897 stories by "Lawrence Bommer"
A SMALL STORY SOARS IN THIS NEW OPERA Right now the Studebaker Theater houses a wonder. A chamber opera with a heart of gold, The Scarlet Ibis, with a supple score by Stefan Weisman and l…
LEO TOLSTOY TURNED TO LEAPS AND TWIRLS IN THIS WORLD PREMIERE BALLET MILESTONE So many superlatives to savor. Newly created by 35-year-old wunderkind composer Ilya Demutsky, who replen…
A SEQUEL WITHOUT A SOUL Some nerve. It takes chutzpah on top of arrogance to dare to continue, let alone complete, another playwright's stand-alone masterpiece. Lucas Hnath has the temerity …
HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE THEATER Some plays take time to come into their own, But they're well worth a wait. Over two decades after its Off-Broadway debut, Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Dri…
A PIPELINE TO GREAT THEATER The title of Pipeline refers to the much-reviled "school-to-prison" conduit that keeps minority kids from any outcome but incarceration, soft or hard. It's …
THE SOUND OF A BRAIN BREAKING Uncertainty is the default drive behind the 95 excruciating minutes of French playwright Florian Zeller's The Father. Seldom has a staged mystery shifted so …
A DEATH OF FRESH AIR It's a tour de force times ten as Monty Navarro, distant heir to the D'Ysquith fortune, slaughters his way to an earldom and marriage, for better or worse, with a doting…
CONSIDER CREATION CAUGHT IN THIS SEMINAL WORLD PREMIERE It's a tour-de-force to take home and reverently recall: A Goodman Theatre world premiere, How To Catch Creation lives up to a l…
OUT OF THE BLOOD OF BABES It's a probably thankless and certainly unsettling undertaking: Us/Them is an hour-long performance piece by two young members of the Belgian troupe BRONKS. I…
IS IT TOO REALISTIC, OR NOT REALISTIC ENOUGH? Is it smoke and mirrors or a trick of the light? No matter — the fact that nothing urgent is at stake in the 100 minutes of Will Leno's…
BRINGING DEAD TO LIFE An import from our neighbor to the north that's almost as inebriating as Canadian Club, Evil Dead The Musical is a blood-splattering, silly-ass, ham-acting confec…
FRIENDS WITH CHILDREN Gay parents — for centuries that seemed a contradiction in terms. How could promiscuity engender anything beyond itself? But, if, as Delmore Schwartz said, "With …
THEATER AND RECONCILIATION Love never seems greater than when hate sets it off. Then, as if to prove its power, it finds so much to rise above. A huge hit at the 2016 Humana Festival of New …
#ME TOO, 15th-CENTURY STYLE If it didn't actually happen, this play would not be believed. Its climax soars as, tortured by the Inquisition to reveal the murderer of the evil-doing Commander…
LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE, OR AN EMPOWER SHORTAGE? Holy Hades! It's an all-purpose victim's ur-dream of getting even: Every misunderstood teenager secretly imagines he was born better than life …
A RUTA WAKENING A play can be a cry for help — against a persistent peril, a former and future danger, a mindset that makes heartbreak. La Ruta, a Steppenwolf Theatre world premiere…
AS RELEVANT AND CELEBRATORY AS EVER, FIDDLER GETS A POWERFUL REVIVAL It takes a musical to make a village: At nearly three hours, this very replete revival, which plays the Cadillac Palace T…
A SPORADIC DREAM There's an epiphany near the end of Shakespeare's celebration A Midsummer Night's Dream when the mixed-up quartet of wayward lovers who've been confoundedly mashed …
IT’LL LEAVE YOU DAZED AND CIRQUE-FUSED Neil Goldberg has a fine formula for his fantastic franchise. His eleven Cirque Dreams spectaculars feature ever-changing processions of dazzling…
GET YOUR FULL For the sake of the butterfly we love the cocoon. The Fully Monty, a musical version by David Yazbek and Terrence McNally, is industriously inspired by the popular 1997 film…
GROUP DYNAMICS SURGE AT HUBBARD STREET DANCE CHICAGO Four world premieres, especially crafted by in-house choreographers for the skills and needs of their company colleagues, display a tales…
THE PLAY ABOUT THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG GOES WRONG The title is brutally honest — and you can't say you weren't warned. In the style of Monty Python and Michael Frayn's self-destroying…
TAKING ANOTHER CRACK: AN UPDATE ON MARIE AND THE GREAT IMPRESARIO No matter how many times you see it, you will ALWAYS be amazed by the gorgeous Nutcracker that Christopher Wheeldon im…
STRIDENTLY SILLY, THEN SUDDENLY SERIOUS The title Familiar alludes to family"and, when loved ones squabble over who they are and where they come from, this title questions just what…
FROM CANCER TO THE COSMOS, OR TO HELA AND BACK There's cold fusion and then there's hot fusion–the theatrical kind. In the world-premiere HeLa, an awesome co-production by Sideshow …
