2,444 stories from chicagoreader.com
The four sisters in Teatro Vista's ¡Bernarda! often complain about the heat, but the stifling Spanish summer is no match for the passions roiling under their mother's roof. This stylish, …
City Lit Theater's stage adaptation of Davis Grubb's 1953 novel has a dark, homespun, campfire-tale feel that suits the folksy tone of its suspenseful Southern Gothic narrative. The Night of…
Doing a gender reversal for Company, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's 1970 ironic comedy of marriage vs. singledom, is such a great idea it's surprising that nobody thought to do it befor…
At one point in Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre's excellent production of Harrison David Rivers's This Bitter Earth, the central character, Jesse (Matthew Lolar-Johnson), says to his activist boy…
Plays about the relationships between caregivers and their clients aren't new. The late Chicago playwright, actor, and disability rights activist Susan Nussbaumʼs well-received No One as …
Grab your lab coat and walk this way to Mercury Theater Chicago for Young Frankenstein, the hilarious 2007 musical with music and lyrics by the legendary Mel Brooks, based on his beloved 197…
On a clear day in Brigadoon, you can see Oklahoma. Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner's 1947 Scottish romantic fantasia is set in a far more mystical and picturesque realm than the Oklahoma…
Set in an uber-modern high-end restaurant, the three-person play Blackademics, written by Idris Goodwin, sets up a gilded cage match of the wits for two Black frenemies in academia. Newly te…
If boxing is a metaphor for life, as many scribes, boxing fans, and websites proclaim (just type "boxing as a metaphor for life" and you'll find over 1.5 million results alone), then for the…
There's a long tradition of Black American playwrights and filmmakers subverting the tropes of vaudeville and other popular entertainments to critique white supremacy and its violent power s…
There is something about Anton Chekhov's first successful full-length play, The Seagull, that attracts playwrights to try their hand at creating their own adaptations"faithful or otherwise.Ã…
Now in a short run with Broadway in Chicago before a hoped-for New York production, A Wonderful World still has a ways to go before it feels like a fully realized portrait of Louis Armstrong…
Last year for the Destinos festival and Teatro Vista, Georgette Verdin directed Paloma Nozicka's haunting Enough to Let the Light In, which amply demonstrated her ability to create chilling …
Nestled in a strip of storefronts in Marquette Park, Teatro Tariakuri (led by founder and artistic director Karla Galván) has been offering Spanish-language comedies and family shows for …
Mia McCullough's play, now receiving its world premiere at Theater Wit, is about the immovable object (denial) meeting the irresistible force (the past), with a family crushed in between. So…
Pro wrestling fans take heed: a lucha libre play is now up at the Goodman Theatre that celebrates the lively art form and spectacle of Mexican pro wrestling, where técnicos (the good guys) …
Considered a precursor to magical realism (Gabriel GarcÃÂa Márquez claims that reading it gave him the key to mapping out the story for One Hundred Years of Solitude), Juan Rulfo's 1955…
Because we live in stupid times, Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones series of kids' books about an enthusiastic first-grader ended up at number 71 on the American Library Association's list of to…
For the third year running, Theatre Above the Law in Rogers Park presents a cornucopia of fairy tales by and about the Brothers Grimm, concocted by Michael Dalberg and directed by Tony Lawry…
Having never seen the film or previous stage productions of Arsenic and Old Lace, I was in a great position to see it fresh at the Beverly Arts Center (BAC) in its short run that ends Octobe…
Strong acting and a powerful theme can't quite bring Juan Ramirez Jr.'s world premiere at Subtext Studio Theatre (part of Destinos: 6th Chicago International Latino Theater Festival) to life…
Through spicy tales of gossip, beautifully passionate visuals of traditional music and dance of the Yucatán Peninsula, and witty dark humor, Conchi León's renowned play La TÃÂa Marie…
With Halloween just around the corner, what could possibly be spookier than bringing together two equally scary entities: witches and mathematics. However, in Teatro Tariakuri's newest produ…
The Impostors have only been producing since 2018, and (like every other company) were on a hiatus from live production from March 2020 to fall of 2021. But they've already carved out a dist…
Last year for the Halloween season, Kokandy Productions presented Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. Now they're back with another slasher songfest: American Psycho: The Musical, adapted from …
