There's a vague sense of dissonance from the beginning in Remy Bumppo's production of "Pygmalion." We know it's set in 1912. But why is there a midcentury radio on, playing pop hits of a lat…
Finding magic in the tragic is a time-honored tradition in children's literature. No one understood that better than J.M. Barrie. Peter Pan represents the triumph of denial over mortality. A…
Ready or not, the holidays are upon us. Whether you need a way to reconnect with friends and family or just a break from the shopping and stress, we've got you covered with theater, dance an…
Like its eponymous sea creature, Jake Jeppson's "Turtle" spent some time treading water. Originally slated for Next Theatre " before that Evanston institution went belly-up two years ago " i…
After Prince died, Chevrolet paid its respects with an ad featuring a vintage red Corvette, above which floated the phrase "Baby, that was much too fast" and "1958-2016." "Speed" is the them…
Charles Johnson's celebrated National Book Award-winning 1990 novel, "Middle Passage," reconfigured classic allegorical stories of 19th-century seafaring life, a la Herman Melville, through …
Made of spit and spirit, cunning and chaos, deliverance and destruction, Kristiana Rae Colon's "Octagon" takes apart the world of slam poetry with bravado and brio. Though at times self-indu…
What's a "Saturn return?" Think of it as Mercury retrograde on steroids. In astrological terms, a Saturn return refers to the ringed planet orbiting back to the exact place in the sky that i…
Though written in 1957, Harold Pinter's "The Room" " his first produced script " might well be the best thing to see to understand the U.K.'s Brexit vote earlier this year. In Dado's staging…
Three years ago, "How We Got On," Idris Goodwin's affectionate portrait of 1980s teenagers learning to rap in the middle of suburbia, got its local premiere in suburbia " Lake Forest's Citad…
Akvavit Theatre's mission " staging contemporary Nordic plays " often takes them far away from the familiar dyspepsia of Ibsen and Strindberg. But their latest offering, Sofia Freden's "Hand…
Calling all Baker Street Irregulars: The place to be this fall in Chicago is Lifeline Theatre. Christopher M. Walsh's "Miss Holmes" offers a cunning and highly enjoyable gender-bent take on …
The clash between past and present, haves and have-nots, has taken root in recent years through plays that use the trope of a down-on-his-luck friend or relative moving in " and wreaking hav…
A play about the clash between old-school feminism and a female tea party-esque presidential candidate should resonate particularly well during this highly polarized election season. But Geo…
Yes, there's the Big Show Everybody Is Talking About. Let's face it, if you don't have your "Hamilton" tickets already, you're probably out of luck, unless you want to sell a kidney in retur…
The late humorist Florence King, one of the greatest in the grand tradition of genteel-but-acidic Southern curmudgeons, once observed, "Sanity holds no charm in the South." No less a persona…
It's hard to name a living playwright who is more influential " yet more routinely ignored by major theaters " than Maria Irene Fornes. The 86-year-old Cuban-born avatar of the avant-garde h…
On a clear day, you can see that loss is forever. So who wouldn't prefer some mental clouds to cover the painful truth? Denial-as-survival is one of the frayed threads tying together the fal…
Stop me if you've heard this one before: a parent has died and the estranged offspring gather to rehash the past, complete with recriminations, secrets and lots of booze. No, it's not "Augus…
When rehearsal is over and the stage lights dim, a lot of Chicago stage artists head straight to the comforts of their own homes. But what about out-of-town talent? A number of Chicago's maj…
Transitioning is hard, as anyone who has stood by a loved one in the process of living as their true gender (rather than the one on their birth certificate) can attest. But what if the perso…
First things first: you're not losing your mind. David Carl's show, now in a short run (it ends Sunday) at Chicago Shakespeare as part of the Shakespeare 400 celebration, was originally mark…
Writing a musical around the stages of marriage after Stephen Sondheim's "Company" is a tough proposition. In the words of another Sondheim classic, "You Gotta Get a Gimmick." You can go cut…
An actor walks into a restaurant. He says, "I'll take the extra-large order of a Dream Deferred. Hold the ambition." The manager says, "Get to work. You've got tables." That may not be exact…
A working man joins his comrades in the woods to rehearse a "most lamentable comedy." But someone's made an ass of him " literally. "Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee," cries out one of his fri…