Review: Midwestern Sensibilities Drive Jim Gaffigan’s The Fun Tour
Full disclosure: I listen to standup to help me sleep. During these dystopian times, when I’m frequently unable to catch some ZZZs, I’ll play a comedy special on the bedroom […]
Review: Hell in a Handbag’s The Drag Seed Fails to Bloom
Hell in a Handbag’s New York-bound revival of its 2019 production The Drag Seed has lots to say about LGBTQ culture and the advances that have been made in the last 40 […]
Review: Hadestown Celebrates Human Love and Tragedy Against a Joyous Jazzy Musical Backdrop
Hadestown is a tragedy of human love and suffering and it will make you happy with its joyous, percussive music and slick dance performances. The musical production, based on the […]
Review: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater—Passion and Grace Wrought from a World in Chaos
We are living in a time of chaos and war while—maybe—emerging from a plague. There is no better balm for my soul than an evening in meditation on movement by […]
Review: Griffin Theatre Company’s Solaris Makes (Human) Contact
Few 20th century works of art have inspired as many adaptations as Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 science fiction classic Solaris: three films, four operas, five plays and an eponymous Hungarian rock […]
Review: At Last, Akram Khan’s Apocalyptic Creature Comes to the Harris Theater
Creature, the English National Ballet’s new work by the brilliant choreographer Akram Khan, finally made it to the stage and audiences this week after being waylaid by the pandemic twice. […]
Review: Come from Away Takes a Heartwarming Look at the Helpers
When asked how to talk about scary news with small children, Fred Rogers famously repeated his mother’s advice: “look for the helpers.” Come from Away, the Tony-nominated musical that opened […]
Review: Art Comes to Life in The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at Goodman Theatre
The Goodman Theatre’s remounting of Mary Zimmerman’s landmark and career-launching work The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci is as wondrous as it was in 1993. Highly visual and incorporating a […]
Review: Lost Souls and Collateral Damage in Ruined at Invictus Theatre
When a country is ravaged by war, various organizations publish pictures to horrify the viewer enough to give a tax-deductible donation. Send a check or a monthly donation and get […]
Review: An Entertaining When There Are Nine Omits Part of the Story of RBG, the Pop Culture Legal Icon
When There Are Nine, a world premiere play about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is an entertaining production that tells the public story of the late Supreme Court associate justice. Sally Deering’s […]
Review: Broken Nose Theatre Asks If the Cure Can Be Worse Than the Illness in This is Only a Test
I have not heard the air raid sirens in years. In the ’50s through the ’80s an air raid siren would blare every Tuesday morning at 10:30. It was heard […]
Review: Ballet Folklórico de México Is a Vivid and Entrancing Look at Mexican History
Spending time on the West Side of Chicago with my grandparents was an introduction to Mexican culture. They lived very close to 26th Street, which is part of Little Village. […]