Review: Storypod Is a Great Interactive Learning Aid for Kids
There are a lot of ways to learn as a kid these days. There’s the things we grew up on like picture book and PBS as well as educational video […]
Review: Lookingglass Theatre Returns with The Steadfast Tin Soldier, a Weighty Holiday Fable Filled with Wonder
For all the theater I’ve attended in Chicago—since childhood, really—I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that this weekend marked my first visit to Michigan Avenue’s Lookingglass Theatre, the 35-year-old ensemble company […]
Review: Steven Spielberg Channels His Own Childhood into Mid-Century Family Drama The Fabelmans
One would assume that a Steven Spielberg film that is a thinly veiled biography of a young Steven Spielberg would feel more personal, and certainly elements of The Fabelmans do. […]
Review: Chicago in the Rearview, Plains in Our Hearts
Guest review by Lorenzo Zenitsky. It’s official, y’all: Plains, the collaboration between Jess Williamson and Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee, came into Chicago’ the Vic like a cannonball and none of […]
Dialogs: Patti Smith, a Woman of Depth, Artistry, and Love for Humanity, Lights up the Music Box
When I hear the name Patti Smith, so many images are conjured in my mind. The 1970s at Club 950, No Exit, and Neo were teeming with people sporting mohawks […]
Review: Love, Charlie Chronicles the Life, Work and Obsessions of Chicago’s Charlie Trotter
The opening scene of this Charlie Trotter documentary is a bit of a giveaway about the man whose food we loved (if we could afford it). During the sound check […]
Review: She Said Recounts How Two Journalists Reported on the Truth—and Changed an Industry
In case there’s any question as to where I stand on this, let me start by saying plainly: Harvey Weinstein is a serial rapist and abuser and he should rot […]
Review: Like the Restaurant Culture it Aims to Skewer, The Menu Is More Style than Substance
I haven’t been lucky enough to manage a seat at Alinea, Chicago’s only three-star Michelin restaurant, but friends who’ve been still talk about the experience years later. They remember the […]
Review: The Wonder Puts a Town’s Faith, and One Nurse’s Resolve, to the Test
The official place and time stamp on director Sebastián Lelio’s (Gloria, A Fantastic Woman, Disobedience) latest, The Wonder, is the Irish Midlands circa 1862 (13 years after the Great Famine, […]
The Salt Shed Announces Their First Wave of 2023 Shows
It’s no secret, we’re big fans of the Salt Shed. This past summer they hosted their first round of outdoor shows in their Fairgrounds Space and every single one of […]
On the Road: Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt on Broadway—a Brilliant and Intense Saga of a Viennese Jewish Family Over Six Decades
Leopoldstadt is a place, a Jewish section of old Vienna. It’s also an imagined history of how two intermarried Jewish families lived (or didn’t live) through six decades of the […]
Review: Timeline Theatre Company Gives New Life to Trouble in Mind, a Classic in Our Racist History
I always look forward to Timeline Theatre productions because the company provides the background and history of the play in a lobby display and in the playbill. Ron OJ Parson […]