THE CANDY COUPLE "The world belongs to the fools who dare to dream": Reprising the crowd pleasure of music-hall euphoria and pantomime cut-ups with a charming quintet of Cockney buskers, An …
OUT OF CONTEXT BUT EASY TO ADMIRE William Finn, a gay songwriter with wit and warmth (and second only to Sondheim), writes story ballads and situational numbers that teach as much as touch. …
CORKING UP OR SELLING OUT? Living up to its title billing, Lookingglass Theatre Company's world premiere Thaddeus and Slocum: A Vaudeville Adventure is a rampage down Memory Lane. Their 135-…
SO BEYOND BAD THAT YOU’LL BE TAPPED OUT Half-baked, heavy-handed, overlong, poorly plotted, wretchedly sung, scenically sterile, contrived and clichéd, witless and mindless, and minus…
EV’RY MOUNTAIN GETS CLIMBED AGAIN It's fitting that Rodgers and Hammerstein's final collaboration is a tribute to the art and craft they served so well"music and singing. Like Mary Pop…
THE LONE EAGLE VERSUS THE LONE WOLF 81 years ago, everything conspired to make the "trial of the century" engrossing entertainment. (Actually, it was the second trial of the century–af…
LOVERLY The most insidiously satirical moment in Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore comes when a lowly sailor and his captain must instantly switch places when we learn that the latter w…
SUBVERSION, DISRUPTION"AND PRETENSION Caught is just what Gertrude Stein said of Oakland: "When you get there, there's no there there." A series of metaphysical jokes played on the audience,…
CAPTIVATING VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF LOVE What a feat happens seven times a week in Steppenwolf's upstairs theater! Usually critics tell you to take their words for what they saw–but t…
A RECIPE FOR BETTERÂ THEATER It's no accident that this bold play, the latest offering from Northwestern University professor Rebecca Gilman, happens in Wisconsin circa 1976. The story of …
INTERROGATING AN AUDIENCE It's the afterschool special from hell: The North Pool is that rare you-can-hear-a-pin-drop play. In a mere 80 minutes, playwright Rajiv Joseph shrewdly and sharply…
BINGEWATCHING THE BARD “Tug of war”–a child's game that mutates into an adult's nightmare; it's an apt title for Chicago Shakespeare Theater's marathon of Bard history p…
AN UNCRITICAL MATING COMEDY Familiar gay fare, The Boys Upstairs, a 2009 rouser by Jason Mitchell, revels in industrial-strength crowd-pleasing. Pride Films and Plays' two-hour funfest is cr…
A DOCUMENTARY DRAMA DELIVERS Chicago is currently witnessing two productions about photojournalists haunted by their work. TimeLine Theatre's Chimerica offers a flawed but fascinating 180-mi…
GIRL-POWER PRINCESSES TAKE ON TROPES, BUT THIS REVUE COULD USE MORE WIT AND MAGIC If you were a mean girl, you might call Disenchanted! a feel-good pity party. More compassionate souls will …
A SEARCH FOR DOUBT BOTH TANTALIZES AND ENERVATES Speculation is just as tricky on the stage as on the stock market. Winner of the 2014 Laurence Olivier Award, Chimerica (its title suggesting…
A FAIRY TALE LEAPS INTO LOVE Rossini, Walt Disney, Rodgers and Hammerstein"they all wanted a piece of Perrault's fairy tale. Cinderella has become Cendrillon, Cenerentola, and, by Jerry Lewi…
CORRUPTION: MORE FUN WHEN CHOREOGRAPHED Now in its twentieth year, this slimmed-down, near-concert version of Kander and Ebb's cynical and enthralling musical features, as the smoothly lying…
LORRAINE HANSBERRY'S OTHER PLAY Written five years after Raisin in the Sun and just before her early death at 34, Lorraine Hansberry's last work is a challenging"as in problematic"play. The …
LET'S NOT CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF George Gershwin died no older than the equally immortal Mozart"and, well, we can't make or get enough of a Broadway blessing's too-brief talent for tunes. …
 A HUGE HIT IN AMERICAN BLUE’S LITTLE SHOP American Blues Theatre seldom does musicals (the last was the wonderful Hank Williams: Lost Highway). Happily, their current triumphLittle…
A CRASH COUSE IN 'LA LA LAND' LUNACY Once in a Lifetime, the first triumph of George S Kaufman and Moss Hart (You Can't Take It With You, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Royal Family), is a …
SCATTERSHOT SPOOFERY THROWS A LARGE NETÂ OVER A LITTLE SATIRE Alluding to the elevated Chicago subway that courses through the North Side, A Red Line Runs Through It proves a theme as much…
IN THE HEAT OF THE STORY "They call me Mister Tibbs." That's the signature catchphrase from the celebrated 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier the first African-American male Oscar winner) …
NEVER SAY "NEVER AGAIN" Survivor guilt is supposedly small-scale suffering, compared to the agonies of those who never get the luxury of remorse. It's a tricky feat to accommodate near evil.…