897 stories by "Lawrence Bommer"
WHO NOSE BEST? Edmond Rostand's timeless love story celebrates the one-sided love between the famous 17th-century swordsman and poet — disfigured with a humongous schnoz — and hi…
UNLOCKING WHAT WAS NEVER HIDDEN At least Time Is On Our Side is more sex-affirmative and upbeat than Significant Other, About Face Theatre's last offering. A Midwest premiere devote…
RIDICULOUS REVENGE It's so well-intentioned that the results are doubly deplorable. Lookingglass Theatre Company’s Plantation!, a world premiere by ensemble member Kevin Douglas staged…
LITERAL LEAPS INTO THE FUTURE It's all over — but this review of record is as much a promissory note as a remembrance. Worth noting as much as seeing, Winning Works, the Joffrey Bal…
A ROYAL CATFIGHT GETS A ROYAL PRODUCTION Coulda, woulda, shoulda: It's the greatest confrontation between rival monarchs that never happened — the 1586 face-off between the "Virgin" Qu…
JOHNNY BE BAD: A CHUCK ROAST Once more it's homage time on Clark Street. The latest musical reclamation from Black Ensemble Theater, L. Maceo Ferris's Hail, Hail Chuck: A Tribute to Chuck…
MESSING UP MURDER The cops may be blue, the victims black, but in Six Corners the predominant color is gray. Marinating in moral relativism, this independent installment in Chicago pla…
AN EVERGREEN PARABLE OF RESISTANCE It's a two-act tonic, this Madwoman of Chaillot. Life, Jean Giraudoux knew, is never safe from our constant "fever of destruction." When decency gets be…
IN CYBER SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM On the Internet or just IRL, there's joy in striking back — turning the tables and trolling the bullies. But what's rotten one way is no bette…
THE PHANTOM NEVER DIED, BUT SHOULD HAVE Gaston Leroux knew: The original author of The Phantom of the Opera concluded his horror romance with his disfigured serial-killer as dead as Lo…
A PENNY DREADFUL FOR YOUR THOUGHTS Murder will out, whether in police gazettes or chamber opera. If he hadn't existed, the still unknown Jack the Ripper could have been invented by penny dre…
IN TASTING YOUR MORTALITY, YOU GET A LOT OLDER WATCHING THIS In the bleak midwinter " appropriately " comes this dour drama. A Chicago premiere from Steppenwolf Theatre Company, this 2014 Ob…
MOVEMENTS WITHOUT DEMANDS Modern masters indeed. A splendid showcase for steps and leaps, Joffrey Ballet's annual winter engagement always brings fresh glory to the state of their art. Mo…
SAVED BY YOUR SERVANT Like manna from the heavens, it comes when we've never needed to laugh more: The invaluable comic master P.G. Wodehouse returns from the Roaring Twenties to the rescue …
THE DIS-ASSEMBLY LINE Some stories can't stand on their own and for very good reason: They tell so many others. Much as The Wire dealt with Baltimore's failing institutions and August …
THE GIRL OF MY DREAMS "No one will ever love you as much as I do — so shut up and stop looking for more." A harsher hope-killing "reassurance" should not be imagined. That's the curse/…
REHABILITATING REAGAN Putting us backstage as history happens, Goodman Theatre's world premiere Blind Date generously or doggedly tells audiences more than they knew (or perhaps want t…
AMERICA'S COARSE 'CORRECTION' A huge reason that theater counts is that it can carry a club (or, as the situation warrants, a stiletto). Both an agitprop assault on the 46th President's b…
A RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN STYLED MUSICAL THAT ASKS AND TELLS Call it the new nostalgia. In most ways, Yank! A WWII Love Story is an unashamedly conventional book musical, as predicta…
THE LOST–AND FOUND–BOY What resonates in each of the 90 minutes of TimeLine Theatre Company's Boy is the play's total absence of rage or recrimination. As compassionately t…
MY LITTLE (PARANOID) PONY If you believe The Antelope Party, a Theater Wit two-act world premiere, fascism could soon be coming to a neighborhood near you. The "party" reference is politi…
YOU STILL CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN Plays about what doesn't happen feel a lot trickier than the action models: Exhibit A (through Z) is Rachel Bonds' Five Mile Lake, a group portra…
GET THE LEAD OUT "The majority is always wrong." Norwegian disrupter Henrik Ibsen practically carved that credo into his 1882 potboiler An Enemy of the People. In his still-seminal protes…
GOOFBALL GAMBLERS IN SIN CITY A troupe from Fayetteville, Arkansas has come to Chicago's Theater Wit to showcase a new play about Las Vegas. That's the download on Flamingo & Decatur,…
TERROR IN TRUTH In For the Loyal headlines become humans. A short but stirring piece of theatrical speculation, this new work by topical playwright Lee (A Walk in the Woods) Blessing c…
