In Nilo Cruz' Pulitzer Prize-winning 2003 play, cigars symbolize all kinds of things, from capitalist commodity to an older, slower lifestyle to religious burnt offering, like smoke through …
Joffrey Ballet's magnificent revival, an adaptation of Tolstoy's vast novel of illicit love among the nobility of Czarist Russia, captures the book's tragic, inexorable power.
A set of nine love-themed comic vignettes presented in time for Hallmark's and Fannie May's favorite holiday, Valentine's Day.
Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party" suggests that what we think of as the habits of ordinary life are often a kind of smokescreen designed to block awareness of underlying arrangements and …
Four couples have gathered together for a weekend retreat designed to strengthen their marriages and reset their moral and spiritual compasses, under the soothing, cliché-laden guidance of …
Ray Cooney's 1987 British farce, offers unredeemed silliness of the slamming-door and double-take variety. More of a live-action cartoon than a play, it will appeal mainly to those who favor…
"Trouble" is a backstage work set during the rehearsal period for a new and controversial race-themed play, written by a white man, that's set to open on Broadway.
The show affords a fine introduction to what The Conspirators call "The Style," the group's robotically jerky, audience-facing, hyperbolic acting method that stirs together Chinese opera, Ge…
As depicted in "The Locusts," life in Vero Beach, Florida is so nasty and brutish that it almost seems a not-totally-bad thing that it's short, too, at least for the victims of the serial ki…
These fables do manage to teach some important morals.
"Alma" sensitively weaves together the personal and political in this tale of an immigrant single mother originally from Mexico and her rebellious U.S.-born teenage daughter.
Under Terry McCabe's crisp direction, this 1925 play comes saucily to life, its portrayal of showbiz self-absorption and social insensitivity as fresh and stinging as an Oscar-night slap.
Well cast and imaginatively staged by adapter/director Kevin Theis, Oak Park Theatre Festival's telling of "The Winter's Tale" is a consistently engaging and occasionally enthralling way to …
"Antigone" is perhaps the oldest depiction we have of civil disobedience, focusing on the tension between the state and the individual conscience.
A real minefield of a drama, focusing on how the macro issues of race, class and gender affect the micro world of workplace relationships.
"Both [ballets] are trying to deal with a particular time: One by healing with the beauty of dance, the other by trying to create empathy for beaten-down humanity. Right now, we're facing so…
The drama takes place over a non-sequential series of Passovers, beginning in 2019 Los Angeles, as three generations of a Sephardic Jewish clan come together.
Featuring a bravura performance by Jim Ortlieb, this show is all about getting reacquainted with the joys, stresses and sheer sensation of real life after a too-long hibernation.
"Solaris" takes us on a mind-bending philosophical and spiritual journey, probing into the nature of reality and identity.
The play focuses on Anthony and Rosemary, forty-ish neighbors whose farms and personal histories are deeply enmeshed.
As with the epic tales of the ancient world, the characters' stories blend together into one complex, interrelated narrative that gives insight into the past and offers moral and practical g…
Joffrey Ballet performs a miracle, turning this holiday chestnut into something not just fresh and new, but also relevant and provocative.
The story revolves around Kit, a loyal young daughter struggling to pay off the debts of her father, who as the play opens is languishing in a debtors prison.
The Joffrey Ballet's triumphal return to live performance is a multi-sensory delight that serves as a joyful homecoming for a crown jewel of Chicago's cultural scene.