Saturday, March 15, 2014
“Ithaka” begins with a walk-on appearance by Odysseus (Andrew Saenz), bemoaning the ten years it took him to get home from the smoking ruins of Troy, thanks to the ill will of the gods. …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:00PMWednesday, March 12, 2014
RECOMMENDED There is great truth in the notion that the insane do the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Of the several themes in actor-cum-playwright Joshua R…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMTuesday, March 11, 2014
RECOMMENDED “Life’s got its own rhythm,” says Ruby (Taron Patton). “It don’t always go along with your rhythm.” This is the continuous theme of August Wilson’s “King Hedley I…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMMonday, March 10, 2014
RECOMMENDED Mozart’s penultimate opera “La clemenza di Tito” (“The clemency of Titus”) is at long last, finally coming into its own. A work overflowing with the mature Mozart at hi…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:00PMSunday, March 9, 2014
RECOMMENDED Self-referential by repeatedly remarked upon design, “The Earliest Known Photo of Men Drinking Beer” tries to say in thousands of words seemingly everything the titul…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:00PMRECOMMENDED “Nothing is more dangerous than stupid men who think they have a good idea,” says a character at one point. The play is based on the true account of a Chicago band of Irish-A…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:00AMRECOMMENDED 415. The number of homicides recorded in Chicago in 2013. 46. The number of homicides recorded in Chicago as of January 1, 2014. 266. The price of a pair of Air Jordans, and the …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMSaturday, March 8, 2014
“The Planetary Defense Force in: Crisis on Planet Earth!” provides the slimmest of sci-fi narrative trappings within which to showcase an evening of the casually costumed cast challengin…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMFriday, March 7, 2014
By Suzanne Karr Schmidt As a relatively recent Midwesterner, I associate Chicago with outdoor festivals, pop-up art shows and street theater. And while the Berghoff’s Oktoberfest and the C…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMWednesday, March 5, 2014
RECOMMENDED What do you get when you cross poison ivy with four-leaf clovers? A rash of good luck. What do you get if you cross an artist with a policeman? A brush with the law. What do you …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMMonday, March 3, 2014
Asskicking Amazons attempts to be many things. Unfortunately it attempts them in generally heavy-handed fashion. Its combination of social commentary, exploitation-flick trappings and soap-o…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMRECOMMENDED Joe Penhall is a British playwright and screenwriter, best known for his play “Blue/Orange.” Exploring the dynamic of two doctors working with a schizophrenic patient, the pl…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMSunday, March 2, 2014
RECOMMENDED Five or ten minutes into “Period Piece,” I had nearly resigned myself to a show with little but its heart in the right place. Then, quite noticeably and suddenly, eve…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMFriday, February 28, 2014
Heartfelt and well-intentioned though it certainly seems, “This is Not a Cure for Cancer” is not an engaging or artful piece of theater. That is not to say it is without craft nor lackin…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00PMRECOMMENDED Watching Lifeline Theatre’s “A Tale of Two Cities,” I found myself wondering what Charles Dickens would make of this adaptation of his novel about the French Revolution. Di…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:00PMThursday, February 27, 2014
In the 1990s, television veered into new programming territory with the show “The New World,” offering a form of entertainment for which there was little scripting or preparation, where …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMWednesday, February 26, 2014
RECOMMENDED Coming at you with the beauty of a well-placed left-hand hook, the Griffin Theatre presents Clifford Odets’ heavily metaphorical masterpiece “Golden Boy.” A cautionary tale…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:00AMTuesday, February 25, 2014
RECOMMENDED Billed as a psychological thriller, “Mishap!” is a mannered but engaging rumination on human relations, contrasting the genuinely dramatic tragedies and complexities of famil…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:00AMThe Marriott Theatre kicks off its 2014 season with “Cabaret,” the eight-time Tony Award-winning musical, under the direction of David H. Bell. The show centers on a young American write…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMMonday, February 24, 2014
RECOMMENDED Chicago winters teach a myriad of things: the fine art of layering, new terms like “polar vortex” and, among other things, how to be resilient. The House Theatre’s producti…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00PMSunday, February 23, 2014
RECOMMENDED “You don’t have to be smart to laugh at farts,” Louis C.K. sagely explained in one of his many oft-quoted interviews, “But you have to be stupid not to.” The ensemble o…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00PMSaturday, February 22, 2014
RECOMMENDED To add to Chicago’s celebration of Black History Month, Porchlight Music Theatre sends a jazz-jolt to Chicago’s February theater scene with a musically rousing, historically …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMThursday, February 20, 2014
By Hugh Iglarsh The paradox of theater is that it is the most ephemeral of arts, yet the most closely tied to history and memory. Born of the desire to honor the gods and heroes, theater con…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMWednesday, February 19, 2014
Like “Tribes,” which recently closed at Steppenwolf, this production centers around a tight-knit family whose precariously balanced levels of love and annoyance with each other are throw…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:00PMTuesday, February 18, 2014
RECOMMENDED Insufferable people working unenviable positions for an inexcusable tyrant, the characters in “Assistance” are close cousins to put-upon office workers nationwide. In…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMMonday, February 17, 2014
One of the earliest educational video games—“The Oregon Trail”—crosses paths with one the earliest forms of entertainment—nearly naked ladies shaking it—in Gorilla Tango Burlesqu…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00PMRECOMMENDED The circus has come to Evanston. Actually, it never left; The Actors Gymnasium has been teaching the circus arts in Evanston for almost twenty years. Their latest endeavor, “…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PMRECOMMENDED Walking through the cinderblock, cement and steel pipes of the parking structure and into the stark modern lobby of The Harris Theater at Millennium Park, I couldn’t help but b…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMSaturday, February 15, 2014
RECOMMENDED This production of “Gypsy,” now at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, begins gorgeously before the first note, at the silent sight of the ornate gilded frame of a stage th…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:00AMRECOMMENDED Billed as a play “told in a sitcom format” and split into four episodes/acts, “4PLAY sex in a series” thwarts formal expectations more than most sitcoms. The action, dial…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMFriday, February 14, 2014
RECOMMENDED I would never wish ill upon great women of history Joan of Arc, Amelia Earhart and America’s beloved Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Nonetheless, I am glad they all died so I c…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PM 
