4,921 stories by "Chris Jones"
Dana Delany is an actress with guts, that's for sure.
In the grim drama "Flood," Mashuq Mushtaq Deen has written an environmentalist allegory with absurdist underpinnings.
Aurora's ever-growing Paramount Theatre has been granted the rights this fall to what's likely to be a hot-selling musical.
Brian D'Arcy James and Kelli O'Hara play the on-the-rocks couple in Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel's potent musical.
Three different singers play the welterweight boxer Emile Griffith in Lyric Opera's visceral production of Terence Blanchard's 2013 jazz opera.
"I think it says something about our times," she says about the play, "and the loneliness we all feel."
He plans to stage his prior Chicago hit "I'm Not a Comedian ... I'm Lenny Bruce," as directed by Joe Mantegna, and a new production of "Bill W. and Dr. Bob."
The new Disney tour will open at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago's Loop in July 2025.
Roche Schulfer, 72, plans to retire from his job as the Chicago theater's executive director, effective Aug. 31.
Peck is best known as a dance choreographer but he wants "Illinoise," opening soon on Navy Pier, to be a theater piece. There is a narrative.
"Cinderella" is a barnstormer of a title, but there is no fairy godmother or glass slipper in this emotionally potent "La Cenerentola."
The theater will produce its 2024 season in the venue at the western end of Chicago's North Center neighborhood.
As the wife, Max decides to repair herself to her husband's Southern Baptist seminary. "Why is this woman here?" you keep wondering.
Take a cruise with a show packed with vitality, honesty and love for old-school Broadway.
The winter theater season is upon us. We have 10 Chicago-area shows opening between now and the end of March that look especially interesting.
The play is set partly in 2016 as the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen makes unnerving political inroads and partly in 1946, when many Jewish families had been obliterated.
They say they will begin picketing theaters Jan. 16 and will ask audiences not to cross the picket lines.
Here, in order of preference, are my top picks from New York's Great White Way on the first full year since the pandemic.
They were the leads of big musicals ("Boop," "Tommy") or stars in other ways. Including an unprecedented top-10 double appearance.
"He was the godfather of the working Chicago actor," said Barbara Gaines, former artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Across the country during the pandemic, nonprofit theaters lost their audiences and were forced to cut staff. Not at the Goodman Theatre.
Paulson is on fire all night long, torching not just anyone sharing Second Stage with her " including Elle Fanning " but half of the open-mouthed audience.
This was an especially fine year for musicals but over the last 12 months, I've also admired everything from revivals to daring new plays.
Now staged in its new theater on Lincoln Avenue, this holiday show based on the Jimmy Stewart movie has gathered an audience that would follow it anywhere.
