CHARLES DICKENS, RINGMASTER EXTRAORDINAIRE This exuberant offering first appeared 16 years ago: Lookingglass Theatre Company reinvented Charles Dickens' tough-loving and always topical Ha…
LOST IN TRANSFUSION Halloween is dangling out in the future, which means that Washington D.C. is finally getting competition in the terror market. The indefatigable Sean Graney, disruptive d…
A TWENTY-YEAR ALIEN INVASION The azure takeover began in 1991. Six years later, Blue Man Group—the company that is a show—debuted in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood. 20 …
THORNTON WILDER'S SURVIVAL SAGA It's a play for all seasons and all sorrows: Writing during the uncertainty of a world war, Thornton Wilder intended The Skin of Our Teeth to be a three…
THE ULTIMATE FRENCH KISS It was a one-off last night at the Athenaeum Theatre. But a long run on the road continues to beckon to Awesome Company's bravura showcase Piaf! The Show (whic…
FEAR FACTOR: 1692 = 2017 325 years ago, a witchhunt gave this continent one of its most chilling and cautionary cases of panic-peddling and persecution: In assorted "witch trials" the suppos…
HE STILL GOT THAT SWING In his 75 years of marvelous music-making, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington really was American nobility if not royalty. The sultan of swing was alsoy the jazz king, a…
SINGING, SURVIVING, AND SPIRIT It's a fine fit: As much as molding character is the goal of the imaginary Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys in Choir Boy, it's also the purpose of Chica…
MORE “FUN” THAN THE FIRST TIME AROUND Wise and warm, the 100-minute family memoir Fun Home charts the twisted courses of two generations of the Bechdels—a self-shamin…
MORE PLAYS ON THE PIER Tuesday night's "consecration of the house," attended by Chicago's Mayor Emmanuel, was a celebration that this care-ridden city badly needed. The big news is the gr…
UNSTOPPABLE AND UNSPARING This week Goodman Theater's season-opener, a landmark drama from 1955, exploded into relevance. A rarity worth a return, Arthur Miller's original 120-minute, one-ac…
A PAINTING IS A PORTAL Art is never still, not just still lifes but landscapes, genre scenes, even abstract configurations and, especially, portraits. Every painting is a time capsule that a…
ORWELLIAN OR TRUMPIAN?:Â 1984Â MEETS 2017 Everything evil is new again: What George Orwell wrote 69 years ago still remains ahead of our time—but, with a President in power who pur…
A THUG BECOMES A MUSE "Fish out of water" humor meets showbiz stereotypes—that's the gag-winning formula in the 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway, starring John Cusack, Jennifer Tilly…
FACING FATALITY It's the last play written by John Millington Synge. This Irish minstrel-playwright died in 1909 at only 37 after penning stunning beauties—Riders to the Sea and his…
A STUNNING RECLAMATION OF OUR 16th "AND BEST"PRESIDENT Right now—bar none—the most stirring chronicle on a Chicago stage is Shattered Globe Theatre's enthralling 155-minute Th…
WHEN MEDICINE GETS SICK "First, do no harm." A no-brainer, this unarguable warning in the Hippocratic Oath apparently defies and defines the medical profession in 2017. Mercy Killings …
BECOMING A "MAN" A brand-new musical about the past intersects the present with a vengeance. A world premiere from Permoveo Productions and Pride Films & Plays, The CiviliTy of Albert…
SYMPATHY FOR SCUMBAGS How can two white-trash lovers—"small town nobodies," as the press release puts it—"search for meaning at the height of the Great Depression"? Patronize a s…
A PRETTY WOMAN GETS AN INDECENT PROPOSAL" AND IT'S A MUSICAL! Some marriages get tested before they tie the knot. That's trenchantly the case with naïve fiancés Jack Singer and Bet…
UNDERCOOKED AND INNUTRITIOUS Yes, disruption continues to roil the stage in 2017. Old-fashioned make-believe dwindles into its opposite: dis-illusionment. The latest test case: Robert O'Hara…
TUESDAYS WITH ELIZABETH IN A NOT SO PRIVATE PALACE Peter Morgan is the proverbial fly on the wall: Commanding the realm of royal fiction and other historical speculation, this British writer…
TOO MANY SAILS AND NO RUDDER How have the mighty fallen! It's hard to believe that, 17 years after The Weir fascinated Steppenwolf Theatre audiences, not to mention all-absorbing Chica…
TOUGH LOVE GONE HAYWIRE Some people"hey, that could be a song title!"say Gypsy is the greatest Broadway musical ever written. And, calibrators of showbiz greatness, these folks may …
LOVE AS A VERY MOVEABLE FEAST Love may be blind but it can certainly sing up a storm. Not to be confused with the John Cusack film about a Chicago vinyl record shop, High Fidelity: An Ope…