Food For Thought–A Kill Your Darlings 3CR Night of Improv & Live Lit
Last Wednesday night was the second Kill Your Darling evening, a time for laughs, improv, free pizza (thanks to the theme of food night and Giordano’s) and a big helping […]
Einstein’s Gift: Compelling Story of Two Scientists’ Approach to War and Life
Einstein’s Gift, the compelling new production being staged by Genesis Theatricals, is that most satisfying kind of play. It’s rich with historical detail and scandal and ripe with questions for […]
CST Hosts Shakespeare’s Globe, Jonathan Pryce in Sumptuous Merchant of Venice
Shylock’s daughter, Jessica (Phoebe Pryce) and Shylock (her real-life father Jonathan Pryce) in Shakespeare’s Globe’s The Merchant of Venice at Chicago Shakespeare Theater (photo by Manuel Harlan). Director Jonathan Munby infuses the humor he brought […]
Paper-Thin Newsies Is Big On Talent
Disney’s Newsies, currently playing at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, provides a strikingly relevant exploration of current conversations about workers’ rights, despite its period milieu. Set in 1899 and based on […]
Byhalia, Mississippi, Portrays Issues of Class, Race and Family in a Nowhere Town
Byhalia, Mississippi, is one of those nowhere, dead-end small towns that no one wants to live in. Except for the young woman from somewhere else, who just gave birth to […]
Direct from Death Row: The Scottsboro Boys, a Riveting Tale in Narrative & Vaudeville
Direct from Death Row: The Scottsboro Boys fools you into thinking you’re getting a straight retelling of the events and trials of the nine young African-American men who were falsely […]
SoloChicago: A Theater Startup in a City of Theaters: An Interview
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to start a new theater company in a city that might be considered saturated with storefronts. But Ron Keaton and Kurt Johns […]
Eclipse’s Our Lady of 121st Street a Moving Character Study
Eclipse Theatre’s 2016 Stephen Adly Guirgis season was already off to a great start, and with Our Lady of 121st Street–the second entry of their playwright-centric season—Eclipse Theatre firmly cement […]
Goodman’s War Paint Offers Glamour and Spectacle, Little Substance
My ratings for War Paint: — Scene design and costumes? Four stars. — Performances of its leading actors? Three stars plus. — Sophistication and nuances of its story, smart dialogue, […]
Midsummer Merriment: BITE: A Pucking Queer Cabaret
On a hot midsummer’s night, two young couples stumble into a fairy forest and play out the mischief and trickery of knavish sprites and spirits, only to wake the next […]
Steppenwolf’s Between Riverside and Crazy: Wildly Funny and Profane, Touched by Today’s Drama
The setting was once a large and elegant apartment on Riverside Drive in Manhattan. There’s a spacious living room and a view of the Hudson River. The place has a […]
Steep Theatre’s Wastwater: Three Tense Stories About the Choices We Make
Frieda, an Englishwoman of indeterminate age, is one of the links among the three parts of Wastwater, a new play by English playwright Simon Stephens in its U.S. premiere at […]