A Night Filled with Spirit(s): A Preview of "Gender Play, or What You Will" at Steppenwolf 1700
Returning to Steppenwolf with "Gender Play" feels like a full-circle moment for Will Wilhelm.
Returning to Steppenwolf with "Gender Play" feels like a full-circle moment for Will Wilhelm.
When audience members enter the Trap Door Theatre for Bertolt Brecht's "Galileo," they see a nearly naked man, sitting on a chair with his face to the wall. They learn that the man is the sc…
A leader in contemporary dance, the company's forty-seventh season will feature a tribute to famed choreographer Bob Fosse, an original work from Hubbard Street resident artist Aszure Barton…
With a tone that's too earnest for farce and too slight for idea-packed drama, the play feels not so much artful as awkward.Â
By choosing an audience member to come on stage and pick a comic to have a date with, "First Date Comedy Gameshow" at the Laugh Factory takes the idea of the first date to a whole other leve…
Programs like The Incarcerated Mass have turned Chicago into the home for a growing community of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated actors and playwrights who produce exciting work in an…
Celebrated British writer Lolita Chakrabarti teams up with three-time Jeff Award-winning director Ron OJ Parson for an updated presentation of "Hymn" (2021), about two estranged brothers fro…
This year, Trinity Irish Dance Company celebrates thirty-five years as the world's only Irish dance organization committed to artistic exploration and expansion of the form. I spoke with Tri…
Hilarious, thrilling and thought-provoking, "Bust" is a must-see for those who seek the examined life.
While "A Tale of Two Cities" paints a captivating and capricious visage of both Paris and London, the place to be this spring is Chicago to witness this modern revamp of a beloved classic.
"The Infinity Play" has no rules yet breaks them anyway, and Brennan and Curious Theatre Branch are like courageous explorers who've travelled into the unknown to bring back delicacies like …
Any play that takes on Berlin during the Weimar Republic era must operate in "Cabaret'"s long shadow. "Berlin," now in its world premiere at the Court Theatre, tells stories from the same pe…
The festival promises to be as thorough and wide-ranging an introduction to absurdism as local audiences are apt to experience.
All in all, particularly if you have never seen "Man of La Mancha," this imaginative production should be top of mind.
As the season nears its annual summer pause, an all-star lineup of choreographers and companies take the stage in May.
Chicago theaters take us through history, from Galileo's heliocentrism to the invention of robots.
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…
Funny, thought-provoking and well-written, "A Jukebox for the Algonquin" is not just a "play about old people" but a contemplation on how to find joy among sorrow.
Running at three hours with two intermissions, "Prayer for the French Republic" is an engaging and thoughtful play that avoids being dragged down by the heaviness of the subject matter.
A co-production of Hedwig Dances and Germany's Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, the programs celebrate the German modernist art and design movement with a trio of performances: "Meta|Mor|Phos," "L…
For some artists, recognition flares up for a hot season or two when they seem everywhere all at once, but then their sparkle burns off. Then there are folks like Ron OJ Parson.
In Mamet's usual acerbic style, we learn that in a world of high-stakes competition there are no friendships. Each act is like a Socratic dialogue, brutal refutations of the virtues of kindn…
"Translations" is a provocative and brilliant play that stands alone as drama.
W. Kamau Bell started out as a popular presence on the Chicago comedy scene in the mid-nineties, and his biggest love has always been for performing as a stand-up.
Ten years ago, Vershawn Sanders-Ward created a piece about the pernicious nature of racial bigotry in America for her then young company. Now, for Red Clay's sixteenth season, Sanders-Ward i…