Thursday, January 23, 2020
Bulgarian playwright Zachary Karabashliev's ddrama shows promise, but falters.
Bulgarian playwright Zachary Karabashliev's 2008 play, about two entwined dysfunct…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:45PMTuesday, January 7, 2020
The Guatemalan immigrant shares his own perspectives on failure and finding his voice.
Nestor Gomez, "creator, producer, curator, and host" of the immigrant-focu…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:55PMTuesday, December 17, 2019
Some familiar cast-offs get a chance to show off their reality-competition chops in this new musical.
America's Best Outcast Toy, by Larry Todd Cousineau (book a…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:20PMWednesday, December 11, 2019
Maya Malan-Gonzalez's contemporary Latinx take on A Christmas Carol shows promise despite production difficulties.
In retelling Charles Dickens's perennial holid…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 01:30PMTuesday, December 10, 2019
A young girl must save Christmas in this new family musical.
This original Christmas show (story by Larry Little, music by Dylan MarcAurele, book and lyrics by J…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:01PMTuesday, November 19, 2019
The Dickensian melodrama-turned-musical features an outstanding ensemble.
Lionel Bart's musical adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1839 novel Oliver Twist first pre…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:55PMWednesday, November 6, 2019
New American Folk Theatre's world premiere needs stronger characters and a more compelling story to match the music.
The story Anthony Whitaker tells in his 90-m…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 30, 2019
Oak Park Festival Theatre's production promenades through the Cheney Mansion.
Staged in various rooms throughout Oak Park's Cheney Mansion, David Rice's clever a…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMHe never got the big breaks, but the 1990s improv and solo stalwart has figured some things out.
Jimmy Carrane first made a name for himself 28 years ago when he…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMRonnie Marmo's one-man show isn't hilarious, but it's arrestingly honest.
In the painfully honest spirit of Lenny Bruce, let's begin with a couple of blunt obser…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 16, 2019
A real-life Jewish "catcher" for the Gestapo never takes compelling shape in this Agency Theater Collective production.
Nicknamed "blond poison" by the Nazis (he…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 9, 2019
It flopped on the Great White Way, but BoHo Theatre's production finds the heart in this musical about tall tales and father-son relationships.
Based on Daniel W…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, September 25, 2019
Lili-Anne Brown's staging of the musical based on Alice Walker's classic novel brings down the house.
There is no doubt the 2005 musical adaptation of Alice Walk…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMMark St. Germain's play outlines an unlikely friendship between a Black civil rights activist and a onetime member of the KKK.
Some plays seem tailor-made for sm…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, September 18, 2019
In Rick Cleveland's play, the five men who followed Richard Nixon as POTUS open up about the job at his memorial.
American Blues Theater's Chicago premiere of en…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, September 11, 2019
The playwright's second play in a trilogy comes from a place of personal experience and pain.
Hannah Ii-Epstein hunches over when she talks, her voice soft and v…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 09:00PMTwo brothers try to steal from the Bard in Marriott's entertaining take on the Broadway musical comedy.
Set in 1595 during the glorious reign of Elizabeth I, thi…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:00PMWednesday, August 28, 2019
Laugh Out Loud's LA import can't find the funny.
Few things age as quickly as topical satire, especially in an age of unrestrained Twitter bursts and 24-hour new…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMThursday, August 8, 2019
Mark Larson explains how he created his 700-page behemoth.
For the past few years followers of Chicago author Mark Larson on Facebook have been teased with littl…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 03:30PMWednesday, July 31, 2019
Beatrice and Benedick are better apart than together in Oak Park Festival’s production.
Chemistry is everything in romance. The folks at Oak Park Festival Thea…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, July 24, 2019
Perfect casting in the title role saves First Folio’s production from a conceptual misstep.
Shakespeare's Henry V is very much a play of words not action, this…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, July 17, 2019
David Cerda’s latest classic makeover for Hell in a Handbag is a winner for summer camp.
David Cerda's camp parody of Mervyn LeRoy's 1956 film The Bad Seed, ab…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, July 10, 2019
Marriott’s new musical hits standard narrative notes, but the songs soar
Daniel Zaitchik's new musical (he wrote the songs and the book) is a sweet little show…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, June 19, 2019
He's become a master at the kind of storytelling he pioneered 28 years ago in I'm 27, I Still Live at Home, and I Sell Office Supplies.
It has been 28 years sinc…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, June 12, 2019
In which five actors play the entire village of Highbury.
Phil Timberlake's new dramatization of Jane Austen's 1816 masterpiece, written especially for Lifeline …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:00PMWednesday, May 29, 2019
The ever-present danger is as much a part of a Cirque show as the spectacle.
Volta is Cirque du Soleil's 41st production since 1983 and, like all the others befo…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:00PMWednesday, May 22, 2019
It's a rock musical about suffering from bipolar disorder and getting electroshock treatment.
This award-winning 2008 musical by Brian Yorkey (book and lyrics) a…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:00PMWednesday, May 8, 2019
Or maybe kids just have a higher tolerance for Roald Dahl's sadism.
Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin's musical adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1988 novel about a precocio…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:00PMThursday, May 2, 2019
They sound their barbaric yawp through the living room.
The premise of Lauren Gunderson's two-hander is remarkably simple: a socially isolated, housebound high s…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, April 24, 2019
Kick off your Sunday shoes.
The problem with the 1984 movie Footloose is that it tries so damned hard to be a serious, realistic drama about a rebellious teen fi…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, April 10, 2019
Our hero a racist? No sirree!
The premise of Meridith Friedman's 2015 drama sounds all too familiar: Patrick, a popular white politician running for a high offic…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AM 
