LORCA'S RUNAWAY BRIDE Elemental, darkly poetic, driven by death, Federico Garcia Lorca's domestic tragedy Blood Wedding is the 1932 installment of his peasant-primitive "Rural Trilogy." (The…
TAKE-OUT THEATER "This is not how I thought my future would be." Bittersweet, broken-spirited, resigned to mediocrity, that lament fits all the characters in David Jacobi's inexplicably name…
THIS LOSS IS OUR GAIN William Inge knew the human heart better than a surgeon. In Bus Stop, Picnic, Come Back, Little Sheba, and Dark at the Top of the Stairs, this closeted author exposes o…
MEETING IN MUSIC In the basement of the Chicago Temple, playwright/actor/musician Ronnie Malley displays his electric affinity for and considerable fluency in a dozen musical tongues. In 75 …
PLAY CONTROL A clumsy comedy about our gun-crazed nation, Cocked packs heat but no warmth. Glib, slick and slippery, Sarah Gubbins' world premiere from Victory Gardens Theater proves there a…
LIFE IS TOO SHORT WHEN ART IS THIS LONG A dozen years ago, dying at 50, Roberto Bolano left his unfinished 2666 as his valedictory. It was, quite simply, the swan song of a spellbinding crea…
THE LOSSES THAT GROW Only 75 minutes long, this slice of loss by Lauren Yee–a "rolling world premiere" from the National New Plays Network–charts one mother's tailspin after the …
THE SILVER SCREEN IS NOT A MIRROR At three hours long, The Flick takes its"and our"time to not tell a story. Almost all atmosphere (more specifically, totally character), Annie Baker's 2014 …
THE HEART KEEPS ITS REASONS Starring Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid, Todd Haynes' 2002 film Far From Heaven told a tale timeless as Romeo and Juliet. But its glimpse of hearts out of sync w…
PRESIDING OVER HISTORY This is a discovery-rich, impeccably presented journey through our political past: American Blues Theater's Looking Over the President's Shoulder takes audiences on an…
FRENZY IN FEBRUARY Detonating across the Auditorium Theatre's vast stage through February 21, Joffrey Ballet's Bold Moves has more of the latter than the former stuff. But this kinetic winte…
TALLY LOW Doggedly determined to fight yesterday's battles, Nell Benjamin's chronic farce The Explorers Club manically mocks the heyday of male British explorers. Fuddy-duddy adventure seeke…
TO BAKER STREET AND BEYOND! Not to give anything away but the title character in The Man Who Murdered Sherlock Holmes is not Professor Moriarty, "the Napoleon of crime." In this life-imitate…
THE DESCENT OF MAN AS DRAMA Another incendiary offering from Oracle Productions, Monty Cole's bold take on Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape is pugilistic and powerful. In his athletic tour-de-…
COMMITMENT CRISES FUEL A CRACKLING COMEDY Many, many gay plays since Stonewall have pitted fidelity against promiscuity, love against sex, and, nowadays, marriage against friendship. Same-se…
EVERYTHING'S FINE IN '59 It's as welcome as flowers that bloom in the spring: A cascading, minute-by-minute hit, Bye Bye Birdie is a showcase for happiness even as it merrily mocks the…
LEARNING TO BE LOVED The past clashes with the future in Dominique Morisseau's Sunset Baby, a drama more of reckoning than reconciliation. Despite her rage at the father she thinks desert…
ANOTHER WALTZ WITH TENNESSEE Tom "Tennessee" Williams never buried his treasures. The ultimate, unashamed "bleeding heart," this passionate playwright put his soul and guts into every show h…
TOO TRUE TO BE NEW Subtitled "A Tale of Today," Mark Twain's early novel The Gilded Age was written in (and from) 1873, a dozen years before Huckleberry Finn rafted down the Mississipp…
A SERIOUSLY STUPID SCREAMFEST Premiering in politically correct San Francisco in 2014, Christopher Chen's cartoon drama purports to address multi-culturalism in politics. This two-act trifle…
BAGGAGE HANDLING Unprocessed pain can supply grist enough for a playwright's mill. But an unprocessed play is a lot less. Alas, there's little design for loving in William Donnelly's No W…
SENIOR RUSH No, despite the title, Gotta Dance, a world premiere at Chicago's Bank of America Theatre, is no musical homage to Gene Kelly or MGM's musicals. It's a true-life, feel-good sa…
A SOUL STORM SUNG TO THE SKIES A tribute to women of soul, Dynamite Divas, despite the title, is not about terrorists with tonsils. A remake and update of a 2001 hit at the Black Ensemble…
A VOICE GETS ITS OWN SHOW Despite the name, Baritones UnBound is no comedy about musical kinkiness. A kind of theatrical rebuttal to The Three Tenors (and its many spinoffs), it …
A POUND OF LOVE EXPLODES INTO A TON OF HATE Short of screaming "Fire!" in the theatrical darkness, you can't imagine a more polemical provocation than Domesticated. As with Grand Conco…