Review: Eclipse’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs Dramatizes Everyone’s Fears in 1920s Oklahoma
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, a 1957 play by William Inge, is set in a small town in 1920s Oklahoma. The play tells the story of the […]
Nancy S. Bishop is publisher and Stages editor of Third Coast Review. She’s a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and a 2014 Fellow of the National Critics Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. You can read her personal writing on pop culture at nancybishopsjournal.com, and follow her on Twitter @nsbishop. She also writes about film, books, art, architecture and design.
Liberté, Égalité, Sororité: Four Badass Women Fight for Art and Freedom in Strawdog’s The Revolutionists
The Revolutionists is feminist history laced with an argument for the value of art in revolution. Playwright Lauren Gunderson describes it as a “comedic quartet about four women at the height […]
Ike Holter’s Rightlynd Is a Story of Chicago Politics: It’s the City We Love Despite Its Flaws
“Once you’ve come to be part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never […]
Wrightwood 659 Exhibits Work of Tadao Ando and Le Corbusier in Stunning Ando-Designed Interior
Wrightwood 659 is a stunning new art gallery in Lincoln Park and its current exhibition is a great way to get acquainted with the new space if you have not […]
Manual Cinema Creates Strangely Enchanting Multimedia Frankenstein at Court Theatre
Manual Cinema is presenting a weirdly enchanting version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at Court Theatre. Nine puppeteers and musicians display the original story of Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature, combined with […]
Red Theater’s An Oak Tree Is an Intellectual Exercise Mixing Dream and Reality
I admire experimentation in theater, whether it’s setting a familiar Shakespearean tale behind a vinyl screen in some post-modern setting (as Gift Theatre did with Hamlet recently) or telling the […]
New York Reviews: The Ferryman and The Waverly Gallery Are Both Family Tragedies
Earlier this week I reviewed a darkly hilarious Kurt Vonnegut satire on stage in New York. The other two plays I saw last weekend are powerful dramas about family tragedy. They […]
New York Review: Vonnegut’s Happy Birthday, Wanda June Is a Wacky Dark Satire on 42nd Street
If you’re a Kurt Vonnegut reader, Happy Birthday, Wanda June will sound familiar. I was sure I had read it long ago when I was devouring everything he wrote. But no, […]
Silence Is Worth a Thousand Words in Small Mouth Sounds at A Red Orchid Theatre
In the madness of our daily lives, we may wish that we could abandon our devices and spend a week meditating in the woods and getting high on nature. We […]
3CR News: We’re Adding Stars to Third Coast Reviews
Third Coast Review is initiating a rating system for our arts reviews. Starting later this week, our reviews of films, plays, games, albums and more will carry ratings of zero […]
There’s Little Brotherly Love But Plenty of Poteen in The Lonesome West by AstonRep
The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh is a story of two Irish brothers, locked in a codependent relationship of affection and hatred (mostly the latter). Throughout the course of the 100-minute […]
Review: Remy Bumppo’s Poetic Frankenstein Asks How a Lonely Creature Becomes a Monster
Frankenstein opens with an exquisitely staged birthing scene. The Creature is shrouded in a sheer fabric sac, a metaphoric womb. He struggles to free himself and emerges naked, covered in scars […]