Inspired by Giacomo Puccini’s massively influential Madame Butterfly, Boublil and Schönberg’s equally successful Miss Saigon originally premiered in 1989 in London’s West End. It would prove to be an international hit, becoming Broadway’s 13th longest […]
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 Mary Shelley’s […]
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 Frankenstein story […]
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 aren’t comedies, […]
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, I never […]
Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed (“Good Moving”) has a distinct outside vantage point to dissect the fraught American electoral system. Their limited run of Fight Night at Chicago Shakespeare is required viewing for armchair sociologists […]
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 would return […]
There’s this gem of a theater in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, and it’s keeping a little secret: the best musical theater productions in the city. Broadway touring companies aside, Porchlight Music Theatre […]
“People, are you ready? Circolombia is in the room!” This was the chant that began slowly and tentatively and built to a full on proclamation complete with fist pumping and other crowd […]
Days later, I am still humming and smiling. From the moment the orchestra began the familiar overture, to the cast of Hello, Dolly! stepping onto the stage of the Oriental Theatre to […]
It’s not likely (though perhaps possible) that director Nick Bowling and music director Doug Peck knew when they selected Terrence McNally’s Master Class for Bowling’s 30th production at Timeline Theatre Company that Magnolia […]
For me, the worst nightmares have always been the ones closest to reality. Aliens, ghosts, and monsters don’t scare me as much as thinking about someone waiting in the bushes outside my window […]
