2,444 stories from chicagoreader.com
The dramaturgy displays alone for Mercury Theater Chicago's Big River, based on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, taught me more about Mark Twain's 1830s-set, biting antislavery novel than I l…
If verisimilitude and timeliness were all it took to create a great play, Ken Green's world premiere comedy-drama about working in big-box retail would be a home run. Its dialogue captures e…
Environmental peril is the norm. News streams whisper about the climate crisis, relentlessly broadcasting the planet's daunting existential threat. However, nothing seems to change. Kids, bo…
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 …
Chicago actor and community organizer Arti Ishak was tapped to audition for Hatefuck in 2020. They found the script exciting, like nothing they'd ever read. But the production was ultimately…
The woods are leaf-free spires of light, Cinderella's sisters are outfitted in bad 80s prom dresses, and Rapunzel's coil of blonde hair is a rope in the national touring production of Into t…
Eclectic Full Contact Theatre's first full-length production in Chicago since 2019, a world premiere penned by Maggie Lou Rader, is haunting, literally. Based on the first reported instance …
The devil goes down to Washington (D.C.) in the 1955 musical Damn Yankees, and he's rarely been more irresistible than in his current incarnation at the Marriott Lincolnshire. Damn Y…
Cutting Oscar Wilde's 1895 classic comedy of manners down to a sleek 90-minute running time is a bold step, but Theatre Above the Law's current staging, directed by Tony Lawry, manages that …
House Musical: Coming of Age in the Age of House, the new community production running at Center on Halsted's Hoover-Leppen Theatre, is a great history lesson on the genre and Black Chicago …
To break in their new North Lawndale space, Kezia Waters directs Theatre Y's production of Jackie Sibblies Drury's 2012 meta meditation on colonialism, genocide, and racial trauma. (The play…
Hearken back to a simpler time"the pandemic"and join Mira, a classical violinist, and Beckett, a folk music academic, as they escape their Brooklyn apartment and head to a hootenanny in Geor…
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…
Airness, now playing at the Citadel Theatre, delivers a rocking good time, laughs, and a rock classic earworm to follow you home. Chelsea Marcantel's play follows the journey of Nina (an ear…
The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a delightful, mesmerizing production created by Jonathan Rockefeller that's been traveling the globe for the last five years. Chicago Children's Theatre first …
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), …
The phrase "white spaces" evokes quite a few strong images. Kohl's. The LDS Church. Late-night talk show desks. Bar Harbor, Maine. And, for too many comics, improv clubs. It's no secret that…
Donnetta Lavinia Grays's play is about the limits of love"both in what it can accomplish, even when it feels infinite, and in what it can tolerate before it disappears. Monique (the protean …
Aleshea Harris's What to Send Up When It Goes Down, produced by Congo Square Theatre last year, provided a trenchant and sometimes anguished portrayal of how racialized violence affects Blac…
Jessica Dickey's world premiere at Remy Bumppo (directed by Marti Lyons) has some echoes of Doug Wright's I Am My Own Wife: the playwright appears as a character, researching the life of a h…
A simple lit rooftop, church steeple, or body-as-a-temple metaphor greets you as you enter the theater. Two bright lines meet in the middle, seemingly pointing upwards towards something grea…
Jonah Saesan and LanDis Frederick are veterans of two different branches of the U.S. armed forces. After being discharged in 2015, they started processing their experiences in the military t…
Motherhouse begins with a recently bereaved daughter struggling to write her mother's eulogy. Her mother's four sisters arrive to help with the task but instead reenact every unresolved …
The last great production of The Cherry Orchard I saw was at Steppenwolf, nearly 20 years ago. Tina Landau turned the company's upstairs theater into a near-immersive experience, with Riccar…
Though it premiered in 1981 with the Negro Ensemble Company, won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for drama, and was subsequently turned into the well-received 1984 film A Soldier's Story, Charles Fu…
