2,444 stories from chicagoreader.com
Shakespeare was queering the narrative before that term even existed. So it makes sense that Midsommer Flight's seventh annual production of Twelfth Night at the Lincoln Park Conservatory go…
I try not to lose myself in hyperbole, but I'm guessing Tom Whalley's Jack Off the Beanstalk (a bawdy take on the classic British "panto") is the only play this […]
The post Have yourself …
Now in its 21st year, Hell in a Handbag Productions has a ridiculously hilarious new show playing at the Center on Halsted in their The Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes […]
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Playwrights Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon wrap up their Pride and Prejudice fan fiction trilogy with Georgiana and Kitty, once more bringing to the center of the action characters perip…
There are two Christmas pantomimes based upon 19th-century fables currently playing on Chicago stages, and unless Mary Zimmerman has been up to some dramatic retooling, it's safe to assume t…
Uncle Joe was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The cardboard boxes littered the floor, filled with Joe's tools, Joe's college textbooks, Joe's albums and […]
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At a preshow reception introducing the Goodman's new artistic director, Susan V. Booth, executive director Roche Schulfer talked about how the theater's production of A Christmas Carol, whic…
Frank Capra's 1946 Christmas classic film is packed frame-by-frame with small moments of storytelling perfection, and as I get older, there's one that just guts me like a fish. Exhausted, [â…
After earning rave reviews during its Chicago premiere last year, Matthew Lombardo's provocative take on a holiday classic makes a triumphant return to Theater Wit. Who's Holiday follows a n…
Int. messy Chicago apartment, unseasonably hot end of November. Being a theater critic can be so isolating when you don't fit the story being told. Most of the time, I […]
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Mosque4Mosque is not a monolithic representation of the Arab American Muslim experience, and perhaps that's exactly the point. Written by Omer Abbas Salem and directed by Sophiyaa Nayar,…
Exquisitely paced and intellectually explosive, The Island at Court Theatre is a profoundly moving work of art. From the first moment, this production (directed by Gabrielle Randle-Bent, Cou…
It begins festively enough with a giant advent calendar revealing hints of the story to come. Some symbols are cheering, like wreaths and a violin. But others are mysterious"why a […]
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Like much that passes for entertainment during the holiday season, this 2010 musical, based on the 2003 movie, lives on the infinitely thin line between charm and utter stupidity. The […]
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Theatre Above the Law's sampler platter of four one-acts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (most of them seldom produced) offers mixed results. The opening piece, A Dollar […]
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At 25 years old, The Lion King has been seen by more than 110 million people and played every continent but Antarctica. Between global warming and ticket demand, it's probably […]
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Death is an often unwelcome teacher. It descends into our lives suddenly, without warning, or takes its sweet time. No matter when it finds us, Grief is right behind Death, […]
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Alice Childress's Trouble in Mind made its off-Broadway debut in 1955, but it never made the leap to the Great White Way (emphasis most definitely on "White"). The white producers […]
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Reminiscent of Shakespeare's first play The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the new Shakespeare-inspired comedy titled Malapert Love by first-time playwright Siah Berlatsky would make the bard prou…
Lifeline Theatre's acclaimed KidSeries has had good luck with the silly bucolic tales of Doreen Cronin (illustrated by Betsy Lewin), from 2003's production of Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type…
No matter your views on Christmas and the bulging Santa's sack of psycho/socio/political/familial drama wrapped up in the sparkle-plenty holiday, this much I know is true: If you aren't move…
Hansol Jung's 2016 play, Among the Dead, now in an intriguing, surprisingly funny, and sometimes quite moving production with Jackalope Theatre, occupies a bit of the same surreal territory …
The Twenty-Sided Tavern"written by David Andrew Greener Laws (aka DAGL), with game design by Sarah Davis Reynolds, and produced by David Carpenter, is an interactive, theatrical quest that i…
Fourteen years ago, First Folio Theatre presented Jeeves Intervenes, the first in what would prove to be a reliably crowd-pleasing series of adaptations by Margaret Raether of P.G. Wodehouse…
After thoroughly enjoying the shameless perversity of Kokandy Productions's Cruel Intentions, under Adrian Abel Azevedo's direction, I found Azevedo's Rent at Porchlight to bring a stark, of…
