Review: The Color Purple Is As Powerful and Moving As Ever
Every now and then, when I’m feeling particularly down, I’ll queue up this segment from the 2016 Tony Awards: a performance from the 2015 revival of The Color Purple featuring […]
Victims of Duty Showcases the Shape of Michael Shannon
Ubiquitous big-budget bad guy Michael Shannon returns to his roots, his theater company, his kind of town in the remount of A Red Orchid’s Victims of Duty. He reunites with […]
At Brown Paper Box Co., Everybody Is a Hip Meditation on Death and Mortality
Last weekend in Spring Green, I saw the Ionesco play, Exit the King, an absurdist but moving play about death and mortality. My first night at home, I attended another […]
Review: Marriott’s Murder for Two Proves Less Is More in Absurd Comedy
There are lots of dynamic duos—Batman and Robin, peanut butter and jelly, Italian beef and fries. Now there’s murder and dancing. Murder for Two is a horse of a different color […]
Review: Stacy Keach As Aging Ernest Hemingway in Goodman Theatre’s Pamplona
As the Goodman Theatre opens Pamplona, a one-man show starring Stacy Keach as an aging, rambling Ernest Hemingway, the production’s primary claim to fame may be its rough road to […]
In Red Theater’s Brutal Sickle, Four Village Women Try to Survive the Ukrainian Genocide
One of the missions of theater is to tell untold stories, as Elizabeth Lovelady points out in her director’s note for Sickle, the new production at Red Theater. The story […]
Review: Steppenwolf’s Lightweight The Roommate Aims for Laughs Over Depth
Search the Chicago theater listings far and wide this summer and you will find very few productions with two 50-something women at the center of the production, if any (and […]
Review: Chicago Shakespeare Theater Captures the Magic in Peter Pan–A Musical Adventure
—Last month, I was at Chicago Shakespeare Theater to see Macbeth, a brooding, dark tale produced at the Yard, their newest and most versatile stage. Co-directed by Teller (of Penn […]
Mercury Theater’s Avenue Q Remount a Welcome Return for 2018
Since it first premiered in 2003, the hot-button topics of the puppet-based musical, Avenue Q, seem to have only become hotter and hotter. Racism, homophobia, even post-graduate, millennial strife seem […]
Stage Shorts: Four Plays About Memory, Love and Disaster at Eclectic, Cuckoo’s and Pride
Welcome to Stage Shorts, our feature that highlights current plays at Chicago’s storefront theaters. It’s our way of covering more of Chicago’s theatrical productions and giving you more choices in […]
Monty Cole’s Direction of Hamlet at the Gift Theatre Focuses on the Power of Language
Sometimes you see a familiar play, one that you’ve seen many times, and it gains new power because of the casting and staging or the mood created by the director. […]
Goodman Theatre’s Father Comes Home from the Wars: an American Epic
Inspired by the tales of Homer, Suzan-Lori Parks’ Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2, and 3) explores issues of loyalty and freedom during the Civil War. The […]