Thursday, October 15, 2015
RECOMMENDED The final installment of Khecari’s five-year performance cycle takes place this fall and brings us back to the five-by-eight-foot pit that was the set for last year’…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:12AMWednesday, October 14, 2015
“Unspeakable” by James Murray Jackson, Jr. can be summed up in one word: inexplicable. Sure, the play is loosely based on the life story of Richard Pryor. Sure, Jackson’s portrayal of …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:45PMNewcomer Kelly Anderson follows up her Chicago dance theater debut “Message Me If…” with another evening-length show at Links Hall, this time inspired not by the trials and…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:03AMMonday, October 12, 2015
Depression is a difficult thing to bring to the stage. Not only is it a topic that is wrapped in denial and stigma, it is also deeply internal, and therefore difficult to embody in an outwar…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:55PMMy favorite part of Sherlock Holmes’ stories is always when, after Holmes relays a long list of facts about an individual’s life, he breaks down how he gleaned each and every fact from t…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:35PMRECOMMENDED Hubbard Street dedicates their entire fall program to the great William Forsythe, reviving “Quintett,” sinking their chops into all-male quartet “N.N.N.N.̶…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:15AMSunday, October 11, 2015
RECOMMENDED Among the many wonders presented by magicians David Parr and Joe Diamond, the most impressive trick the night I attended was pretty much filling up the house on Wednesday evening…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:40AMSaturday, October 10, 2015
The last time that actress Katherine Keberlein and director Max Truax collaborated together, the result was Oracle’s Jeff-Award winning production of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Mother,” w…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:00PMRECOMMENDED America is known as the Great Melting Pot. It’s a place where people come to have a better life, dream big dreams and do what they can to help them come true. However, it also …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:52PMRECOMMENDED The Savoyaires celebrated their fiftieth anniversary last year. They’ve been doing Gilbert & Sullivan operettas for a long time, and that half century of practice has ensur…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:20PMWhen I attend a sketch comedy show, I want to walk away having enjoyed myself. I also want to be able to tell people about the sketches that I just saw. You know, in that same sort of way th…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 12:11PMRECOMMENDED The Dead Writers Theatre Collective focuses on presenting classic pieces in the style and ethos of the period in which they were first produced, and they do so with great verve a…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:45AMFriday, October 9, 2015
RECOMMENDED As far as voyeurism is concerned, theater tops film hands down. The former’s brutal pleasure lies in the squirm-inducing feeling that not only is what you’re witnessing inesc…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 04:00PMRECOMMENDED Loneliness, at its worst, clamps down, feeling like a black box from which there is no escape. The claustrophobia of loneliness can sometimes feel so inescapable that dying of it…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:30PMRECOMMENDED John Neumeier’s reimagining of “Sylvia” blesses the stage with images not often seen in story ballet: those of powerful, independent women en pointe. According …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:09AMRECOMMENDED To be a teenager is to be a creature of extremity. Not only your body but your emotions and ideas and opinions are expanding with the rush and fury of a newborn universe—your o…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:45AMWednesday, October 7, 2015
“Well, it’s a relief to finally see something cheerful,” Gwen said, as they exited out to the street. “Yeah,” said Eleanor. “Though it ended weirdly with the traditional gender r…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:59PMBy Kevin Greene Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel “Treasure Island” is so ubiquitous in the sphere of popular culture that it’s possible to feel as though you’ve read it without ever …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:29AMTuesday, October 6, 2015
Last Sunday’s afternoon matinee of Gioachino Rossini’s “Cinderella” (“La Cenerentola”) at the Lyric Opera set me musing. Why would Lyric director Anthony Freud schedule a romanti…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:30PMRECOMMENDED Twenty-five years after it first premiered at the Goodman, Scott McPherson’s “Marvin’s Room” is still relevant because people are still dying—slowly, painfully, draggin…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:32AMMonday, October 5, 2015
RECOMMENDED The strings that tie mothers to daughters are knotted, twisted and forever looping. Severing those strings is an impossible feat, though many spend their lives trying. Untangling…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMWith a title like “The Black White Love Play,” it’s not surprising that a song entitled “No Matter What Race” is featured, gets a reprise, and also gets sung during the bows. What …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:30PMHoneybees throughout the world are disappearing. Entire hives lose their populations almost instantly, and beekeepers’ careers, not to mention our food supply, are threatened. Seemingly, p…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:45AMSunday, October 4, 2015
Sensuous excess comes to life in Christina Rossetti’s 1862 poem “Goblin Market,” with proliferation of rhymes, synonyms, luscious lists of fruits and “figs to fill your mouth.” It�…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 08:15PMSaturday, October 3, 2015
RECOMMENDED This little operetta dinghy overcame modest box office and, proving the critics right for once, sailed away with the 2014 Tony Award for Best Musical. No small feat in an era whe…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 09:30AMFriday, October 2, 2015
RECOMMENDED Cantastoria is not a terribly familiar theatrical form, but it is a legitimate one, and one that is appropriately suited to bringing the poetry of Charles Baudelaire to those of …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 02:35PMWednesday, September 30, 2015
RECOMMENDED Willy Russell, playwright of “Educating Rita” and “Shirley Valentine,” wrote the book, music and lyrics for the folk cantata “Blood Brothers,” which ran for twenty-fo…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 01:45PMRECOMMENDED Horror is a mighty genre, stealing you away from the present like no other genre can, activating the primal instincts that follow fear and focusing your attentions like a laser o…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 11:15AMFrank Chaves, artistic director of River North Dance Chicago, steps down this December after twenty-three years leading the contemporary jazz company. In 2005 Chaves was diagnosed with syrin…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 10:00AMTuesday, September 29, 2015
RECOMMENDED Remember banker’s boxes? Those white, cardboard, 10″H x 12″W x 15″D storage bins that arrived flattened, to be unfolded and refolded until they took a shape t…
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 05:00PMRECOMMENDED When you review a show, you have to take into account what the producing company is shooting for. “Scream, Queen, Scream!” – three vignettes by playwright David Cerda, …
SOURCE: Newcity Stage at 03:30PM