1,044 stories by "Kerry Reid"
On one wall of the set for Terry Guest's Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes, now in a local premiere with Story Theatre under Guest's direction, a large sign tells us "THIS IS NOT HIST…
Last year, Chicago Shakespeare offered We Are Out There, a digital sneak peek of Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair's goofy musical adaptation of the 1953 Universal Pictures sci-fi film, It Came …
In 2016, Monty Cole made his directorial debut in Chicago with Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape at now-defunct Oracle Productions"and what a debut it was. His staging of the story of Yank, a s…
Back in the Before Times, I saw Carisa Hendrix perform as her alter ego, dipsomaniacal Lucy Darling, at the Chicago Magic Lounge. Combining va-va-voom Golden Age of Screwball Comedy glitz an…
Back in 2014, Theater Wit presented Madeleine George's acerbic but aching comedy, Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, in which the denizens of a small New England college town wrestl…
Maybe it's a sign of our times that musicals about the aftermath of loss and grief have become so prominent in 21st-century life, from Next to Normal to Dear Evan Hansen. But while both thos…
This is the first time we've done a summer theater and arts issue, and judging by the full-to-bursting content, that's surprising"especially given how much Chicagoans love getting outdoors i…
Siah Berlatsky just graduated this month from ChiArts, but though she's taking a gap year before college, the 18-year-old playwright-director-actor isn't letting the grass grow under her fee…
On the wall of the big-box retail warehouse that forms the setting for Eboni Booth's Paris, now in a midwest premiere at Steep Theatre under Jonathan Berry's direction, there's a sign readin…
I hardly ever start reviews this way, but trust me: stop reading this and hop online to get tickets for Erika Dickerson-Despenza's cullud wattah, now in its local premiere at Victory Gardens…
I spent most of the 90s in the Bay Area, where outdoor theater in the summer is a given, and the weather generally cooperates (if you're not facing the threat of forest fires, that is). But …
Lots of behind-the-scenes news in Chicago theater, and some well-deserved plaudits to note as well this week! At the Tony Awards this past Sunday, longtime Chicago sound designer and compose…
Like the rest of the world, Second City has been through its share of upheavals in the past two years. Longtime owner, CEO, and executive producer Andrew Alexander stepped down in June 2020 …
Samm-Art Williams's Home, first produced in 1979 with the seminal Negro Ensemble Company and then in a Tony-nominated run on Broadway in 1980, is considered a contemporary American classic, …
Noel Coward's 1941 comedy about a socialite writer who finds himself haunted by his vivacious (if annoying) dead wife"while his living wife first questions his sanity, then finds herself in …
Back in 1996, the late playwright August Wilson delivered an address at the annual conference for Theatre Communications Group, the national service organization for theaters in the U.S. Ent…
The Uvalde school massacre put a somber hue on my mood going into 57 Blocks, Free Street Theater's latest ensemble-created piece that takes a sharp look at public education. But by the end o…
Six years ago, Brian Quijada and Teatro Vista teamed up to present Quijada's solo show, Where Did We Sit on the Bus?, an endearing and poignant portrait of growing up in the Chicago suburbs …
Last August, I caught up with Jacob Harvey just as he was taking over as the new (and first-ever) managing artistic director of theaters for the Fine Arts Building. At the time, he noted tha…
Aaron Sorkin's gonna Sorkin, even when he's working off someone else's material. In his new adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, now in a short touring stop with Broadway in Chi…
Whether by design or happenstance, Writers Theatre has focused on the theme of women in competition and collaboration this season. In Eleanor Burgess's Wife of a Salesman, two actors portray…
If you're a fan of Henry Louis Gates's Finding Your Roots on PBS, then you can probably relate to Annabelle Lee Revak's impulse to create a musical out of the World War I-era letters of her …
Reproductive rights cuts both ways: the government deciding that you may not have a child comes from the same authoritarianism that tells you that you must continue an unwanted pregnancy. Gi…
Ele Matelan didn't plan on making a career out of sound effects. Like a lot of Chicago theater artists, she moved here after college (at Southern Methodist University) to pursue acting. She …
Laura Schellhardt's Digging Up Dessa was commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center as part of its Theater for Young Audiences program in 2018. But this play, now in its Chicago premiere wit…
