Leave it to Jane Glover and her fairly small orchestra and chorus to give a gargantuan performance of a classical music leviathan to a sold out crowd on Saturday night. Music of […]
Review: Music of the Baroque Wowed on Saturday Night
Persuasive Xenophobia Finds Voice in BigMouth at Chicago Shakes
Critics Kimzyn Campbell and Karin McKie jointly review BigMouth, running at Chicago Shakespeare Theater through September 22. Ticket discounts are available when two or more “Big in Belgium” shows are booked together. […]
Review: Tres Bandidos Reaches for the Sky and Hits the Mark
If you’re familiar with the concept of a bottle episode of a TV show, you might also know how notoriously difficult they can be for writers. Bottle episodes keep a few characters […]
A Shayna Maidel at Timeline Theatre: A Timely History Play Full of Ghosts and Terrors
The Holocaust. Armenia. Cambodia. Darfur. Bosnia. Rwanda. South Sudan. Native Americans. Rohingya. Whether or not you had family or ancestors in those hellish genocides, you may find it hard to watch some […]
Stage Shorts: Four Plays About the AIDS Crisis, Greek Tragedy, Missionaries and Swordplay in Skirts
Holding the Man Dramatizes True Story of Australian Actor’s Life With HIV Holding the Man, based on Timothy Conigrave’s memoir of the same name, tells the heartbreaking life story of the Australian actor during […]
Manual Cinema Creates The End of TV, a Magical Performance with Actors, Puppets and Retro Tech
Every once in a while you get to see a work of theater that seems as if it could reinvent the form. Manual Cinema is a Chicago-based company that has earned international […]
Bus Stop at Eclipse Theatre: William Inge’s Road Story Lacks Energy
Playwright William Inge is considered a quintessential midwestern writer. Born in Kansas, he worked in Kansas and Missouri, and died (by suicide) in Hollywood. His 1955 play Bus Stop is one of the […]
Review: The Color Purple Is As Powerful and Moving As Ever
Every now and then, when I’m feeling particularly down, I’ll queue up this segment from the 2016 Tony Awards: a performance from the 2015 revival of The Color Purple featuring Cynthia Erivo […]
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 original co-star […]
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 play with […]
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 for the Marriott […]
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 this five-week […]
