2,444 stories from chicagoreader.com
Alexis J. Roston's sixth go-round playing jazz legend Billie Holiday in the last year of her life is beautifully layered, heartbreaking, and still affirming of the great vocalist's accomplis…
Appropriation, wordplay, riffs on news headlines, improv skits, and a grab bag of absurdist tropes get thrown in a hat to very uneven ends in Curious Theatre Branch's set of four half-hour p…
Big Fish bombed on Broadway. Based on Tim Burton's 2003 movie version of Daniel Wallace's 1998 novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions, the show, with a score by Andrew Lippa and a boo…
When The Revival theater opened its doors in 2015 at the corner of 55th Street and University Avenue, its intent was to pay homage to improv's earliest roots. Paul Sills formed the Compass P…
Every time I hear someone describe Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights as a "romance," I die a little inside. It's a portrait of dysfunction, abuse, codependency, and revenge. Which, sure, I…
Jasmine Sharma's Radial Gradient, directed in its world premiere at Shattered Globe Theatre by Grace Dolezal-Ng, is the story of two students and their bid to enter a sorority at their unive…
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…
Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol on June 3, 1968, out of anger that he wouldn't produce her play/manifesto Up Your Ass. Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, out of anger at …
In a world . . . where Norse mythology meets prog rock on a set seemingly built by precocious middle-schoolers, brothers Jorik and Jarl battle one another and several deities (best known to …
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…
Like many of the American musical theater greats, Cabaret is one of those shows that can suffer from style-creep, wherein an unwritten but generally agreed-upon aesthetic tradition grows int…
Redtwist's rolling world premiere of The Great Khan with the National New Play Network couldn't be better timed. When Florida's Department of Education had just rejected an Advanced Placemen…
Christina Anderson's luminous and wise the ripple, the wave that carried me home (now at the Goodman in a coproduction with Berkeley Rep, where it played in fall 2022) unfolds in mesmerizing…
I remember when rock was young. So, evidently, does Chicago playwright Katie Coleman, as she well attests in her intelligent, heartfelt play about two young Soviets, hopping and bopping to a…
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…
In Witold Gombrowicz's fictional kingdom of Burgundia, the royal court is bored. One day Prince Phillip (Keith Surney) and his consort, Simon (Gus Thomas) happen upon Ivona (Laura Nelson), a…
For the uninitiated like I was, just entering the Chicago Magic Lounge on a chilly Wednesday evening was a thrill. Via a secret door, the faux-laundromat entry gives way to a luxe theater bo…
The hardest working queen in showbiz? That'd be Ginger Minj (fight me). After three stints on RuPaul's Drag Race (season seven, All Stars 2, and All Stars 6), the breakout star and two-time …
First Folio Theatre planned to produce the world premiere of Heather Chrisler's adaptation of Little Women back in spring of 2020, but COVID took that production out just as surely as scarle…
Nearly 69 years since its birth as a smash movie, the seasonally ubiquitous White Christmas remains a good, old-fashioned holiday chestnut. It also remains an objectively odious, old holiday…
Otherworld Theatre, known for its sci-fi and fantasy works, takes us into the winter solstice with Tales From the Wandering Wyvern Inn: A One-Shot Immersive LARP. If you are a fan of esc…
During the holiday season there are traditions all over the world. I hope that Strawdog's Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins maintains its place as a Chicago seasonal perennial. Now in its fif…
I've now seen the North American tour of Dear Evan Hansen twice in Chicago, and both times I've come up short trying to feel the emotional connection that so many fans have with this show. M…
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, first presented on Broadway in 1978 and memorably mounted as a film in 1982, is ironically one of the most prescient musicals for the 21st century. The s…
Him (Jennifer Lim) coughs on the smoke of the incense she lights as she bows to a temporary altar in her kitchen in Carrollton, Texas. Ma (Wai Ching Ho) is propped up on a hospital bed, wher…
