Review: A Newsman Gets His Due in Mike Wallace Is Here
The generation obsessed with social media and information that’s instantly available may not even know who Mike Wallace was (and they’re the worse off for it). Though 60 Minutes, the show […]
Review: Black Harvest Film Festival Features the History of Blue Note Records in It Must Schwing!
Some of the strongest films at any year’s Black Harvest Film Festival, the annual month-long film series at the Gene Siskel Film Center now in its 25th year, are the […]
Review: High Crime-ing and Ms.-Demeanors with Mueller, She Wrote
Constitutional crisis commentary has become a cottage industry, and three SoCal women have carved out their niche with focused, funny, and accessible vivisections of the constant onslaught. The Daily Beans […]
Review: Magical Wolf Play at Gift Theatre Will Make You Think and Break Your Heart
It sounds like a sad story. A couple adopts a child from another country, then decides “it’s not a good fit” and decides to un-adopt him. But if I tell […]
“I Wanna Go on with That Next One Myself”: Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson
Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson By Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow Chicago Review Press Robert Johnson is a definitive legend, though the dead-at-27 bluesman […]
Two Decades Under the Influence: A Night with Taking Back Sunday
Somewhere in the kingdom of my memory there’s a small village dedicated to music from my youth. This community is populated with the essence of mallcore. The denizens wear To Write […]
Chicago’s Free Museum Days for Summer 2019
Chicago, being one of the world’s great cities, is home to an assortment of world-class museums and cultural institutions. Featuring an ever-changing roster of historically and culturally significant exhibits, Chicago […]
Hello, Yellow Brick Road: The Night the Grant Park Orchestra Played Up a Storm
A threat of severe storms dissipated the evening of July 10. Yet a cinematic tornado blew through the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park… and the band played on. The […]
Review: Cooked Explores the Inequality of Natural Disaster Response
As a Chicago native, I have a vague memory of the heatwave of 1995, a days-long invisible natural disaster that ultimately took the lives of hundreds of Chicagoans who didn’t […]
Review: Goodman’s The Music Man Proves A Classic Story With Timeless Songs
The Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical this year went to Daniel Fish’s stripped-down, timely interpretation of Oklahoma!, a Rodgers & Hammerstein classic that first opened on Broadway […]
From Patriotism to Protest: Grant Park Festival’s All-American Weekend
The Grant Park Music Festival continued its tradition of touring the American songbook for thousands attending its annual July 4th concert at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. It […]
Review: An American Literary Treasure Tells Her Story in Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
Except for a brief period in my pre-teens when I thought it wasn’t “cool,” I’ve always been an avid reader. I was practically raised in the library, and to this […]