2,444 stories from chicagoreader.com
I've seen Jersey Boys at least six times, which I mention not as a flex but for context. It's a fantastic show, but over the years the various productions have blurred together and become in…
When Harry Milas makes a royal flush materialize from the chaos of a deck we just inarguably saw shuffled at the hands of several of his 35 audience members, it's not magic. Instead, he expl…
Now in its third iteration, Steppenwolf's LookOut Series invites a local dancer to curate performances over a two-week period. This time around, interdisciplinary artist Helen Lee has put to…
British playwright Simon Stephens has been produced here so often, he's practically an honorary Chicagoan. So it's perhaps puzzling that his adaptation of Mark Haddon's 2003 novel, The Curio…
All the ingredients for a whimsical look at unlikely love are in place in Nick Robideau's Inanimate, now in its local premiere at Theater Wit under Jeremy Wechsler's direction. But like a Da…
Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire is an iconic play that lives up to its reputation. Solidly written, packed with vivid characters and terrific dialogue, the play may run nea…
Steppenwolf has long had a way with wildly dysfunctional family dramas. From Anton Chekhov's Seagull to Sam Shepard's True West to Tracy Letts's August: Osage County, the off-Loop institutio…
I can't remember the last time I left a theater a little teary and a lot inspired, with a carpe diem spring in my step. Remy Bumppo's production of John Kolvenbach's one-act rom-com, helmed …
The early moments of Leah Nanako Winkler's The Brightest Thing in the World, now in a heartfelt midwest premiere with About Face Theatre under Keira Fromm's direction, reminded me a bit of G…
In this wonderfully satisfying revue, Theo deploys its reliably exceptional voices to give the audience a sampling both deep and broad of the works of Stephen Sondheim. The program contains …
As her name suggests, Cloudia has been obsessed with clouds her entire life. In particular, she's always wanted to see a legendary Cloud Man for herself. So she moves into a cabin on Cloud M…
Evan Jackson directs and co-adapts (with Tristan Brandon) a new version of Idle Muse's 2009 reoriented riff on "the Scottish play." Told from the point of view of three young sisters as they…
This is actually Two One-Acts On A Single Set, both directed by City Lit Theater artistic director Terry McCabe and with music direction by Shraman Ghosh. The first, Waiting for Tina Meyer b…
The same day I saw Aurora Real de Asua's Wipeout at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, I read an essay by onetime Reader staffer Heather Kenny about women finding midlife empowerment in outdoor spo…
William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin's 2005 musical about a swarm of blooming, buzzing tween-age lexophiles began life as a fully improvised play, C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, created by Rebecca Feldman…
Artistic director Susan V. Booth waited a good long time after rejoining the Goodman in 2022 to direct a show of her own, but it was totally worth the wait. Her production of Margaret Atwood…
Chicago's premier BYOB live arts venue"Elastic Arts"saw the debut of a new contemporary dance and musical performance by experimental pop trio Big Pal with Emily Craver on Friday, March 8. "…
Ronnie Marmo has been extremely candid about his struggles with addiction, especially in the context of playing Lenny Bruce, as he has for several years in his show I'm Not a Comedian . . . …
The overture begins with soft and almost wistful strings creating an atmosphere of tentative beauty, like a mist entering as the sun rises"a subtle, dark, and pensive beginning to an opera n…
It's totally easy to make fun of the 1980s. Shoulder pads you could poke an eye out with. Leg warmers over fishnets. The elevation of Bret Easton Ellis into a literary celebrity. But it was …
"Sludge and slurry!" Badger (John Drea) frequently exclaims to giggles and muted repeat-backs from the littlest of audience members. Utterly enchanted, the children in this audience seem mes…
The title of David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize"winning play does double duty: it refers to mathematical proofs but also to the question of what constitutes sufficient evidence of devotion to tho…
Thirteen-year-old Amanda, not quite a Twihard herself but an avid reader who loved Twilight, would have died over Otherworld Theatre's Twihard musical parody. Thirty-one-year-old Amanda thou…
Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble's Meditations on Being is a sampler platter of eight pieces that in some way "reflects on what one remembers." Not all the work on display here necessarily mirro…
Deborah Zoe Laufer's 2007 dramedy, End Days, has intermittent moments of charm woven into a premise that is trying way too hard for profundity and whimsy. (When a show begins with someone dr…
