132 stories by "Dennis Polkow"
“The Great Gatsby: A New Musical” is here for a short run at Broadway in Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre.
Mangum, the Lyric's general director, president and CEO, and Mazzola, the Lyric's music director, discuss what's in store for the opera company in the year ahead.
The producer discusses his Broadway career, from the tragic origins of "Rent" to the tragedy in D.C. that led to this spring's "Hamilton" production in Chicago.
Matthew Ozawa's multidimensional staging of "Butterfly" that premiered at Cincinnati Opera in 2023 is now being presented at his home company of Lyric Opera, where he is chief artistic direc…
The Athenaeum Center's audience included priests, nuns of various orders, and even the Pope's brother for this tale of a nineteenth-century French peasant girl who claimed to have visions of…
What makes "Irish" work is that no matter how sad things may get, there is always an aura of celebration in the production.
Lyric's production transports the Da Ponte-Mozart opera to a 1930s seaside resort, where the colors, costumes, scenery and approach are overstated.
Isaiah Bailey brings power, humanity and personal truth to the North American tour of "The Phantom of the Opera."
Billed as "A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness," Friday night was not your typical night at the opera.
The legendary Chicago theater maker, most known for his work at Goodman Theatre, directs a contemporary and understated version of Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus."
Keys' songs are masterful fusions of music and poetry, performed in a breakout performance by Maya Drake.
Broadway In Chicago's revival, by three-time Tony Award-winning director Jack O'Brien, is chillingly on time.
The long journey to get Cherubini's "Medea" to Lyric Opera culminates in a spectacular production and stellar performance.
"Big White Fog," to which "A Raisin in the Sun" owes much, provides an invaluable snapshot of a community struggling with its own identity.
The season preview concert overlapped with Taste of Chicago, creating a sometimes amusing Ivesian auditory collision.
The fascinating focus of "MJ: The Musical" is on creativity and what drives and shapes it, especially when it has a cavernous cultural response.
One of the most highly-anticipated cultural events of the summer.
"Parade" is the best touring musical of the year so far, but the run is short. Don't let it pass you by.
Jeanine Tesori's opera "Blue" had its much-anticipated Lyric Opera of Chicago premiere last fall. Porchlight Music Theatre performed her Tony-Award-winning "Fun Home" last winter. And now Br…
When the inevitable happens, we are right there with each and all of them"those who make it and those who don't"powerfully caught up in the surreal reality that the vessel between you and th…
Without question, "La bohème" has been the opera most performed at Lyric Opera over my decades as a critic.
The fifty-seven-year-old Opus One of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice is getting an amazing Technicolor facelift.
Some might be expecting to see given that Broadway in Chicago's signature genre is musicals, this is a non-singing "Clue: On Stage." For this new, believe it or not, national tour incarnatio…
The sixtieth anniversary of the death of playwright Lorraine Hansberry is the catalyst for the first-ever Court Theatre production of "A Raisin in the Sun." The Chicago-born Hansberry was th…
One of the most satisfying aspects of the overall approach taken here is not just that everyone in the cast can sing effectively, but that they are aesthetically on the same page walking the…
