Monday, September 14, 2015
RECOMMENDED Exploring classic works by revisiting them in new forms can be exceptionally enlightening, and this is especially true with The House Theatre’s newest offering, “The Revel.�…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:45PMThursday, September 10, 2015
RECOMMENDED The premise of “The Producers” is based on a truth of theater production that is stretched to absurdity. It’s very easy to lose money when producing plays. Many investors i…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:40PMWednesday, September 9, 2015
In the world of Chicago theater, it is customary to do a few previews before opening to the public, the critics and the JEFF Committee. Doing so allows a play to get on its feet and to be a …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMWednesday, September 2, 2015
In music, an interval is the space between two notes. For various reasons certain intervals inspire pleasant emotions, positive reactions. Other intervals are more apt to be heard as conflic…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:45AMTuesday, September 1, 2015
Nicky Silver’s scripts are always a little bit absurd, focused on the dynamics of close personal relationships and absolutely brilliant. Over the past couple of years, AstonRep Theatre Com…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMThere is a generation of theatrical composers who have now been raised on the sounds of “Rent.” And not unlike those young playwrights who have for years been trying to emulate David Mam…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:00PMSunday, August 30, 2015
Nikolai Gogol wrote a short story entitled “The Overcoat” in the mid-nineteenth century about a Russian bureaucrat whose cloak is ratty and in need of replacement if his career i…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:30AMSunday, August 23, 2015
RECOMMENDED Aliens and hillbillies in a musical together. That’s what you get when you go to see “It Came from Kentucky” at The Annoyance Theatre. Initially, you might think that this …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:00PMSaturday, August 22, 2015
RECOMMENDED Harold Pinter’s plays often seem longer than they are thanks to the fact that he intentionally calls for prolonged pauses and silences within his scripts. Because of this, thos…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:45AMWednesday, August 19, 2015
Back in my college days, I attended a sizable number of history and political science lectures as a Theatre and Poli-sci double major. I would have been thrilled if any of those lectures had…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:15PMSunday, July 26, 2015
RECOMMENDED With four mismatched chairs on the stage of Rivendell Theatre’s cramped Edgewater space, Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell’s “[title of show]” is set within environs which contr…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMWednesday, July 15, 2015
RECOMMENDED You know what “Men of Soul” is? It’s a whole lot of fun. The newly put together musical revue of hits from the sixties through the early nineties is an evening’s worth of…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:00AMThursday, July 2, 2015
RECOMMENDED There is something magical about sitting in an audience and witnessing the moment that a piece of theater officially becomes dated. Despite being twenty years old, Guillermo Reye…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMTuesday, June 23, 2015
As the lights come up on the first scene of “Black River Falls,” a refreshing bit of father-son banter places us firmly in 1978. Dad (Matt Rieger) sits on the couch watching football as …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMMonday, June 22, 2015
There could be many reasons to entitle a play “A Work of Art,” but by doing so the author is either telling you that the play is about a piece of art, whether real or figurative, or the …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:00AMEarly in their studies, young actors often run into what are called A/B Scenes or contentless scenes. These are back-and-forth bits of dialogue that leave everything so undefined that the wo…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:35AMTuesday, June 9, 2015
Light Opera Works has launched it’s thirty-fifth season with a musical that has a great deal of staying power of its own. “The Fantasticks” has the honor of being the longe…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:15AMWednesday, May 13, 2015
RECOMMENDED Beth Henley’s modern classic “Crimes of the Heart” won a Pulitzer Prize and is a perennial favorite at theaters across the country. So, the final show of Step Up Production…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:30PMRECOMMENDED Donny Hathaway is one of the many popular musical geniuses who died too young. His voice was smooth and soulful, and his career was headed upward when he took his own life in 197…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:45PMFriday, May 8, 2015
Chicago, as you may be aware, is the center of the universe when it comes to improvised sketch comedy. Stages are filled nightly by young comedians who are trying really hard to break into t…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMWednesday, May 6, 2015
RECOMMENDED The music of Johnny Cash has a unique sound that elevates it past the rest of the country genre. Even those of us who aren’t terribly familiar with other country songs will kno…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PMSaturday, May 2, 2015
RECOMMENDED If Neil Simon had written “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” about musicians, rather than television writers, the likely result would have resembled Warren Leight’s “Side Man.�…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMWednesday, April 29, 2015
RECOMMENDED Richard Kalinoski’s play “Beast on the Moon” has won awards all over the world, and in Raven Theatre’s current production directed by Michael Menendian, one can easily se…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMMonday, April 27, 2015
The publicity materials and preview articles written about Polarity Ensemble Theatre’s world-premiere production of “Anna in the Afterlife” admit that the play is a therapy exercise fo…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:00AMFriday, April 24, 2015
RECOMMENDED Oscar Wilde is generally acknowledged as one of the most skillful wits to have written in the English language. His plays are filled with wicked jibes at the expense of British s…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00AMTuesday, April 7, 2015
RECOMMENDED In this day and age, people are often defined publicly by what they put forth through electronic means of communication. Mickle Maher’s play “Song About Himself” is an expl…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMSunday, March 29, 2015
RECOMMENDED I truly wonder what would prompt a director to choose David Hirson’s “La Bête” as his or her next project to tackle. It is a play in the style of Moliere, with…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMTuesday, March 24, 2015
RECOMMENDED John Patrick Shanley’s newest play is the tale of Anthony Reilly, a man who believes himself to have no value to anyone else, a man who has dedicated his life to a farm that hi…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 06:00PM 
