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 […]
It may seem a daunting task to take on developing the stage version of a beloved book and film, with thousands of fans. Singer/songwriter Ingrid Michaelson and playwright/screenwriter Bekah Brunstetter […]
There have been some really great one-woman performances and standup comics over the years. My favorite ones have told stories that are personal and off-kilter funny. Kellye Howard is yet […]
Jill Lepore wrote about America’s first political spin doctors ten years ago in The New Yorker. She called the California political consulting team of Leone Baxter and Clem Whittaker “The Lie […]
You may know Alison Bechdel as the author and subject of the memoirish musical, Fun Home. But she’s also the source of the well-known Bechdel Test, which requires that a work of […]
Making its pre-Broadway world premiere in Chicago this month, the new musical version of Lauren Weisberger’s (and the 2006 film adaptation) The Devil Wears Prada has the feel of a […]
American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wis., opens with a summer bouquet of plays for every taste American Players Theatre, located in rural Spring Green, Wis., has attracted Illinois theatergoers […]
Christine stands, spotlighted, center stage, and begins to tell her story. She’s blonde and fair, middle-aged, wearing a light blue coat that looks as if it might be too warm. […]
Boas! Feathers! Dance hits of the ’70s! The Mercury Theater’s production of Priscilla Queen of the Desert—the Musical had plenty of all three. There was a core fan base of […]