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 […]
On the Road: Theater and Architecture in Wisconsin
Spring Green is an arts center in nearby south central Wisconsin that’s easily accessible to Chicagoans interested in theater and the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. In a long weekend, […]
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 […]
Support Group for Men: A Knowing, Poignant Comedy About Male and Human Issues
Ellen Fairey knows Chicago. She knows and replicates its sights, sounds and cultural wrinkles in Support Group for Men at the Goodman Theatre, directed by Kimberly Senior. For 95 minutes, Fairey […]
Trickery at Its Best—A Magical Show in Boystown
In a little storefront in Boystown, there is a tiny lush space that has been transformed into a magic den. Festooned in crushed velvet and dotted with antiques, the atmosphere […]
Sideshow Theatre’s Tilikum: A Bleak Fantasy, Ripped From the Headlines
“Tilikum, the infamous SeaWorld killer whale, has died.” That was the headline in the Orlando Sentinel on January 6, 2017. Sideshow Theatre’s world premiere production of Tilikum takes the story of that […]