Let’s Café: Lunch at Shokolad in Ukrainian Village
This is the first in our new series of posts in which we’ll feature casual local joints from fast casuals to delis and the cafes that we all frequent. If […]
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.
Last Stop on Market Street Is a Musical Treat With Messages at Chicago Children’s Theatre
Chicago Children’s Theatre’s new production, Last Stop on Market Street, is a sunny, colorful collage of music and dancing with some serious messages for kids and their adults. Director Henry […]
Theater Oobleck’s Reality Is an Activity: 90 Delectable Minutes of Poetry and Word Play
Reality Is an Activity is not a typical theatrical production. It’s short on plot and character development. But it’s a symphony of humorous word play and a love song to poetry, […]
Della’s Cake Shop Confronts the Modern Era in The Cake at Rivendell
Della’s Sweets is an adorable little cake shop somewhere in North Carolina. Winston is mentioned, which is what locals call Winston-Salem. The shop is pink and white, filled with cakes, […]
A Poet Spreads the Love: Poetry in a Bubble Gum Machine
Yvonne Zipter, poet and Portage Park resident, is spreading her love for poetry in a creative way. She has placed “poetry machines” in two neighborhood venues. Customers can drop 50 […]
William Inge’s Natural Affection at Eclipse: A Slice of Bygone America That Wasn’t Idyllic
A middle-aged woman, her boyfriend and her teenaged son—all in one small apartment. That sounds like a formula for trouble and so it proves to be in William Inge’s Natural […]
On the Road: At the Jersey Shore, Spring in Springsteen Country
The calendar says it’s spring, even though the weather doesn’t. But it was time to hit the beach anyway. That is, the Jersey Shore. We spent four days last week […]
Steep Theatre’s Birdland Is a Fast-Moving Story of Rock Stardom and its Consequences
Paul (Joel Reitsma) is a rock star, with rock star habits and ego. He’s now in Moscow, nearing the end of a long tour and faced with going home to […]
Two Great Playwrights on the Cusp of Their Careers: Philip Dawkins’ The Gentleman Caller at Raven Theatre
Tennessee Williams has been a local favorite for decades, ever since December 27, 1944, when Claudia Cassidy, the fearsome Chicago Tribune theater critic, said Williams turned the theater “into a […]
Playwright for the Trump Era? It’s Politics and Money in Brecht’s Round Heads & Pointed Heads at Red Tape
Round Heads and Pointed Heads is a cavalcade of political events and characters, woven loosely (very loosely) into a Brechtian story of politics and money. Red Tape Theatre’s new production […]
Disturbing Theater, 20 Years Later: How I Learned to Drive Is About Drinking, Driving and Sexual Abuse
How I Learned to Drive isn’t a play for the squeamish. It’s a disturbing and ultimately sad story about pedophilia, sexual abuse, drinking and driving. It illustrates how the predator […]
Tension Builds as Ambiguity Becomes Retribution in hang at Remy Bumppo Theatre
We sit through 60 minutes of ambiguity and tension—about what? When hang finally reveals (almost reveals) its essential point in the final 25 minutes, we are caught up in the […]