I read a lot of short stories, of varied styles and themes. I like the stories of George Saunders, Shirley Jackson, Philip K. Dick and Hilary Mantel, among others. But […]
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 […]
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 […]
Linda, the Steep Theatre production of Penelope Skinner’s 2015 play, is entertaining and poignant, cataloging the life and career of the successful brand strategist for a beauty company. Robin Witt’s smart […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
One of the missions of theater is to tell untold stories, as Elizabeth Lovelady points out in her director’s note for Sickle, the new production at Red Theater. The story […]
Search the Chicago theater listings far and wide this summer and you will find very few productions with two 50-something women at the center of the production, if any (and […]