Pop Waits: It’s Punk Raucous Mixed with Melancholy
Pop Waits, the Neo-Futurists’ new production, directed by Halena Kays, is a punk rock operetta with some sweet and sad moments. Created by Malic White and Molly Brennan, Pop […]
Refuge Theatre Project’s High Fidelity Reclaims a Chicago Classic
Refuge Theatre Project, the no frills, contemporary music theater group that brought you Next Thing You Know and Glory Days in 2015, is starting off 2016 with a run of High […]
Porchlight’s “Far From Heaven” Takes Their Musical Theater Fare Shaken, Not Stoic
How do you take a cloyingly overused plot line and make it feel less decayed, more relevant, and, above all, interesting? That’s what Porchlight Music Theatre’s Far From Heaven attempts […]
Eclectic Full Contact Theatre’s Overworked Shape of Things
The first time I saw Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things was at my small Midwestern liberal arts college, the same setting as the play itself. Afterwards, my friends and […]
Hypocrites Remount Tennessee Williams’ Memory Play, The Glass Menagerie
Hans Fleischmann developed a distinctive poetic vision for his production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, which ran for about six months in 2013 at Mary-Arrchie Theatre and then at […]
Mary-Arrchie Signs Off in Classic Chicago Style with Snarling, Hilarious Mamet
If you want to see classic Shakespeare without flying to London, you can drive up to Stratford, Ontario, to see a production of Macbeth or As You Like It this […]
The Greenhouse Theater Center’s Jacob Harvey on Embracing the Individual
One may allegedly be the loneliest number, but at the Greenhouse Theater Center, Artistic Director Jacob Harvey would like to argue that it also makes for one hell of a fine show. […]
Chicago Slam Works’ “Incendium”: A Hell of a Show
“Everybody looks better once they die.” Welcome to your orientation to the afterlife. In a gritty, dungeon-like club, the cast of “Incendium” provides a cabaret-style evening of performance to acquaint […]
Neil LaBute X 11: Profiles Theatre Proves the Value of Great Writing
An evening of Vices. An evening of Virtues. That’s how Profiles Theatre describes the collection of 11 short plays by Neil LaBute now being staged at the theater in […]
Mercury Theater’s Sherlock Holmes Tries to Make Its Pleasantries Elementary
“Do you really believe in 100 years, people will be talking about Sherlock?” Says Michael Aaron Lindner as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man behind the sleuth who is tired […]
Kicking Off “Shakespeare 400 Chicago” with Robust Russian Measure for Measure
Shakespeare in Russian rocks, especially when you start the evening with a shot (OK, shots) of vodka in a “Shakespeare 400 Chicago” glass. Kicking off a year-long, city-wide celebration of […]
Oracle Rekindles Message in O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape 94 years later
Oracle Productions’ new play, The Hairy Ape, was one of Eugene O’Neill’s early works, written in 1922. It’s written in an expressionistic—rather than linear–style, which makes it suitable for director […]