100 stories by "Jack Helbig"
At a time when so many larger, established theaters are cutting back their seasons, laying off staff, or suspending operations, smaller theaters, like the relatively young Forest Park Theatr…
Is there a Shakespeare comedy better suited for an outdoor production in a park in July than A Midsummer Night's Dream? Much of the play itself takes place outdoors in the summer, in the woo…
Alan Janes's musical Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story is a clever piece of work, mixing the best elements of a biographical play, a jukebox musical, and a cover band concert into a bubbly, tight…
The Practical Theatre Company has earned its place in Chicago comedy history. In the 80s, this plucky troupe of young, energetic, gifted comic actors lit up stages around Chicago"including C…
The Puritans in New England lived fearful, close-minded, claustrophobic lives. Disdainful of all other Christian sects (especially Catholics and Quakers) and of the Native Americans who they…
This double bill of plays from two very different theater companies (Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble and CIRCA-Pintig), working in two very different styles"one abstract, movement-based, very s…
Pay no attention to the show's baggy, forgettable, mildly pompous title. This smart, tightly written play is at once a very funny satire of the Star Wars saga"and Star Wars fans"a heartfelt …
There have been many versions of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey's Grease: the raunchy one that premiered at Kingston Mines in 1971; a much cleaned-up version that opened a year later in New Yor…
The idea of turning Richard Linklater's brilliant 2003 film comedy, School of Rock (about a struggling guitarist/substitute teacher coaching his prep-school students on how to, well, rock), …
Dame Peggy Ashcroft considered the role of Winnie in Samuel Beckett's notoriously difficult Happy Days a "summit part," one of those roles, like Hamlet or King Lear, that tests an actor's me…
Big Fish bombed on Broadway. Based on Tim Burton's 2003 movie version of Daniel Wallace's 1998 novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions, the show, with a score by Andrew Lippa and a boo…
I remember when rock was young. So, evidently, does Chicago playwright Katie Coleman, as she well attests in her intelligent, heartfelt play about two young Soviets, hopping and bopping to a…
Like much that passes for entertainment during the holiday season, this 2010 musical, based on the 2003 movie, lives on the infinitely thin line between charm and utter stupidity. The […]
…
Their premise is not half bad: a "still relatively new" (as they describe themselves) theater company uses a fictional 125th-anniversary "jubilee" to bring together a collection of short ske…
Siena Marilyn Ledger's brand-new two-person play, being produced here with 16th Street Theater and Dragonfly Theatre as part of the National New Play Network rolling world premiere program, …
This is a play of tiny moments and small details, a play in which characters change slowly, the way people and seasons change"silently, imperceptibly at first and then with the […]
The pos…
The UrbanTheater Company's performing space on Division Street is not small"I have seen them stage plays there just packed with actors"but it is really not large enough to contain all […]
…
Hello, Dolly! is not revived that often. It only feels that way, because Jerry Herman's score (book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's play The Matchmaker) is so infectious […]…
Originally conceived in the mid-70s as a vehicle for Nell Carter but opening on Broadway in 1981 with Jennifer Holliday in the role that might have been Carter's (if Carter's […]
The post …
James Sherman began his career as an actor; he joined the Second City in the 70s, while he was still a student at Illinois State, appearing in the shows Once […]
The post Chagall's Camelot…
Journalist, playwright, screenwriter, theater critic, arts editor, and novelist Adam Langer was born in Chicago, grew up in West Rogers Park, went to school in Evanston, and spent the early …
When Chicago poet, sculptor, and musician Marvin Tate was in elementary school, he had a terrible stutter. To help him, his older sister gave him a poem to practice reading aloud. The poem w…
This is a great play for the summer"despite its title"because The Winter's Tale is as much about the coming of spring as it is the dreary desolation of December. At least that is what direct…
My daughter tells me she likes the 1989 movie version of Steel Magnolias because you can have it running in the background while you do other things, and still more or less follow the plot. …
Writer and artist David Hauptschein has been working in Chicago since the 80s, curating live performances, writing plays, and working in visual arts, but his work has been produced more ofte…
