897 stories by "Lawrence Bommer"
MURDER—A REFUSAL TO SUBMIT? You could call Machinal a nightmare under stage lights. Still potent after nearly ninety years, Sophie Treadwell's 1928 drama can't be dismissed as a …
SCHADENFREUDE GETS ITS SHOW We learn from fear, even if it's the wrong lessons. Well before Mark Twain's "Slovenly Peter," let alone Edward Gorey, Roald Dahl or Tim Burton, there was Heinric…
WHEN LOVE SEEMED ALL A half century can wreak a ton of change, especially when it takes us from 1967's Summer of Love to 2017's Winter of Trump. It's impossible to imagine two more different…
DRIVEN DANCES FOR JOY AND JUSTICE Their "dance card" is filled to bursting. Departing from Black Ensemble Theater's usual blast-from-the-past musical reclamations (Nicholas Brothers, Josephi…
PARIS AS A PAS DE DEUX The opening image"a baby grand piano under the Arc de Triomphe"suggests the rest. The hopeful harbinger of a new normality, the beloved 1951 film An American in Par…
MEMORIES OF MEXICO, LUZIAÂ UNLEASHES A RAIN OF JOY The Cirque du Soleil just made a run for the border"and not the Canadian one. Ignoring the United States (a favorite activity of many now…
BLUES WITHOUT NOTES It takes a play to raise a village. Here it's East Harlem, a killing field with 8 homeless shelters, 36 drug and alcohol treatment centers, and 37 mental health treatment…
SOMETHING SILLY; NOT QUITE ROTTEN BUT HARDLY FRESH What is it about William Shakespeare that inspires lesser authors (namely, everyone else) to try to take him down? George Bernard Shaw spen…
DOMESTIC DISRUPTION From the start, a classic curtained proscenium conceals the utter disorder that detonates on Steppenwolf Theatre's sprawling mainstage. Hir, now in a Chicago premiere,…
BIGOTRY AT THE BURLESQUE Some swan songs will never sound sweet. Take the fade-out of female impersonators in Elizabethan drama. Or the final white thespian to wear blackface. Or"well, witne…
HAPPY DAY'S JOURNEY INTO LOVE It's a dramatic "one-off": The same Connecticut domicile supplies the site of two enormously different plays by the same author. If Eugene O'Neill imagined a da…
A KURT WEILL COMEBACK Here's another triumph worth the wait. Recently revived, City Lit's London Assurance took 120 years to return"hilariously"to a Chicago stage. Even more inexplicably abs…
REST ASSURED: THE LIES LOVE LIVES ON You can't keep a good comedy down. Wildly popular in its time, Dion Boucicault's 1841 London Assurance is a mating romp that, inexplicably, has not been …
IT GETS WORSE TOO Teenage suicide due to cyberbullying deserves its storytelling: In just 70 minutes, Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill’s Late Company seems to cover the bases…
SONGS FROM THE BOTTOM OF A BOTTLE Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre really loves the sad songs of Jacques Brel. First came A Jacques Brel Revue: Songs of War and Love in 2005. Three years later th…
THE WHITE WHALE RETURNS! You can't keep a good cetacean down. Buoyed by the success of their 2015 inaugural production and national tour, Lookingglass Theatre Company (in association with Th…
THE STAR WHO WAS A CONSTELLATION "Stardust" was the name for what made Bette Davis shine. With playwright Jessica Sherr's solo recreation of more than big eyes and flouncing cigarettes, t…
PROVOCATION PLUS DISRUPTION" 2017 GETS ITS PLAY! Ever since artistic director Anna Shapiro took over Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Chicago mecca hasn't been afraid to upset an audience. S…
IS IT OK FOR PCÂ TO FIGHT BSÂ IN D.C. at the V.G.? (NOT WHEN IT'S TV…) There's a cable series on the Investigation Discovery channel called Fear Thy Neighbor: It recreates real-life tr…
DANCE BEGINS AT 40 For Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, it's time to take stock. This 100-minute evening does it all and well. It's as much a showcase for seven seminal choreographers (Lou Cont…
A CLASSIC GOES GLOBAL It's a marriage made in theater heaven: With a newly great Great Expectations, two very different Chicago theaters find common ground. The result is a cross-cultural ve…
NO TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL A broken, cash-challenged clan go on a road trip to California that somehow heals their hurt. It's not the Joads, colorful Okies in a Ford pick-up, fleeing the dust stor…
C'EST SI BON! She was infamous for her 1927 "costume" in Un Vent de Folie"a girdle of bananas. In 1934 she became the first African American woman to have a major role in a film. Acquiring f…
FALLING WHILE RUNNING RISKS Domesticity and danger, it seems, don't mix. The private and the public, small-scale versus big-issue matters, mingle uneasily in Time Stands Still, now in a p…
LOOKING BEFORE THEY LEAP It's a night of dance discoveries. Four Chicago-based choreographers create a splendid showcase in danc(e)volve, two world premieres and two nearly new offerings at …
