Thursday, May 11, 2023
This double bill of plays from two very different theater companies (Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble and CIRCA-Pintig), working in two very different styles—one abstract, movement-based, very…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 03:35PMThursday, May 4, 2023
Pay no attention to the show’s baggy, forgettable, mildly pompous title. This smart, tightly written play is at once a very funny satire of the Star Wars saga—and Star Wars fans—a hear…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:18AMWednesday, April 26, 2023
There have been many versions of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey’s Grease: the raunchy one that premiered at Kingston Mines in 1971; a much cleaned-up version that opened a year later in New Y…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:07PMThe idea of turning Richard Linklater’s brilliant 2003 film comedy, School of Rock (about a struggling guitarist/substitute teacher coaching his prep-school students on how to, well, rock)…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:57AMThursday, March 23, 2023
Dame Peggy Ashcroft considered the role of Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s notoriously difficult Happy Days a “summit part,” one of those roles, like Hamlet or King Lear, that tests an acto…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:53PMThursday, February 9, 2023
Big Fish bombed on Broadway. Based on Tim Burton’s 2003 movie version of Daniel Wallace’s 1998 novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions, the show, with a score by Andrew Lippa and a…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:11AMWednesday, January 18, 2023
I remember when rock was young. So, evidently, does Chicago playwright Katie Coleman, as she well attests in her intelligent, heartfelt play about two young Soviets, hopping and bopping to a…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:54PMWednesday, November 23, 2022
Like much that passes for entertainment during the holiday season, this 2010 musical, based on the 2003 movie, lives on the infinitely thin line between charm and utter stupidity. The […]
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SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:30AMWednesday, November 9, 2022
Their premise is not half bad: a “still relatively new” (as they describe themselves) theater company uses a fictional 125th-anniversary “jubilee” to bring together a collection of s…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:10AMThursday, October 27, 2022
Siena Marilyn Ledger’s brand-new two-person play, being produced here with 16th Street Theater and Dragonfly Theatre as part of the National New Play Network rolling world premiere program…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:24AMWednesday, October 19, 2022
This is a play of tiny moments and small details, a play in which characters change slowly, the way people and seasons change—silently, imperceptibly at first and then with the […]
The p…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 04:26PMWednesday, October 5, 2022
The UrbanTheater Company’s performing space on Division Street is not small—I have seen them stage plays there just packed with actors—but it is really not large enough to contain all …
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 04:51PMThursday, September 22, 2022
Hello, Dolly! is not revived that often. It only feels that way, because Jerry Herman’s score (book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder’s play The Matchmaker) is so infectious […
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:56PMWednesday, September 14, 2022
Originally conceived in the mid-70s as a vehicle for Nell Carter but opening on Broadway in 1981 with Jennifer Holliday in the role that might have been Carter’s (if Carter’s […]
The p…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:24PMWednesday, August 31, 2022
James Sherman began his career as an actor; he joined the Second City in the 70s, while he was still a student at Illinois State, appearing in the shows Once […]
The post Chagall’s Camel…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 05:56PMWednesday, August 3, 2022
Journalist, playwright, screenwriter, theater critic, arts editor, and novelist Adam Langer was born in Chicago, grew up in West Rogers Park, went to school in Evanston, and spent the early …
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:25PMTuesday, July 26, 2022
When Chicago poet, sculptor, and musician Marvin Tate was in elementary school, he had a terrible stutter. To help him, his older sister gave him a poem to practice reading aloud. The poem w…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:56PMWednesday, July 20, 2022
This is a great play for the summer—despite its title—because The Winter’s Tale is as much about the coming of spring as it is the dreary desolation of December. At least that is what …
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:08PMFriday, June 24, 2022
My daughter tells me she likes the 1989 movie version of Steel Magnolias because you can have it running in the background while you do other things, and still more or less follow the plot. …
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:15AMTuesday, June 14, 2022
Writer and artist David Hauptschein has been working in Chicago since the 80s, curating live performances, writing plays, and working in visual arts, but his work has been produced more ofte…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:56AMWednesday, June 8, 2022
Puppets are cool, but they are also creepy. Very creepy. Even the cute ones, like Kermit the Frog or Ollie the Dragon. There is just something deeply unnerving about how puppets seem like au…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:24AMWednesday, June 23, 2021
John Michalski, onetime Chicago improv teacher and performer, never found great fame. But he embodied the art form at its purest.
John Michalski died May 24. In …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:54PMWednesday, September 30, 2020
The rapper-dancer-performance poet rolls with the pandemic punches.
2020 started off so well. January and February were great months for 27-year-old rapper, danc…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:30PMTuesday, August 4, 2020
Remembering the comedy theater’s humble beginnings and reflecting on its dramatic end
How did you find out about iO closing?…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 04:45PMTuesday, April 28, 2020
A critic reflects on UCB's early history in Chicago.
Last week the folks at the Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB) sent out a letter announcing they were permanently…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:25PMTuesday, March 10, 2020
A starry cast can't inject a lot of life into Dan Clancy's middlebrow story.
Dan Clancy's four-person play about two couples living a middling life in a middle-c…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:45PMTuesday, February 25, 2020
The 1987 Michael J. Fox film gets a toothless musical treatment.
This musical version of the 1987 Michael J. Fox vehicle, receiving its world premiere at the Par…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:50PMTuesday, February 18, 2020
Mercury Theater Chicago's revival of this murder mystery party game can't overcome the dated material.
Adapted by Marilyn Abrams and Bruce Jordan from the origin…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:00PMTuesday, February 11, 2020
It's Gershwin for the win in Drury Lane's production.
You don't have to know the classic 1951 movie musical to be disappointed by this 2015 stage version, but it…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:20PMAudrey Cefaly's story of a photographer and an agoraphobe goes far beyond Madison County.
Audrey Cefaly's new play, receiving its world premiere at 16th Street T…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:10PMTuesday, February 4, 2020
Roger Bean's jukebox musical has pleasant songs, but no point to its journey.
There is no story in Roger Bean's jukebox musical, nor are there any characters, on…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 08:00PM 
