As we left the Chopin Theatre Friday night, after an appropriately spooky and decidedly well-sung performance of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street presented by Kokandy Productions, I […]
Right out of the gate, I will say that the term ‘gothic’ certainly fits the story and the actions of the characters in Southern Gothic. Windy City Playhouse’s remount of […]
Leaving the theater after seeing this wise and hysterically funny play, my first thought was, I would like to see this produced in Florida, where the governor and legislature have […]
Joseph Kesselring’s 1941 Arsenic and Old Lace is a familiar property, frequently revived and indelibly captured on film in Frank Capra’s 1944 movie starring Cary Grant. Its popularity is well […]
It was a rainy Sunday morning, so what’s the best thing to do (as an alternative to staying in bed)? About a hundred parents and kids—and I—thought the best thing […]
For the uninitiated (and perhaps even for those clued in) thinking of going to the opera, the Lyric’s Ernani is likely what they have in mind. This lush 2022-2023 season […]
Art is enmeshed in the politics of the Russian revolution in James Sherman’s new play, Chagall in School, now being staged by Grippo Stage Company at Theater Wit. Georgette Verdin […]
Lifeline Theatre is a mainstay of the arts scene in Rogers Park. They remain after BoHo Theatre moved to Lincoln Square, Theo Ubique moved to the Evanston side of the […]
A high farce, a comedy of manners, a play named after an irrelevant medical condition. Those would be a few ways to describe Noel Coward’s 1925 play, Hay Fever, now on […]
A funny thing happened in the New York theater scene in 1999: two new musicals, with the same name and based on the same source material, debuted in the same […]
Controlled chaos is an oxymoron. The word chaos could be a synonym for anarchy meaning away from all of the “archs” that have defined how humankind lives. Monarchy, oligarchy, plutarchy, […]
In the talkback after watching a workshopped version of a new play titled Rectitude, I heard a term—cradle Catholic—that was new to me. It’s a person baptized as an infant into […]