Stages, Theater, Theater Festival

Dispatch: International Puppet Theater Festival Kicks Off With Variety of Puppetry Styles and Formats

The 6th Annual International Puppet Theater Festival is under way in Chicago and we have a few brief reviews to whet your appetite for your own puppetry experiences. The festival […]

Third Coast Review Staff /
Stages, Theater

Review: Porchlight’s Anything Goes—Delightful… Delovely

Get your tickets and grab your seats. On the relatively small stage at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Porchlight Music Theatre is putting on a big, big show: […]

Doug Mose /
Stages, Storefront, Theater

Review: Mother Courage at Trap Door Theatre Brings Brecht’s Anti-War Rhetoric Home to the 21st Century

Bertolt Brecht’s 1939 play, Mother Courage and Her Children, is the greatest anti-war play of all time. Anti-war, anti-government and anti-capitalism, as we learn in the opening scene of this stirring […]

Nancy S Bishop /
Stages, Theater, Theater Festival

Preview: Count Down the Days (6!) to the 6th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival

A revolt of the animals to save the planet. The adventures of a marooned astronaut. The creation of an Afro-futurist Pinocchio. A monster who can’t scare a scaredycat. Urban youth […]

Nancy S Bishop /
Dance, Stages, Theater

Review: A Harlem Reverie in Sugar Hill: the Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker

Harlem. The name evokes a sense of place, time, and for some, the halcyon days of the Harlem Renaissance. Sugar Hill is a section of Harlem where the strivers lived, […]

Kathy D. Hey /
Opera, Stages

Review: Chicago Opera Theater Triumphs With Shostakovich’s The Nose, From Gogol’s Story

The Chicago Opera Theater COT) has a mission to produce new and rarely produced work. Dmitri Shostakovich was 22 years old when he wrote The Nose adapted from the short […]

Kathy D. Hey /
Stages, Theater

Review: Northlight Theatre Brings Thrilling Murder Mystery to the Holiday Season with Dial M for Murder

Money, fear, jealousy, revenge, and protecting someone you love. These are the five top motives for murder, according to Maxine Hadley (Elizabeth Laidlaw), a murder mystery writer who is about […]

Lauren Katz /
Circus, Stages, Theater

Review: Cirque du Soleil Performs a Holiday Thrill Ride in ‘Twas the Night Before

As we were making our way to the Chicago Theatre on Thursday, my friend asked me how I thought Cirque du Soleil was going to pull off their feats of […]

Kathy D. Hey /
Broadway, Stages, Theater

Review: Boop! The Betty Boop Musical Sizzles Thanks to Its Star—But Its Plot Fizzles

What do you say about a priceless diamond in a shabby setting? That it shines brilliantly, no thanks to what surrounds it—a dull distraction than can, by contrast, sometimes make […]

Doug Mose /
Stages, Theater

Review: Black Ensemble Theater Celebrates 47 Years of The Other Cinderella

I cannot believe that 47 years have passed since the premiere performance of The Other Cinderella. Jackie Taylor came out of Cabrini Green and has emerged as a Chicago legend. […]

Kathy D. Hey /
Stages, Theater

Review: Blank Theatre’s Promises, Promises a Holiday Delight

In 1960, when Eisenhower was still president and what we think of as “the ’60s”… counter culture… protests… civil unrest… had yet to really begin, Billy Wilder and his screenwriting […]

Doug Mose /
Stages, Theater

Review: Red Theater’s Caveman Play Tells Its Story via a Playful Dialogue With the Audience

Review by Anthony Neri. Nothing about the set of Caveman Play is very primal. Yes, there is a fire in the center of what is presumably a cave, but it crackles silently […]

Guest Author /