The Plagiarists current production of “King Ubu” is an updated version of “Ubu Roi,” Alfred Jarry’s revolutionary social satire and the godfather of all ensuing…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:07PMRumor has it that the Irish cast in the original production of Tom Murphy’s booze-drenched, pub-set “Conversations on a Homecoming” consumed real alcohol throughout the course of this …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:50AMThey say the pen is mightier than the sword, but in Babes with Blades Theatre Company’s premiere of Eric Simon’s “Bo Thomas and the Case of the Sky Pirates,” the two …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:16AMOnce in a weird, waning moon, something very strange occurs. It comes on suddenly, like the regurgitation of a warm shot of whiskey, and wreaks tender-footed havoc on those willing to sit th…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:48PMRECOMMENDED An architecturally surreal house is the setting: bedrooms, neon lights, a kitchen. As the center spotlight comes up, a beautiful middle-aged woman, with a hint of fatigue on her …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:20AMRECOMMENDED In his time, Shakespeare’s plays, particularly his comedies, were meant to entertain the masses. These early situational comedies (yes, sitcoms) were borderline interactive, wi…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:46AMFans of Harold Pinter are sure to be interested in Proud Kate Theatre Project’s stripped-down production of “The Dumb Waiter,” currently playing at The Alley Stage in Buena Par…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:30AMRECOMMENDED In August of 1998 Camille Paglia, social critic and dissident feminist, released an essayist’s interpretation of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” that cast the …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:49PMRECOMMENDED You’ll stand the forty-five-minute drive from the city. You’ll stand the insufferable traffic and overpriced tolls. You’ll even stand the thrumming engine roar of a low-fly…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:55AMBy, Joshua C. Robinson Switch Committee—David Schwartzbaum, Ryan Nallen, Alan Linic, Dave Karasik and Collin Dahlgren, best friends and iO Chicago graduates—perform their own version of …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMRECOMMENDED Jason Robert Brown’s well-crafted two-person musical “The Last Five Years” (actually more of a mash-up of two one-person musicals) tells a fairly uncomplicated story of a r…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:04PMThe carefully executed and evocative opening scene, a brilliantly subtle little bait-and-switch, promisingly sets “Invasion!” up to be an ever-shifting piece of all-engaging theater, ask…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMRECOMMENDED Before Rudy Hogenmiller became the artistic director of Light Opera Works in 2005, he had been a song-and-dance man on stage for more than thirty years. One of the shows that Hog…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:00AMRECOMMENDED In the field of Computer Science, when you’re studying algorithms and network connections and artificial intelligence, there are a few actual human names that get committed t…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00AMTaking a pop-culture film phenomenon and transforming it into a new Broadway musical is no easy task, to be sure: the myriads of misfires significantly outweigh the occasional hits. The lat…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:32AMI took an Introduction to Philosophy course in college. One of the few questions posed in that class that still seems interesting to me is the one that playwright Scott T. Barsotti addresses…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:05PMRECOMMENDED There’s a lot to say about A Red Orchid Theatre’s latest production. A lot. But there are three things you need to know up front. They’re all equally important, but you nee…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:33PMRECOMMENDED “Who can solve the mystery of dreams?” demands actor/director Toni Servillo as the increasingly disheartened Alberto Saporito in Piccolo Teatro di Milano’s production of th…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:37PMRECOMMENDED There is a sketch early on in the second act of “A Clown Car Named Desire” that starts out seeming like your standard hipster-mocking (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t en…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:54AM“You’ll have plenty of time to hold her tomorrow. You’ll have the whole rest of your life.” So says brand-new daddy and eager-to-sleep husband Peter (Gabriel Franken) to his excited …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:23PMStewing alone in his cramped, book-filled apartment in New York City, smug yet self-loathing Bob (Richard Cotovsky) has vague plans to write, think and generally just complain during the fin…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:44PMThe pre-show music for Lyric Opera shows don’t typically include selections from Deltron 3030. And you can’t usually order mixed drinks with clever names like The Boozy Baritone or The I…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:48PMRECOMMENDED This weekend I watched “Fast & Furious 6,” alternately gaping, cheering and shaking my head in disbelief at scene after scene of various insane stunts that Dom and his te…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:47AMRECOMMENDED Following six years in the complex relationship between an established writer/professor and her aspiring protégée, Donald Margulies’ “Collected Stories” is a study in men…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:30PMBy Zach Freeman As a twenty-six-year old graduate student studying Shakespeare at Berkeley and working on her dissertation, a frustrated Young Jean Lee, fed up with academia, went to a thera…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00AMRECOMMENDED Look at the Head of Passes on a map and you’re not likely to think of it as a place to set up a bed and breakfast. A no-man’s land of bayous and marshes sticking out into the…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 07:00PMThere’s realism and there’s allegory. And “In A Garden,” playwright and screenwriter Howard Korder’s discourse on beauty, culture and nationalism, falls somewhere in between. Unfor…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:36AMBy Zach Freeman “We’re out on the fringe,” says Jeremy Menekseoglu, artistic director of Dream Theatre Company, sipping a beer in the brightly lit underground area of Sakura Karaoke Lo…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00AMRECOMMENDED “What the hell is Mike Tyson gonna do up here on stage tonight?” This is the thought that Tyson attributes to every member of the audience early on in “Mike Tyson: Undisput…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:24AMRECOMMENDED A suicide is always a tragedy. And in the hands of various interest groups and media outlets, as agendas are pushed and stories are filtered or distorted, a tragedy can become a …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:20PM“Why did the chicken cross the road?” It’s a simple enough question and there are any number of suitable punchlines. But when this trivial setup-line is asked, needled, demanded three …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:45AM