RECOMMENDED Playwright Brad Fraser examines the nature of true love through the tortured lens of fetishism, idolatry and narcissism in his spectacularly vivid play “Love and Human Remains.…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMRECOMMENDED If winter plunged directly into summer and robbed us of a gentle rebirth, Court Theatre’s very new production of “The Secret Garden” reawakens optimism in life, and the sta…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:30PMBy Aaron Hunt In May 2012, Julieanne Ehre and Katy Collins co-produced what they coined a “Fable Festival” in Edgewater. Cafes, empty storefronts and restaurants hosted such delectable, …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMRECOMMENDED It all began with a stag party skit, which explains the madcap, innuendo-filled, my-uncle’s-got-a-barn quality that blessedly remains, despite Broadway spit-and-polish. Bob Mar…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:45AMRECOMMENDED The Baby Boomers grew up in one of the longest periods of affluence in American history, lulled by a soundtrack of Elvis, Johnny Cash, ABBA and Frankie Valli. The Great Recession…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:30PMRECOMMENDED If you saw the pre-Broadway, Chicago run of “Big Fish” and thought it needed scissors and paste, or read the tepid New York reviews, mourning a loss of opportunity when compa…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMRECOMMENDED The brilliance of writer/composer/lyricist and Tony nominee Paul Gordon, the tremulous set design of Kevin Depinet, and Donald Holder’s mystic lighting, guided by director Barb…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:25AMRECOMMENDED The mythical line between opera and musical theater further fades with Chicago Opera Theater’s mounting of “A Coffin in Egypt.” Is it really an opera, as advertised? The co…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMRECOMMENDED If “All’s Well That Ends Well” is, as some critics insist, a “problem comedy,” then director Drew Martin, by setting the play in the Mafia-land of television’s popula…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMRECOMMENDED Playwright Kristine Thatcher has written an important play, and it has landed in the hands of exactly the right theater company for its world premiere. Commissioned and pr…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMRECOMMENDED Since their 1997/98 season, Eclipse Theatre Company has focused on one particular playwright for all of their adventures, or re-visited a group of previously examined authors for…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:45PMRECOMMENDED It’s always an event when Chicagoland can steal director/choreographer Marc Robin away from his duties as artistic director of Lancaster, PA’s Fulton Theatre to work his spec…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMIn our world of bullet points and sound bytes, the second act of an entertainment seems presented with the challenge of proving its worth. A bristling Act I is often sadly followed by a defl…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:15AMWonderful things can come of Lyric’s decision to present musical theater. New audiences may be caught up in the ambiance, and elect to attend an opera. Lyric’s opera audiences could see …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMRECOMMENDED While Carlo Goldoni’s 1747 play hangs on the familiar device of mayhem following in the wake of mistaken identical twins and the supporting stock characters of its time, Evanst…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:30AMBy Aaron Hunt Every year, New York City Center hosts the celebrated “Encores!” series, imagined as a way to rediscover and celebrate the Broadway musicals that, for whatever reason, …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:38AMRECOMMENDED There is more than one lens through which to experience Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties:” One can know everything there is to know about James Joyce, Lenin, Dadaist Tristan Tzar…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:30AMRECOMMENDED The story of Anne Frank, a budding young Jewish woman entrapped by design, hidden in an Amsterdam attic where she bravely, almost joyously awaited what she felt certain would be …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:00PMRECOMMENDED Deborah Zoe Laufer’s existential comedy “End Days” sounds like a tongue-in-cheek choice for the Windy City Playhouse’s launch of its inaugural season. If their opening …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:38PM