Before HBO's harrowing prison drama "Oz" and before "The Shawshank Redemption," there was Tennessee Williams' "Not About Nightingales." Well, sort of. Though written in 1938 for the Group Th…
In 2011, a group of 18 high school girls " many of them cheerleaders " in the New York town of Le Roy began exhibiting strange vocal and physical tics. The phenomenon unleashed a storm of me…
When someone has been stuck in the shadows of history, the light that finally shines on her accomplishments seems all the brighter " even if it bends and refracts through the lens of artisti…
A businessman with a crude way of talking and an outsize " but easily bruised " ego arrives in Washington, convinced he can bully and buy his way into getting what he wants. Which is more mo…
He's petulant and greedy, surrounded by thugs who take out enemies real and perceived at the drop of a hat. He mouths populist bromides while engaging in the worst excesses of corruption and…
A vague whiff of a John Hughes movie hangs in the air over Sarah Sander's "Sycamore," in which three disaffected suburban teens attempt to figure out how to claim their identity without caus…
What's in a name? That which we call a rose is just as bittersweet in miniature form. And so it is with Chicago Shakespeare's "Short Shakespeare! Romeo and Juliet," now dashing through the s…
The ghosts of Abu Ghraib haunt the world of Paul Pasulka's "Skin for Skin," while suggesting that the recent shameful past can only be read as prologue to our present times. It's a story wor…
When you're basing a show around the Nicholas Brothers, who created what Fred Astaire called the greatest dance sequence ever filmed " well, brother, those are some big tap shoes to fill. (A…
The narrative terrain in Irish playwright Marina Carr's work bursts with ghosts. But we're far away from, say, Conor McPherson's "The Weir," where a newly arrived transplant from Dublin find…
If one seeks a personalized metaphor for the tortured morality of being a Western superpower, look no further than conflict photographers. They run around war zones " many of those places ei…
The women's marches held in protest of Donald Trump's inauguration last month threw already-fraught issues of gender discrimination into high profile. Away from the pink hats, three plays on…
Many years ago, John Gray " author of the help-yourself-in-relationships guide "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" " appeared on Bill Maher's old "Politically Incorrect" program. Fello…
The white working class has been endlessly anatomized and scrutinized in pundits' think pieces since the presidential election, in which its support for Donald Trump was attributed as key to…
Nicole Hollander's "Sylvia" comic introduced us to "The Woman Who Does Everything More Beautifully Than You." That captures Julie Bascov, the hostess at two very different Christmas dinners …
"The country is all, sir. The king is not." That line in David Rice's adaptation of "Captain Blood," now in a world premiere at First Folio Theatre, scored a direct hit on a night when airpo…
"Being Scared Since 2016 Is Privilege." That observation, emblazoned on a sign in the Boston incarnation of the global women's marches on Jan. 21, carries some provocative weight in Shepsu A…
We are such stuff as dreams are made on. So, we better pick the right dreams " and fight like hell for them. That's pretty much the message underlying Sean Kelly's "Psychonaut Librarians," n…
Norma Desmond is (sort of) alive and definitely unwell. She's just going by the name "Phedre," and her address is Cortland Avenue, not Sunset Boulevard. Or so one might surmise from Nicole W…
The old '60s saw, "Never trust anyone over 30," worked off the assumption that people (and perhaps by extension, institutions) grow more conservative as they age. But in the case of Pegasus …
Sketch comedy holds a mirror up to human nature as much as Shakespeare does. It just happens to be a funhouse mirror. And as Steve Martin told us years ago, "Comedy is not pretty." In 2016, …
In a "best of times/worst of times" year (and really " every year feels that way to somebody, somewhere), Chicago's theater offerings continued to provide a cultural balm for troubled times.…
Ebenezer Scrooge isn't the only one haunted at the holidays. All the lights and tinsel can't quite hide that for many, this is a time for bittersweet personal reflections, poignant bursts of…
Amid the sugarplums and good cheer, dyspeptic holiday-themed diversions also abound this time of year. For the third year in a row, the Goodman Theatre gets into the anti-holiday show act wi…
True to holiday cabaret tradition, Chicago actor and singer Christine Bunuan fills her solo-show stocking with songs ranging from naughty to nice, sardonic to sentimental. But what Bunuan al…