardinghouse—the heart of the home is an appropriate setting for a play that […]