Preview: Guitar Wolf Jet Their Way to Chicago
There are few better ways to end your weekend than with a concert and even fewer as exhilarating as Sunday night’s show at Avondale Music Hall. Presented by Last Rites […]
Review: City Lit Stages T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral in a Church Sanctuary With a World Premiere Score
Murder in the Cathedral is a solemn play, drawn from the works of master poet and Nobel-Prize laureate T.S. Eliot. The 1935 verse play is now on stage at City […]
Review: Absurdist and Delightfully Off-Kilter—Hamburgers and Disappointment by Barrie Cole
I find it strange that much is written about parameters and boundaries in relationships. Of course, there should be boundaries, but who decides what those are? How many people live […]
Review: Belle & Sebastian Bring Some Love to the Salt Shed
It took me a second to realize, but Belle and Sebastian have been in the game for 28 years with a dozen albums under their belts and a hefty mount […]
Review: In Young People’s Theatre’s Last Stop on Market Street, a Boy Named CJ Learns About Life and Friendship
Last Stop on Market Street, now being staged by Young People’s Theatre of Chicago, is a children’s story with lively music and song and dance performed by six talented actors. […]
Interview: Michael Shannon and Travis Knight Talk About Turret, Working With an Ensemble and Being Fearless on Stage
In 1993, A Red Orchid Theatre (and its talented ensemble of writers, directors, and actors) established itself as a pillar of Chicago’s independent theater scene. In 2024, two of its […]
Review: At Steppenwolf Theatre, The Thanksgiving Play Fails at Satire, Succeeds at Silliness
The American theater business and society in general offer plenty of opportunity for criticism of “wokeness” and efforts to satisfy all sides—both in the arts, in other nonprofits and in […]
Dialogs: Chicago Humanities Festival Explores Hip-Hop History and Black Punk Now
Chicago musicians Chance the Rapper, Jennifer Hudson, plus legendary producer Quincy Jones, recently opened the renovated Ramova Theatre. The interior’s quaint cityscape-inside-a-building balconies and windows have been restored to usher […]
Review: Tour De Friends Part Deux Parties at Salt Shed with Atmosphere, NOFUN! and HEBL
Last Friday The Salt Shed campus was abuzz with all the goings on. The new Goose Island Brewpub was open and had a line out the door that was only […]
Review: A Slow-Paced but Beautifully Poignant Evil Does Not Exist Explores a Small Community’s Connection to Nature
Following his 2021 Oscar-winning Drive My Car, writer/director Ryusuke Hamaguchi (whose also excellent Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy was released stateside the same year) takes a more oblique but no less potent and […]
Review: I Saw the TV Glow Blends a Stark Visual Style with a Compelling, Creepy Teenage Story
Under its super-charged surface story of an obsessed young fan of a TV show, I Saw the TV Glow has a great deal going on, including the story of an identity transformation […]
Review: Watching the Writer’s Mind Work, Write Cut Rewrite: The Cutting Room Floor of Modern Literature, by Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon
Everyone, I suppose, has a sense of the what-if of history. What if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t gone to Ford’s Theater that night and avoided assassination? What if I had taken a […]