Breach at Victory Gardens: Love and Relationships, Sitcom Style
Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate is a world premiere at Victory Gardens Theater. The play’s long title might […]
Haven Theatre’s Fear and Misery in the Third Reich: Brecht’s Ghost Warns Us About Fascist Dictatorship
Fear and Misery in the Third Reich can be described as Bertolt Brecht’s ghost arriving to warn us about the United States of Donald Trump turning into a fascist dictatorship. […]
Steppenwolf’sYou Got Older Succeeds as a Quietly Realized Family Story
After seeing Steppenwolf’s Chicago premiere of Clare Barron’s poignant play, You Got Older, I felt the need to text my sister. Much like Barron’s protagonist, Mae (Caroline Neff), my sister, […]
Ragtime at Marriott Theatre a Powerhouse, Wake-Up Call
It’s not for nothing that director Nick Bowling selected Ragtime for the 2018 season at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire. When he read the book for the 1996 play, which was based on […]
Bobbing and Weaving in Red Tape’s Catastrophic I Saw Myself
Red Tape Theatre inaugurates its new “The Ready” space with Howard Barker’s scenery-chewing angst-fest I Saw Myself. The 13th century widow Sleev (Carolyn Hoerdemann), vulnerable in a black slip, is weaving […]
Nice Girl at Raven Theatre: Sweet, Heartfelt Story of Four People Whose Lives Aren’t What They Hoped
Josephine is the nice girl. She’s so nice that she remains living at home with her mother, working in a dead-end job, when she really wants to do what she […]
Strawdog Theatre’s Pillars of the Community Questions the Self-Interest of Leaders
Pillars of the Community, adapted by Samuel Adamson from Henrik Ibsen’s 1877 work, The Pillars of Society, is one of Ibsen’s lesser performed works. According to scholars, Ibsen struggled to […]
Goodman’s Blind Date Stars the World on the Cusp of Change
The blind date actually took place on November 19, 1985, in Geneva. Nothing much happened diplomatically; the world order wasn’t changed. But the two leaders of the U.S. and the […]
Tony Winner The Humans Returns to Chicago Better Than Ever
The 70th Tony Awards, presented in June 2016, were an affair to remember in more ways than one. It was the year Hamilton won big. It was the year Cynthia […]
Porchlight’s Dynamic Merrily We Roll Along Puts Energy in Ever-Poignant Sondheim
In 1981, Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince collaborated with writer George Furth for a new musical based on a 1934 play, Merrily We Roll Along. The show was to be […]
We the People: The Anti-Trump Musical Fails to Soar
It’s pretty hard to look away from the events in this country as late, and it’d be a surprise to find anyone who didn’t at least have an elementary grasp on […]
1960s Nuclear Fears Animate We’re Gonna Be Okay at American Theater Company
We’re Gonna Be Okay is a cold-war era story that reminds us that when danger is in the air, it’s time to take stock of our priorities—and give a little […]