Moreau Meets Groundhog Day Week in The Invention of Morel
The Police drummer Stewart Copeland has turned the 1940 Argentine novel into his fifth opera that’s a mix of island dwellers like Dr. Moreau and Gilligan’s Professor, while extending Bill […]
Karin McKie is a Chicago freelance writer, cultural factotum and activism concierge. She jams econo.
Schenkelberg’s Smart Scientology Smackdown in Squeeze My Cans
Cathy Schenkelberg adds her own narrative to the recent repudiations of Scientology in the remount of her rapid-fire, intimate, informative, mind-boggling and poignant solo exploration Squeeze My Cans. In […]
Chicago Shakes Finds the Humor in Love’s Labor’s Lost
Populated with the Italian stock characters of the braggart (Allen Gilmore as Don Adriano de Armado), sassy servant (James Newcombe as Boyet) and dumbass (Steve Pringle as dullard Constable Dull), […]
High Energy Rock Chops in Remount of High Fidelity: The Musical
Oh, if only one could jump into the Wayback Machine into the simpler times of Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel and Stephen Frears’ 2000 movie to escape 2017’s dystopia. You can, just […]
MCA Swings at Artistic Patriarchy with Riot Grrrls
Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art attempts to counter the emboldened pussy-grabbing culture with its Riot Grrrls installation. Male artists are disproportionately presented and compensated so the MCA borrowed from the […]
Couch-Watch Shakespeare 400 Chicago Shows with The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses
“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings; How some have been deposed; some slain in war, Some haunted by […]
The Body Count is High and Hilarious in The Complete Deaths at Chicago Shakes
In June, British actor and playwright Tim Crouch got his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead on with his hysterical, empirical take on Twelfth Night’s Malvolio, and returns to Chicago Shakespeare […]
Lyric Opera’s Longer! Louder! Wagner! The Second City Wagner Companion A Fleeting Primer
Jesse Case (left) plays piano as well as Richard Wagner alongside bonafide opera singers Jonah D. Winston (center) and Tracy Cantin (right) in “Longer! Louder! Wagner,” a collaboration between the Lyric […]
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 […]
CST Channels the Befuddled Busey as the Melancholy Dane in David Carl’s Celebrity One-Man Hamlet
Thick-haired David Carl’s loony yet logical mash-up won the Outstanding Solo Performance Award at the New York Fringe, and adds a splash of pop culture irreverence to the litany of […]
CST’s Doreen Sayegh Brings the Bard to the City of Big Shoulders with Shakespeare 400 Chicago
Doreen Sayegh has been a skosh busy. Playwright and quote-machine William Shakespeare died 400 years ago this year, and a few folks still like to produce his work, so […]
Tiananmen Square’s “Tank Man” Sought in TimeLine’s Chimerica
Chris Rickett as Mel Stanwyck and Coburn Goss as Joe Schofield. Photo by Lara Goetsch Lucy Kirkwood’s 2014 Best New Play Olivier Award winner Chimerica, running at the MacArthur-Award-winning TimeLine Theatre, […]