Thursday, March 30, 2023
Originally developed by the Philadelphia-based Pig Iron Theatre Company in 2015, this queer adventure drag alt-comedy feels both like a natural fit for Hell in a Handbag Productions and a re…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:23PMWednesday, February 22, 2023
Ask any middle-aged person about their first romantic breakup, and there’s a good chance they’ll laugh. Ask about their first friend breakup, on the other hand: no laughter. Director Eri…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 01:30PMFriday, January 27, 2023
Like many of the American musical theater greats, Cabaret is one of those shows that can suffer from style-creep, wherein an unwritten but generally agreed-upon aesthetic tradition grows int…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 11:00AMWednesday, December 7, 2022
There are two Christmas pantomimes based upon 19th-century fables currently playing on Chicago stages, and unless Mary Zimmerman has been up to some dramatic retooling, it’s safe to assume…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 12:19PMWednesday, November 30, 2022
Frank Capra’s 1946 Christmas classic film is packed frame-by-frame with small moments of storytelling perfection, and as I get older, there’s one that just guts me like a fish. Exhausted…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 01:34PMThursday, November 3, 2022
The surrealist, sometimes anarchic style of British playwright Caryl Churchill’s prose invites a lot of directorial interpretation and creativity from the theater artists who’ve been dra…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 04:58PMFriday, September 16, 2022
Comedian, author, and volunteer ambulance driver Chris Gethard may be a fully Boylan-blooded New Jerseyan, but he’s not shy about the extent to which his improv and stand-up DNA has […]
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SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 10:40AMWednesday, August 24, 2022
Organizational consulting is like a cube of lard: it looks like a sweet bite of white chocolate but sits heavy in the stomach. Stupid people are to be avoided, like […]
The post Sci-fi hea…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 02:12PMWednesday, August 10, 2022
In the 20 years since Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis’s gently irreverent and thoroughly catchy musical premiered, it’s become such a beloved staple among professional and amateur companies…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 03:54PMThursday, June 30, 2022
There are a lot of substantive and weighty criticisms to be levied at the RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise and its global juggernaut influence over drag culture. Then there are petty ones, lik…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 09:18AMTuesday, May 24, 2022
A good play, suggests Tony Kushner in his 1995 anthology Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue, “should be overstuffed.” Memorably comparing well-constructed theater to lasa…
SOURCE: chicagoreader.com at 02:46PMTuesday, March 17, 2020
A solo show about the man behind Bull Moose stands alone.
By the time I had the opportunity to see Derek Evans’s 75-minute solo biographical lecture enactment,…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:45PMTuesday, March 3, 2020
Elaine Carlson delivers a biting title performance for Promethean Theatre.
To get an idea of just how convoluted the legal and moral attitudes toward sex work ar…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:05PMTuesday, February 25, 2020
A woman chemist helps wives dispatch their plutocratic husbands.
In 2013, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Deborah Blum wrote an article for Wired magazine titl…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:30PMWednesday, January 29, 2020
MPAACT's campus drama pushes some hot buttons, but casts an ugly pall.
Playwright and MPAACT founding member Shepsu Aakhu was inspired to write this campus sexua…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:15PMThursday, January 23, 2020
Political prisoners swallow their pride (and maybe some poison) in Rivendell's world premiere.
The gulags in Meghan Brown's world-premiere dystopian fable, The T…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:50PMA brutal homophobic assault tests the love between two women in Diana Son's drama.
To be queer and in love in a 90s play is a pitiable fate. At best, characters …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 12:25PMWednesday, January 22, 2020
Call him “bone dry” if you must, but don't call him “alt.”
The laid-back, unassuming, eminently cool aesthetic of Pilsen's Thalia Hall is such a harmonio…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:50PMTuesday, December 17, 2019
Blank Theatre Company shows off some chops in this Rupert Holmes musical.
One of the easier riddles to solve in Rupert Holmes's 1985 musical comedy is why so few…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:40PMTuesday, December 10, 2019
The unconventional family structures of 19th-century mining camps widen the lens for LGBTQ history.
Neither Tom Selleck nor Steve Guttenberg nor Ted Danson have …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 06:00PMTuesday, November 12, 2019
Scott Bradley's solo show for About Face creates an important document of queer life.
Living out and proud in a coastal queer mecca full of historic gayborhoods,…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:50PMWednesday, November 6, 2019
The songs are strong, but the story needs work in this new musical about depression.
In David Gosz and Leo Fotos's clinically subtitled new show, Tru: A Musical …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 01:00PMTuesday, October 29, 2019
Part hangout, part celebration, part theater of the mind, live podcast recordings are a performance medium all their own.
Sometime next month, Action Boyz podca…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 04:15PMWednesday, October 16, 2019
A ghost-town saloon sets the stage for this zombie-spaghetti western hybrid.
Open up any horror auteur's toolbox, and you'll likely see some recurring devices: t…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, October 9, 2019
Hell in a Handbag's spoof of Mrs. Garrett and 21 Jump Street is far from a drag.
As luck would have it, the most expedient way to describe vanguard camp comic an…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, September 25, 2019
Mixing the Bard up with the Gunpowder Plot doesn't help Bill Cain's play ignite dramatically.
The setup to Bill Cain's revisionist Shakespearean fairy tale is th…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, September 18, 2019
Lifeline's revival of this 2002 Dorothy Sayers adaptation could use more breathing room to fully come alive.
Lifeline Theatre's stage has been something of a hom…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, August 14, 2019
The snake-haired Gorgon gets a narrative makeover in this touring devised piece.
Despite sporting the most recognizable hairdo in all of literature, general know…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, August 7, 2019
The sight gags score, but the music falls short in this spoof/homage of the Wachowskis’ sci-fi classic.
Ready to feel old? The Matrix—a movie that, upon its …
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMWednesday, July 24, 2019
A comedian requests a roast in lieu of a wake in Harry Wood’s debut play.
In lieu of a traditional funeral service, a young comedian asks for a livestreamed, n…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 07:00AMTuesday, June 4, 2019
When Joan Jett Blakk told us to lick Bush in '92
Neon shades of violet—not rainbows—radiate from Tarell Alvin McCraney and Tina Landau's world-premiere docu-…
SOURCE: www.chicagoreader.com at 05:00PM 
