Chicago is no stranger to Broadway trials—especially adaptations of classic films. We have seen countless move through the city over the years, and many seem to fall into the trap […]
The tragedy of Bigger Thomas has had many iterations since Richard Wright’s novel Native Son was published in 1940. Set in 1939 Chicago, at least two film versions and several […]
Turret, a new show written and directed by Chicago playwright Levi Holloway, is born from a cinematic legacy of horror, apocalypse, and suspense, and it uses the mechanisms of live […]
The new production of On the Twentieth Century by Blank Theatre Company, directed by Danny Kapinos, is the latest incarnation of many fabulous versions of this story—on stage and screen. […]
We review two shows now running in Chicago’s storefront theater scene. Did you know that Chicago has more than 200 theater companies, many of them small and performing in storefronts […]
Some properties exist on a Wheel of Fortune spinner of adaptations. The Producers was a movie, then a musical, then a movie. Mean Girls lived the same life. Beetlejuice has […]
Chicago’s Porchlight Music Theatre is a standout among a crowded landscape of local production companies. Focused on musical theater, their shows—usually presented at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts […]
Murder in the Cathedral is a solemn play, drawn from the works of master poet and Nobel-Prize laureate T.S. Eliot. The 1935 verse play is now on stage at City […]
I find it strange that much is written about parameters and boundaries in relationships. Of course, there should be boundaries, but who decides what those are? How many people live […]
Last Stop on Market Street, now being staged by Young People’s Theatre of Chicago, is a children’s story with lively music and song and dance performed by six talented actors. […]
In 1993, A Red Orchid Theatre (and its talented ensemble of writers, directors, and actors) established itself as a pillar of Chicago’s independent theater scene. In 2024, two of its […]
The American theater business and society in general offer plenty of opportunity for criticism of “wokeness” and efforts to satisfy all sides—both in the arts, in other nonprofits and in […]