Review: Case Oats Soundtracks Your Favorite Time of Day on Last Missouri Exit
I’m not sure if anyone else is feeling this, but I sure as hell feel like I’m getting utterly spoiled this year with great Chicago music. Moontype, Smut, Free Range, […]
Review: Comedy and Tragedy in Chicago’s Storefront Theater World—The Very Last Production of King Lear by Richard Engling
Richard Engling is a Chicago theater guy—actor, director, artistic director. He’s taken his years of experience as the raw material for a trilogy of novels about life in Chicago storefront […]
Review: Based on Real Events, Ron Howard’s Eden Delves into Humanity’s Basest Instincts on an Isolated Island
Based on a true story from about 100 years ago, writer Noah Pink and director Ron Howard tell the story of Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Jude Law) and his wife Dora […]
Review: Lena Dunham’s Too Much Falls Short of Becoming a New Generation’s Girls
Netflix launched the TV series Too Much this summer amid a lot of buzz—well-deserved buzz, as Too Much is the first follow-up TV series from creator Lena Dunham since her […]
Review: Cynthia Erivo at Ravinia Defies Gravity
It’s storm season these days, with summer squalls and August tempests hitting town with blustery regularity. But a cyclone of a different sort blew into Ravinia last Friday night, when […]
Review: Incandescent Performances Highlight How to Transcend a Happy Marriage at Redtwist Theatre
Redtwist Theatre is high-kicking and playing on the edge for Season 21, themed “Defiant Femmes.” It is a timely theme and, in my opinion, needed to bolster the energy and […]
Review: At Writers Theatre, Hershey Felder’s Rachmaninoff and the Tsar Brings Duality to the Stage
Opposites may or may not attract but they can certainly produce lively theater. After years of creating solo portraits of famous composers—Gershwin, Chopin, Debussy among them—Hershey Felder pairs Sergei Rachmaninoff […]
Review: New Exhibition at Hyde Park Art Center Introduces Fresh Interpretations on Ageless Themes
Talking about how we process the world and our place in it through the visual arts rather than the spoken word can lead to some curious places. The people, things and […]
Review: King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard Enlist the Chicago Philharmonic to Bring Psych Rock to Ravinia
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has been gracing Chicago stages for over a decade, with their earliest performances dating back to 2014 in spots like Beat Kitchen and Subterranean. […]
Review: In Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee Delivers a Sharp, Impressive Modern Take on a Kidnapping Story About Class, Wealth and Access
The most important part of director Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 High and Low (which in turn was based on the Ed McBain novel King’s Ransom) was never the story of a […]
Review: Starring Vicky Krieps, Went Up the Hill Turns a Ghost Story into an Intimate Mystery of Grief and Connection
Following up his debut feature, Sequin in a Blue Room, New Zealand filmmaker Samuel Van Grinsven gives us a different kind of ghost story with Went Up the Hill. The […]
Review: Giancarlo Guerrero, Clayton Stephenson, and the Grant Park Orchestra Are Excellent, Notwithstanding Sirens, Motorcycles, and a Red Helicopter
The Grant Park orchestra played an excellent concert at Jay Pritzker Pavillion on Wednesday evening. Unfortunately, the ambient noises were worse than ever, with several sirens blaring, motorcycles screaming, and […]