The holidays are a weird time for critics. We stand by mouths agape as an entire nation, again, infantilizes itself with saccharine songs and schmaltzy movies. Critics in December who […]
Who would’ve thought two 19th-century German nerds could cause such a stir? When Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm compiled their nation’s folklore in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales they sparked two centuries […]
Short stories exist in the literary world somewhere between the novel and the dirty joke. Their readers want the accouterments of a novel delivered in the most expedient, gut-punchy way […]
Misery might be the Stephen King novel best suited for a theatrical adaptation. Not only because its single-bedroom setting makes it decidedly stage-sized, but also because its two main characters […]
Let’s simplify and take all the phrases critics could use for Field of Flesh—surrealist, experimental, avant garde, etc.—and put them under the umbrella term “weird theater.” You know, it’s the […]
In Chicago theater, the return of a great—not to mention famous—ensemble actor to the Steppenwolf Theatre Company is an event exciting enough to register on the Richter scale. Particularly when […]
Melodrama gets a bum rap. It’s silly, the cynics say, unrealistic, it’s too much. But when melodrama is done well there’s nothing else like it. The genre appeals to the […]
Some properties exist on a Wheel of Fortune spinner of adaptations. The Producers was a movie, then a musical, then a movie. Mean Girls lived the same life. Beetlejuice has […]
Like many history books, Steven Conn’s The Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America For What It Is—And Isn’t is a showcase of and argument for nuanced thinking. In his […]
Romance is difficult enough in real life, but it’s damn-near impossible on the stage. Balancing the fictive chemicals of genuine-seeming attraction is a science to challenge our best artists. Success […]
Ask a few actors about their childhoods and you start to notice patterns. “My siblings and I made costumes and put on silly plays for our parents,” is a common […]
American Psycho as originally conceived by author Bret Easton Ellis has a great elevator pitch. “A novel about an investment banker in the Reagan eighties who at night becomes a […]