4,921 stories by "Chris Jones"
This is a goofy and warm-centered show that put me in mind of all the different trends I've seen at Second City.
There's a contagious happiness, warmth and openness in this Shakespeare play. I guarantee you will not be bored.
Playwright Theresa Rebeck's new three-character play is about old age and the joy and tyranny of stuff.
Stephen Sondheim believed in the power of love, and in the someone who makes us "aware of being alive." This director has other ideas.
Dennis Watkins, Chicago's premiere resident magician, has plied his trade for some 15 years in the Loop and now has the fancy new venue he deserves.
The quick Broadway transfer replaces a previous plan to first tour the show to more cities, but was not a surprise given the success of the Chicago run.
The host for your evening is the magician-comedian Lucy Darling, adept at crowd work and adding to that supper-club vibe.
Compared to the Broadway overblown spectacle, the show sits far more easily at Chicago's intimate Mercury as a fun, Halloween-season entertainment.
As this new musical confirms, Stephen Sondheim died happy, at the top of his lyrical and compositional game, and clearly in love.
The 25th anniversary of "O" was a reminder of many things, not the least of which the power of live actors and stage sets over video projections.
"Night Watch" is no great masterpiece, but the late Lucille Fletcher, who wrote for "The Twilight Zone," sure knew how to craft a mystery.
I hope Broadway gets to see the star James Monroe Iglehart in this role.
This new show relies for its appeal mostly on the rapport of its two contrasting stars, and the edgy material took guts.
"We tell the Louis Armstrong story through each of his four wives," star James Monroe Iglehart says. "He took a long time to understand himself.
Kudos to the show for delivering the full-blown experience, but it struggles to build a narrative we care about.
The year 1957, the setting of the final scene of "Merrily," is all about possibility. But we already know friends have disappointed friends.
Salons are usually havens for gossip, always good for a laugh. But as we see in "Jaja's African Hair Braiding," they can also be safe spaces.
This is the '90s story of handsome serial killer Patrick Bateman, with a score by Duncan Sheik, staged right there in front of you.
Monday was an especially good night for the Goodman Theatre, winning for "The Cherry Orchard" and "The Who's Tommy."
Playwright Sarah Ruhl doesn't just look at the relationship between Eurydice and Orpheus but at that between Eurydice and her dead father.
It wasn't so much that this three-act script was a literary masterpiece as it was a blueprint for thrilling theatrical storytelling.
Wagner's fantastical 1843 opera is about a sea captain fated to sail forever. Director Christopher Alden's production doesn't offer him much hope.
This is a knockout show, as hilarious as it is cutting and as emotionally warmhearted as it is politically potent.
Playwright Pearl Cleage's comedy of manners pokes gentle fun at a society with Black debutants in Montgomery, Alabama, in the early 1960s.
"Boop! The Betty Boop Musical" is slated to play from Nov. 19 to Dec. 24 at Chicago's CIBC Theatre.
