Stages, Theater

Review: Odets’ Waiting for Lefty by Gwydion Theatre Still Packs a Punch in Contemporary America

Playwright Clifford Odets set Waiting for Lefty in 1935, but this one-act classic play about unions has echoes of life in America today. Unions’ battle against big business was illustrated […]

Kathy D. Hey /
Stages, Theater

Northlight Theatre’s Selling Kabul Is Full of Suspense and Gut-Wrenching Intrigue

Ahmad Kamal and Aila Ayilam Peck in SELLING KABUL. Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow

Lights come up on a live broadcast. On the television on the far corner of the small apartment, we witness President Barack Obama announcing that American troops would withdraw from […]

Lauren Katz /
Stages, Theater

Review: Goodman Theatre’s Highway Patrol Is a Thought-Provoking Story About Online Friendship

Goodman Theatre's HIGHWAY PATROL (photo credit: Liz Lauren)

“The truth is, I needed to know I could love someone.” That’s all so many of us want—to love and to feel loved. That can look a number of different […]

Lauren Katz /
Stages, Theater

Review: How Will the World End? Fire, Ice or Water? In Flood at Shattered Globe, the Answer Is Water

Shattered Globe Theatre’s new play, Flood, is about family issues—parents who don’t understand their children, children who never call home, elderly parents who ignore the realities of today’s world. There may […]

Nancy S Bishop /
Opera, Stages, Theater

Review: Champion at the Lyric Defines Opera in Jazz With Story of Boxer Emile Griffith

Champion is the story of welterweight boxer Emile Griffith’s career in boxing with a life-defining fatal bout in 1962 against Benny “Kid” Paret. I believe that an opera in jazz […]

Kathy D. Hey /
Stages, Theater, Theater Festival

Dispatch: Puppet Theater Festival Closes With Puppetry Comic, Joyful, Grim and Gorgeous

Puppets have stories to tell. And they tell them in all sorts of fanciful and humanistic ways. The 6th annual Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival has come to an end […]

Third Coast Review Staff /
Opera, Stages

Review: Lyric Presents Rossini’s Cinderella/La Cenerentola With a Twist

I have four copies of Grimm’s Fairy Tales in my library and while I have a weird fondness for dark morality tales, I also enjoy the story of the stepchild […]

Kathy D. Hey /
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 /