I should disclose at the outset that American Blues Theater’s 17th annual production of It’s a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago! is a bit of a tradition for me. A huge fan […]
The Woman in Black, a spooky Christmas transplant from the UK, is the second-longest running play on the West End (the top spot belongs to another little potboiler, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap). […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Lonesome West by Martin McDonagh is a story of two Irish brothers, locked in a codependent relationship of affection and hatred (mostly the latter). Throughout the course of the 100-minute play by […]
If you haven’t been to Chicago Ideas Week yet, you’re missing out. I’ve been lucky enough to attend for the last four years, and I’ve been inspired by some of the most […]
The three plays I saw last weekend in New York provided insights into how theater works, and emphasized language and physicality. Two are one-person performances and the third strongly highlights a single […]
I really like Jen Silverman. Steppenwolf just premiered her strange buddy comedy The Roommate after a successful run at the Humana Festival. It was touching and surprising, with outstanding performances from Ora Jones and […]
Tom Stoppard stirs up his personal brew of European political ideology, love, death and pop culture in his 2006 play, Rock and Roll, now on stage in a stirring production at the […]
