Honest. Crude. Raw. Those are some of the words that came to me as I walked away from Steep Theatre after experiencing The Leopard Play or sad songs for lost boys. I […]
Review: The Leopard Play at Steep Theatre Tells a Brutally Loving Family Story
Review: Jump and Jive for Joy at Porchlight’s Sophisticated Ladies
Can there be a show stopper when the show never stops? Porchlight Music Theatre’s production of Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies sings, dances and plays its way through the king of all’s greatest hits, […]
Preview: True Blue Revue to Launch Indivisible Chicago’s 2020 Campaign February 3 at the Athenaeum
Indivisible Chicago will stage True Blue Revue, the group’s 2020 campaign kickoff and free live show, Monday, February 3, at the Athenaeum Theatre’s mainstage, 2936 N. Southport Ave. Doors open at 5:30pm […]
Review: Goodman Theatre’s Roe Asks “Which Side Are You On?”
What is true? What is false? And who gets to decide? In Lisa Loomer’s powerful production of Roe, directed by Vanessa Stalling, at the Goodman Theatre, people change their minds and switch […]
Review: The Adult in the Room Tells Nancy Pelosi’s Leadership Story
Politics. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. This article is a review of The Adult in the Room, a one-woman show about U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi […]
Review: House Theatre’s Verböten Adds a Lot of Heart to “Three Chords and the Truth”
The old rock trope says that punk music is “three chords and the truth.” That holds true for the fact-based story about a kid punk band from Evanston in the 1980s, which […]
Review: Court Theatre’s The Mousetrap Proves a Timelessly Enjoyable Murder Mystery
Perhaps best known as the longest-running play ever (notching north of 28,000 performances and counting), Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap has been continuously on stage in London’s West End since 1952. Now, the […]
Review: The Thrust of Once On This Island Is Gone, But the Heart, Wonder Remain
Just a few blocks north of the heart of Times Square and next door to the massive Gershwin Theatre (capacity: 1,900) is a more intimate space, an 800-seat theater built for unique […]
Review: Females Seek Agency in Remy Bumppo’s Top Girls
Note: Top Girls was reviewed by Karin McKie and Kim Campbell on Women’s March weekend. Caryl Churchill wrote Top Girls in 1982, in the middle of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979-90 fraught, pseudo-feminist tenure […]
Review: Shattered Globe’s Sheepdog Tells an All-Too-Familiar Story About Police Shootings
Alton Sterling. Laquan McDonald. Walter Scott. Michael Brown. Greg Gunn. Philando Castile. Some of those names might come to mind as you watch the tense, even-handed police thriller, Sheepdog, by Kevin Artigue. […]
Review: The Gulf by About Face Theatre—Two Women Stuck in a Relationship—and a Fishing Boat
Two women on a fishing boat in the Alabama Delta. One casts and sometimes reels in…nothing. The other alternately suns, dozes and reads. It’s late afternoon on a hot, humid day. Kendra […]
Review: Sunday Evening Is an Entertaining Debut for Rose Valley Theatre Group
Rose Valley Theatre Group, Chicago’s newest theater company, makes its debut with the first English language production of Sunday Evening, a play by Zachary Karabashliev, a Bulgarian playwright. You might worry that […]
