Newsies at Marriott Theatre is Relevant, Energetic and Earnest
It’s new show season at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, and we were there for the opening night of their latest play, Newsies. Set at a time when fat cats […]
ATC Plumbs Entrenched Racism in Welcome to Jesus
Will Davis directs Janine Nabers’ world premiere Welcome to Jesus at American Theater Company. It’s an oddball dissection of Texas Christianity and their other state religion, football, all driving toward the […]
Artistic Home’s Powerful Wedding Band Portrays a Biracial Couple in 1918 South Carolina
Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White is a powerful drama of black-white relations in 1918 South Carolina, soulfully directed by Cecile Keenan at the Artistic Home. The […]
In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play: Where Clueless Men Misunderstand Female Sexuality
It’s a woman’s play, about an era when women’s physical and emotional needs and desires were not only misunderstood, but completely ignored. Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the […]
Specter of Housing Insecurity Exorcised in Theater Oobleck’s A Memory Palace of Fear
Rust Belt Chicago’s editor/writer Martha Bayne and artist Andrea Jablonski co-curate Theater Oobleck’s unique haunted house, tapping into fears about housing insecurity. A rainy, raw fall day was an apt […]
The Underdog’s Underdogs Campaign in Jackalope’s 1980 (Or Why I Voted For John Anderson)
By Matthew Nerber, a performer and theater artist in Chicago, and a former literary contributor with the Generation, the University at Buffalo’s longest running alternative newspaper. When not seeing or […]
Brecht Deserves a Better Revolution in The Last Days of the Commune at Prop Thtr
Bertolt Brecht is an interesting, if often didactic, playwright. And so it is with The Last Days of the Commune, a play that was incomplete when he died in 1956. […]
Lookingglass’ Hard Times a Dickensian Circus
Published in 1854, Charles Dickens’ Hard Times – For These Times satirizes English society in its depiction of economic and social hardship in a fictitious industrial town in Victorian England […]
(Not) My Best Friend’s Wedding: Level 11 Theatre’s Bachelorette
Matthew Nerber is our Guest Author on the Stages page. He is a performer and theater artist in Chicago, and a former literary contributor with the Generation, the University at Buffalo’s longest […]
The Skin of Our Teeth, an Apocalyptic Madhouse at Remy Bumppo
Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth is the story of the universal family, beset by war and catastrophes but enduring despite all. In a way, The Skin of Our Teeth (written […]
An Evening at the Talkhouse Is an Unnerving and Timely Must-See at A Red Orchid Theatre
A Red Orchid Theatre’s latest show An Evening at the Talkhouse is my kind of production. It’s a darkly funny one-act play running around 100 minutes. It’s funny in a […]
Names Matter in Steppenwolf’s The Crucible, a Fearsome Allegory for McCarthyism
It’s all about the names. Early in The Crucible, set in colonial Salem, young girls caught dancing in the woods name other girls who were involved to save themselves from […]