In 2003, director Amanda Dehnert (who now teaches at Northwestern University) staged an infamous production of "Annie" at Rhode Island's Trinity Repertory Company that ended with the titular…
The boutique "Mary Poppins" at the Mercury Theater is stacked with talent. Matthew Crowle, who plays the chimney sweep Bert, warbles a Broadway-level "chim chiminy," and is fully in touch wi…
Dick Wheeler " he prefers to go by his last name " is a heterosexual white male, halfway to an antique. He was once a Chicagoan, a photographer at the Sun-Times, no less, and surely a loyal …
"Every woman has the right to be beautiful," cosmetics titan Elizabeth Arden famously observed, speaking from somewhere behind her elegant Red Door, through which a wealthy-enough woman coul…
In 1986, an energetic playwright, lyricist and director named Howard Ashman and a young composer named Alan Menken had a New York hit with a satirical off-Broadway show called "The Little Sh…
In 1985, the great director Peter Brook staged a theatrical version of the Sanskrit epic known as "The Mahabharata" and often described as the world's longest epic poem. First staged in Fran…
At one point in Tuesday night's "Odysseo" " the tented equestrian extravaganza that variously imports the essence of the steppe of Kazakhstan and the damp of the Naeroyfjord of Norway to tha…
Playwright, actor and Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Tracy Letts has two plays coming to the theater this year: "Linda Vista," which opens this weekend, starring Ian Barford, and then "…
To make a cinephile smile, merely mention "Amelie." Who can recall the French film from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the one in which Audrey Tautou stars as a young woman who overcomes her own enfanc…
When your British farce is so old-school that you'd swear the whole pox of a post-colonial schoolhouse crumbled at least two generations ago, you need a title that helps justify why the pick…
A man " older, African-American, sad " walks into this industrial space. He goes straight to the washroom. A woman " a bit younger, African-American, Sox cap " walks into this sausage factor…
David Schwimmer is as cagey as any celebrity. But he has learned to trust his mother-in-law. Which is why the Lookingglass Theatre of Chicago is staging the American premiere of "Beyond Cari…
Last time I drove by Soldier Field, and stared at the white tent being raised for the horse extravaganza "Odysseo" on the south parking lot of the stadium, my thoughts immediately went to th…
NEW YORK " The white working-class voters who, conventional wisdom has it, put President Donald J. Trump into office are a dinner-party obsession among progressives. There are two prevailing…
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last week, one-third of Americans say they would struggle to raise $2,000 in the event that they were hit with an emergency. That indication…
The Oscar-nominated "Manchester by the Sea" made the point that some things happen from which people cannot really recover. In the case of that film's central character, a Massachusetts jani…
"This production is meant to be felt," said Will Davis, the new artistic director of the American Theater Company, in a lengthy explanatory curtain speech before Wednesday night's opening of…
The Goodman Theatre will open its 2017-18 season with the director Ivo Van Hove's intensely radical West End and Broadway adaptation of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge," the Goodman …
At one point in "Destiny of Desire," the very fun, very self-aware new show by Karen Zacarias at the Goodman Theatre that offers up a live version of a telenovela, it is said from the stage …
I've never seen a show quite like "Circus 1903." Note that the title is not "Cirque 1903." This is not some dreamy, ethereal proscenium entertainment, designed to capitalize on the perennial…
Are the words "truth" and "reconciliation" inherently oppositional? You might well argue so, when the truth involves the recounting of unspeakable suffering on the part of ordinary citizens …
What most often stands in the way of excellence in theater? It's not usually a lack of talent or creativity " if you're having a real career in the merciless performing arts, those qualities…
What is the most popular form of entertainment on the planet? No, it's not the broadcasts of the National Football League or even the World Cup. It's not even Robert Falls' famous production…
Even when uncovering facts that might change the world, great investigative journalists rarely self-dramatize. And if they do, it's likely long after the story is filed, usually accompanied …
This week Broadway has a true rarity: Two sisters from Evanston appearing in leading roles in two separate Broadway musicals. But it's only through Sunday. At the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, Je…