Friday, 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 07:00PMWednesday, February 12, 2014
With a current Lyric Opera season so overstuffed with Italian warhorses, there is always the hope that when a company drags out the same works again and again, that something, anything, will…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:00PMRECOMMENDED It has been more than a century since J. M. Synge’s dark comedy “Playboy of the Western World” first debuted in Dublin at the Abbey Theatre. To say that opening night did n…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMTuesday, February 11, 2014
A casual setting and an enthusiastic pair of hosts don’t quite add up to what “Option Up!” is striving for, but it’s early going and there’s much promise in this new monthl…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMRECOMMENDED Before this hour of booze-soaked sketch comedy even starts, the audience spends plenty of time drinking in the lobby. And again in their seats after the house opens. And don’t …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:00PMSunday, February 9, 2014
RECOMMENDED Sitting in the cramped, cold, charmingly tatty Angel Island theater space, it is not hard to enter into the nineteenth-century world of Raskolnikov, protagonist of Dostoevsky’s…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMFriday, February 7, 2014
RECOMMENDED It’s late on a blustery winter night in Wrigleyville and aside from a few mounds of icy snow the streets are mostly empty. But inside the iO Theater there’s a line that bunch…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:30PMThursday, February 6, 2014
By Robert Eric Shoemaker A relatively new phenomenon, Chicago Theatre Week is the opportunity for both the diehard fan and the average Joe to explore and enjoy the variety of theater that Ch…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMTuesday, February 4, 2014
RECOMMENDED A visit to Theatre Momentum’s website describes their current production as “an improvised one-act play set in a single location.” As promised, the show consists of one con…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:00AMSaturday, February 1, 2014
RECOMMENDED The Court Theatre has again chosen a production suitable to its environment. “Seven Guitars,” by August Wilson, is set in 1948 in the Hill District of Pittsburgh (where all b…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMWednesday, January 29, 2014
RECOMMENDED Written by German playwright Ewald Palmetshofer (and translated beautifully by Neil Blackadder for this English-language world premiere) “hamlet is dead. no gravity” is a d…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMTuesday, January 28, 2014
RECOMMENDED Surprise! Director William Osetek has re-imagined Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein”—a musical based on the 1974 film starring the unconquerable Gene Wilder that wa…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PMTiny desks are scattered across the elementary school classroom at the center of “Gidion’s Knot.” And while scenic designer Katie-Bell Springmann has adorned the room with brightly col…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMMonday, January 27, 2014
RECOMMENDED The best twists in a story are not those that reveal some new and unexpected turn of events but those that reveal something new and unexpected about a character. Something that m…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00PMSunday, January 26, 2014
Poor Tom Jones: over-sexed and in love. Tom has been that way since first being introduced to the public by Henry Fielding in 1749. Since then “Tom Jones,” perhaps the world’s firs…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:30AMRECOMMENDED A production that aims to be gripping and unsettling from the start, Victory Gardens’ staging of “The Golden Dragon” grows more successful with every scene. However that’…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:00AMTuesday, January 21, 2014
RECOMMENDED Legendary director Elia Kazan once said of Tennessee Williams “Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life.” This insight proves pres…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:00AMMonday, January 20, 2014
Hollywood awards season is in full swing, and any theatergoer looking for a little extra Tinsel Town fix will find some old school glamour in MadKap Productions’ “Mr. Shaw Goes to Hollyw…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:00AMSunday, January 19, 2014
RECOMMENDED I have a near-weakness for Mandrakes. I’m astonished the original four-color superhero was based on an actual magician named Mandrake; the first Linux distribution I ever tried…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PMFriday, January 17, 2014
RECOMMENDED For all of its Goth and grandeur, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” is at its heart a “Beauty and the Beast” love story unspooled in unabashedly Romantic…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PMTuesday, January 14, 2014
RECOMMENDED After watching this smart and entertaining production of “Sweet Smell of Success,” it was a surprise to learn that the Marvin Hamlisch-penned musical (adapted from the classi…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PM“No one saves anyone!” one character adamantly declares to another early on in playwright Zinnie Harris’ parable-cum-family drama that takes place on the side of the tracks (or in this…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMWednesday, January 8, 2014
By Michael Mellini A single sinner navigating heaven’s dating scene, video tributes to Janet Jackson’s greatest hits, a fundraiser to crush Chicago’s rising murder rate, a frazzled Mar…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMMonday, January 6, 2014
By Robert Eric Shoemaker The release reads, “First of its kind in the U.S., the 2014 Chicago Contemporary Circus Festival brings shows from around the world together January 6th through 12…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMFriday, December 20, 2013
As numerous denizens of a nearby municipality aver, the titular Innsmouth is indeed a “queer sort of town.” As imagined by horror luminary H.P. Lovecraft, its secrets, when finally revea…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:00AMSunday, December 15, 2013
In a fractious family that consists of a boorish father (Francis Guinan, on a roll) and a sweet but shrill mother (an endearingly neurotic Molly Regan) who are both writers, a pretentious an…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PMRECOMMENDED There are few stories as universally beloved as Antoine de St. Exupéry’s 1943 tale of a pilot who crash-lands in the Sahara Desert and meets a mysterious little prince from an…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:00PMSaturday, December 14, 2013
There is a grim and calculating excess at the heart of Barbara Gaines’ version of “Merry Wives of Windsor,” overwhelming the music of the playwright’s words and leaving in its place …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMFriday, December 13, 2013
RECOMMENDED In Vienna, and all over the world, the New Year rings in with productions of Johann Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus.” How appropriate, then, that Lyric Opera is reviving this most…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:00PMWednesday, December 11, 2013
RECOMMENDED Everybody has a favorite rap song. Currently, mine is “Holy Grail.” I know it is a bit overplayed, but man can that Jay-Z rap. I also like Chicago Shakespeare Theater, which …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMTuesday, December 10, 2013
There’s no sleeping in heavenly peace over at Studio BE where the New Millennium Theatre Company’s Christmas zombie comedy “Silent Night of the Living Dead” is attempting to offer up…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AM 
