Friday, September 21, 2018
One fundamental problem faced by America’s oldest Equity actor — that would be the 94-year-old Mike Nussbaum — is that directors keep casting him in age-appropriate roles. Such is his …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 09:00PMOn CNN Monday, the remarkable Spanish-American chef Jose Andres was interviewed while feeding tens of thousands of the victims of Hurricane Florence in both Wilmington and Raleigh, North Car…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, September 20, 2018
Tracy Letts is to star alongside Annette Bening in a spring Roundabout Theatre revival of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons.” The revival of the moralistic 1947 family drama, set in small-town …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PMWednesday, September 19, 2018
Thanks mostly to Chicago’s culture czar, Mark Kelly, and the genuine enthusiasm of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, 2019 has been designated the Year of Chicago Theatre by the city of Chicago. Before I…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:00AMMonday, September 17, 2018
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is to make it official on Monday: 2019 is to be the Year of Chicago Theatre. A citywide initiative dreamed up and spearheaded by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Spe…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00AMSunday, September 16, 2018
Here’s a challenge for the growing slate of mayoral candidates in Chicago: How will you ensure that ordinary Chicagoans hear international perspectives on the many troubling issues faced b…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:40PMFriday, September 14, 2018
Tragedy is commonly equated with sadness. But it’s really all about chaos. To quote the great songwriter William Finn: “Life is random and unfair, life is pandemonium.” Be they Greek, …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 10:50AMThursday, September 13, 2018
Without “Little Shop of Horrors,” we wouldn’t have Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” or “Aladdin.” That’s because the spoof 1982 off-Broadway musica…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:00PMThose we see every day usually know us best. In the case of Charity Hope Valentine — the Candide of the dance hall — that means her colleagues, the ones who get right to the point while …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 12:50PMSeated in a corner of the Petterino’s restaurant in the Loop, Brian Dennehy was hopping mad. The objects of Dennehy’s rage — this was in 2004 — were the critics of the American theat…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMWednesday, September 12, 2018
Revitalizing a cavernous, historic space in the Loop that has been hidden from full view for decades, the West Coast entertainment company Teatro ZinZanni is to set up long-term shop on the …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:50PMTuesday, September 11, 2018
In its 17-year history — and, for the record, I’ve seen every show — the courageous House Theatre of Chicago has trafficked almost entirely in new work, often with an emphasis on quest…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:40PMIn 2015 — when the absurdly reductive short-form listicle became the Hail Mary of flagging entertainment journalism — a prominent New York weekly decided to ask a group of actors, and on…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:30PMMonday, September 10, 2018
Hey, let’s do Fyodor Dostoyevsky this sunny September! Two hours and 40 minutes of “Crime and Punishment”! One room! No star names! Not much of a set but lots of atmosphere and acting!…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:50PMSunday, September 9, 2018
I often wish August Wilson would come back to life to help us all make sense of our riven America. I walked into the Court Theatre on Saturday night just hours after watching the Serena Will…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:15PMFriday, September 7, 2018
There’s a new work from Bruce Norris likely to prove incendiary. Performance artist David Cale stages a piece drawn from his own family history. It’s another day at the office for the 94…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:55AMTo be an actress is to be cursed with people asking you which role you would most like to play. This common experience is not to be confused with people offering you the chance actually to p…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, September 6, 2018
Most anyone who ever has been a teaching artist in an under-resourced urban school will tell you much the same thing. On rough days, the job feels like an exercise in impotence, given how th…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 04:25PMWednesday, September 5, 2018
It’s fall showtime! Before we offer up our seasonal deluge of made-in-Chicago attractions, let’s take a look at what is headed our way from Broadway — or, at least, is making that clai…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMTuesday, September 4, 2018
Rahm Emanuel was elected mayor of Chicago on Feb, 22, 2011. Four days later, he showed up at a neighborhood theater. His appearance made national headlines; the attendant publicity helped ma…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:55PMThey’ve impressed us at TimeLine. Knocked us out at Victory Gardens. Made us chortle at Second City. Blown us away at the Lookingglass. They’re a diverse crew but they all are into truth…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 02:10PMFriday, August 31, 2018
Fifty years ago, the political activist and anarchist Abbie Hoffman, a co-founder of the Yippies, was arrested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Along with other members…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMThursday, August 30, 2018
A neglected play from the 1980s that truly is much richer than I, for one, had ever realized, Barbara Lebow’s “A Shayna Maidel” is, on its face, the single-set story of the reconciliat…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:30PMWednesday, August 29, 2018
After a whopping 15 years in “The Lion King” — yes, you read that right — the song-and-dance man Kenny Ingram is back in town, playing Big Daddy Brubeck in “Sweet Charity” at the…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMTuesday, August 28, 2018
In a turnaround from recent history, Chicago’s Goodman Theatre dominated the 2018 Equity Joseph Jefferson Award nominations, with multiple nods for its widely acclaimed productions of Suza…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 01:00AMMonday, August 27, 2018
How did my parents arrive at the moment of my birth? Some of us seek and find the answer to that question as small children. The rest of us, especially if our folks’ trajectories through l…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMSunday, August 26, 2018
A one-man laugh factory known for one-liners delivered through the romantic gauze of memory, and one of the last human connections to the golden age of American comedy, the playwright Neil S…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:30PMThursday, August 23, 2018
In October, Elaine May will appear on Broadway in a revival of Kenneth Lonergan's "The Waverly Gallery," a play about an elderly gallery owner in Greenwich Village. The 86-year-old May — h…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 03:40PMWednesday, August 22, 2018
If you have stared at the roof of a Chicago taxicab over the last few days, you may have been surprised by what you saw: An actual advertisement for the Chicago production of "Hamilton." Unt…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 08:00AMTuesday, August 21, 2018
In 1966, Mike Nichols wrote an article in Life magazine. "We had a theater in Chicago in a former Chinese restaurant," he wrote. "One day, a young girl wandered in — because she lived on t…
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 05:15PMFriday, August 17, 2018
Restaurant criticism is different from other forms of cultural reviewing. For one thing, we all have to eat every day. For another, we have an inevitably intimate relationship with anything …
Linked From Chicago Tribune Subscription at 07:00AM 
