44 stories by "Kelly Kleiman"
One can imagine what inspired directors Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page to rework this 1960s musical about the Continental Congress. There's the attraction of doing a piece about the nation…
Like most speculative fiction (and every original Star Trek episode), Ezekiel's Wheel is a fable: a story whose moral applies to circumstances other than those being described. Determining w…
Ann Noble's play about an Irish family decompensating after the mother's death had its premiere in Chicago nearly 30 years ago, and it's showing its age. There are plots and subplots and Iri…
If you were concerned that Chicago's storefront theaters lost their mojo during the pandemic, get thee to Terry McCabe's gripping production of The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter. It's a me…
It would be hard to find a more appealing trio to embody Jonathan Larson's autobiographical musical tick, tick . . . BOOM! than the ones in BoHo Theatre's production"and "embody" is very muc…
Playwrights Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon wrap up their Pride and Prejudice fan fiction trilogy with Georgiana and Kitty, once more bringing to the center of the action characters perip…
It's hard to write a play whose hero is the American Medical Association (AMA), even as embodied by crusading Dr. Morris Fishbein (the appealing Andrew Bosworth) and his equally earnest [……
Refuge, the wrenching portrait of a Central American woman's effort to reach the U.S. receiving its midwest premiere at Theo Ubique, is less a play than a ritual with music […]
The post Di…
Playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury had too many things in mind when she wrote this play about Mary Seacole, a real-life Jamaican-born healer who improbably served in the 19th-century Crimean W…
Long before the term "meta" entered common parlance there was Arsenic and Old Lace, a 1939 play by Joseph Kesselring about how plays are ridiculous. It's also a play about […]
The post Eld…
If you didn't know that Noël Coward was an actor as well as a playwright, you'd figure it out within minutes of seeing any of his plays: how else to […]
The post Cool Kids vs. Normies a…
If National Merit had to be pitched as a movie, it would be "The Breakfast Club in a test prep class." Competing for high scores and the scholarship that goes […]
The post Teaching to the …
There are half a dozen exceptionally talented individuals in the new Second City e.t.c. revue, Great Altercations. But that turns out to be a problem: they remain individuals rather than for…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that it's actually harder to write a rave review than it is to write a pan. How to communicate the thrill of seeing a show that's just exactly what it …
Natalie Y. Moore's play The Billboard, now in a world premiere with 16th Street Theater, is subtitled "A Play About Abortion." In the spirit of Chicago improv, allow me to say: Yes, and. The…
This is an impeccable production of a play whose weaknesses outweigh its considerable strengths. It's the 1960s episode of August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, tracing a century of life in the …
When everyone on the stage is excellent, it shows a director fully in command of the material. That's the case with Cody Estle's production of The Luckiest by Melissa Ross, receiving its Chi…
Heidi Schreck weaves together civics, feminism, and personal history in this vital production.
At the very start of What the Constitution Means to Me, author Hei…
Douglas Turner Ward's 1965 satirical one-act holds more historic than contemporary interest.
Day of Absence is a show with one joke and two audiences. The joke i…
