Virtual theater has come in many forms during the last eight pandemic months. Our most recent theater review was actor/clown Bill Irwin’s new version of his bravura performance of On Beckett adapted […]
In these “AC,” After COVID, times, Chicago theaters are offering online content to fill the gap of canceled shows and in-person instruction (as well as the yawning expanse of endless days). Chicago […]
Bug starts out like a Sam Shepard play. Two lost souls in a seedy Oklahoma motel room. Fools for love. Agnes (Carrie Coon) is a waitress who’s dreading her ex-husband’s release from […]
There is dancing in Dance Nation, now at Steppenwolf Theatre. It’s sometimes clumsy, sometimes graceful, and generally amateurish. Clare Barron’s play is about a crew of 13-year-old girls (and a token boy) […]
Chicago and Durban, South Africa, have been Sister Cities since 1997, and spiritual siblings for far longer, as explored in the joyful world premiere of Lindiwe, written by Eric Simonson, directed by […]
The Great Leap is an homage to basketball and to playwright Lauren Yee’s father—and also connects to Chinese history and politics and the country’s competitiveness with the West. Yee’s latest play is now […]
Ensemble: An Oral History of Chicago Theater is a book you can enjoy in two ways. You can read it from beginning to end, as you would any narrative of fiction or […]
The play that launched Chicago’s lauded ensemble returns to the substantially larger stage for the first time since 1982. Sam Shepard’s True West propelled the Highland Park High School and Illinois State […]
Chicago had a candidate in the ring during the 1992 presidential election. Ms. Joan Jett Blakk ran for the Democratic nomination that year. What? You don’t remember her? She won zero votes […]
There are no children in Lucy Kirkwood’s play, The Children. The play’s storyline is built on “the disaster,” which we don’t learn the nature of immediately. The disaster was an explosion at a […]
To fully understand this witty and nuanced play, one must know that it is a sequel to Henrik Ibsen’s original A Doll’s House, which was written and set at the end of […]
This isn’t a “best theater of 2018” list. We didn’t see everything. Most of our writers are freelancers, all with other gigs, and it’s hard for us to cover the hundreds of […]
