A musical based on War and Peace sounds like a ludicrous proposition. And of course it is"which is why Dave Malloy's Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 only focuses on a 70-page i…
You think the Titanic had a disastrous maiden voyage? Consider the Vasa, a Swedish warship constructed by King Gustavus Adolphus (sometimes called "the father of modern warfare") between 162…
The tense family dinner has long been a trope for American realism. Just off the top of my head, plays that have such a device as a central dramatic event include Tracy Letts's August: Osage…
Janet Ulrich Brooks is my kind of theatrical royalty: a no-nonsense performer who can play everything from firebrand playwright Lillian Hellman to diva Maria Callas with riveting conviction.…
In Jonathan Demme's 1986 anti-screwball comedy, Something Wild, Jeff Daniels's straight-arrow yuppie gets his life turned upside down in a scary way by Melanie Griffith's wild child, Lulu. T…
With The Full Monty, Paramount Theatre completes the trifecta of musicals derived from movies about British deindustrialization, on the heels of 2021's Kinky Boots and Billy Elliot earlier t…
In a couple of weeks, the national tour of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child lands at the James M. Nederlander Theatre. The show, written by Jack Thorne from an original story by Harry Potte…
Steppenwolf has been mixing it up in recent (post-COVID shutdown) years with solo comedy outings from national names like Mike Birbiglia (The Old Man and the Pool) and Alex Edelman (Just for…
I'd never heard of Neal Adelman before seeing brand-new Dodge Box Theatre's evening of one-acts, presented under the somewhat confounding omnibus title of Legato Limbo Loud or GoFastWait, at…
Domestic violence, suicide, bullying"Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's 1945 musical Carousel is as famous for its dark subject matter as its soaring score. (My high school graduatio…
During the pandemic shutdown, perhaps nothing surprised me as much with Zoom theater as seeing magicians work their craft without the close-up settings we're so used to, especially in Chicag…
For their follow-up to 2006's Spring Awakening, composer Duncan Sheik and librettist and lyricist Steven Sater turned to Lewis Carroll's children's classic. Set in a bomb shelter during the …
We're spoiled for choice when it comes to magic practitioners in Chicago, but David Parr is always a good bet for a fun and thought-provoking night out. His current Wednesday-night show at t…
There's a cartoon that made the rounds on social media a few years ago laying out the dissonance for the modern comedy scene. In the first two frames, labeled "Comedians at the Club," a guy …
In the tradition of rom-coms like the 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle Sliding Doors, Audrey Cefaly's The Last Wide Open uses the conceit of what-ifs to take us through a missed-it-by-that-much …
Haven Chicago is going out the way they came in 11 years ago"sweaty, sexy, sinuous, and unapologetic. In 2013, the company announced their presence with a production of John Cameron Mitchell…
Romeo and Juliet has been on my mind lately, ever since I saw the lovely made-in-Chicago indie film Ghostlight earlier this summer. In that movie, Dan, a middle-aged construction worker (Kei…
The Revival celebrates its new South Loop location with Blank! The Musical, an off-Broadway hit created a decade ago by Michael Girts, T.J. Shanoff, and Mike Descoteaux. Shanoff, who also di…
Cooking as the crucible for family and friendship, as well as self-discovery, is familiar territory in theater and film. Whether it's Jenna in Waitress working out her personal angst through…
Going into a Second City revue during an election year always feels like an anxiety-making proposition and that feels even more true this year. We already know what's at stake"do we really n…
Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre moves into movement (and movements) for their summer season; next month, they open Ntozake Shange's classic choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicid…
Khaled Hosseini's 2003 novel, The Kite Runner, about the diverging paths of two boys in Kabul during the 1970s and after, is a moving and sorrowful story of how geopolitical, class, and reli…
If you've ever imagined how Oscar Wilde would fare in contemporary queer Chicago life, look no further than Strawdog Theatre's sparkling and delightful adaptation of The Importance of Being …
Martin Crimp's 1997 play, Attempts on Her Life, won international acclaim. But Crimp, like fellow controversial 90s Brit playwright Sarah Kane, remains more talked about than seen onstage, a…
Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) has seemingly existed in popular culture mostly as a footnote to other, better-known civil rights figures. In George C. Wolfe's Rustin and Ava DuVern…