Violet Sky Theatre is a new company in the Chicago cultural landscape and it was a delight to attend their production of Summer and Smoke, directed by Eden Blattner. I […]
It’s not easy growing up as a gay Black boy. Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play Choir Boy is the story of Pharus, a high school senior at the Charles R. Drew Prep School […]
From its home base at the far end of Navy Pier, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater routinely presents some of the best independent live theater in the city. In between innovative […]
The Mississippi Delta is the birthplace of the blues, but Chicago is the proving ground. Just a jump north of Chicago the Writers Theatre closes out its 2021/22 season by […]
Almost everything that is written about the times we live in uses words like troubled, divided, and unprecedented. Various adjectives used by the media are rehashed, and do not get […]
It has been a minute since I have covered a play that hits home in as many ways as The Billboard, now being staged by 16th Street Theater at Northwestern […]
Dionysus/Diane has messages for us. The messages we continue to ignore about the serious dangers that climate change portends for our future—and more importantly, for the futures of our children […]
I am a big fan of British comedy and in particular, one master of the genre—John Cleese in Fawlty Towers. That show is an example of farce, done brilliantly. Basil […]
I’ll keep this short – but it won’t be sweet. The Goodman Theatre’s production of Toronto playwright Britta Johnson’s freshman musical Life After starts promisingly, with an absolutely spectacular set […]
What says snobby teens with step-sibling issues and boy band music cruising the airwaves better than the movie Cruel Intentions? It was a movie made for the’90s. It was a […]
Paris is a workplace comedy or more accurately, a tragicomedy. It’s tinged with sadness, tainted with racism and with the despair of workers in low-paying, dead-end jobs. It’s set during Christmas […]
Agatha Christie mystery fans will want to climb aboard Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s production of Murder On the Orient Express, which opened last weekend in the largest of the Rep’s three stages. Orient Express closes […]