If you wanted an example of a pretty well-structured contemporary American play you could do worse than Bruce Graham's drama The Outgoing Tide. Graham's characters"an elderly man with Alzhei…
What's most apparent in Peter Samelson's Magic, Love, Mystery is the magician's love for his craft and its ability to bond people. Samelson is a seasoned magician who's renowned for how he b…
Anna Ouyang Moench is having a moment on Chicago stages right now; her play In Quietness, about women at an evangelical Homemaking House, is playing at A Red Orchid Theatre. Now Gift Theatre…
The term storefront gets tossed around as a catchall for modestly budgeted performance spaces. But Chicago stage artists and viewers are likely familiar with an even more shoestring venue ca…
Dav Pilkey's popular series of kids' books about a crime-fighting superhero mutant dog form the basis for this touring TheaterWorks USA musical production, which has settled in at the Studeb…
Lin-Manuel Miranda's pre-Hamilton musical In The Heights (book by Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes) is not a work of genius, but it deserves a better production than it's currently receiving at Marri…
Illinois. Land of Lincoln. The Prairie State. The Inland Empire State. Home to Illinoisans, Illinoisians, and Illinoians. Algonquin for "tribe of superior men." State bird: the cardinal. Sta…
The 6th Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival swept through Chicago as vigorously as the cold front that accompanied much of it, and puppets dominated venues all around Chicago for t…
Ma'at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre's (MPAACT) latest production, a revival of Carla Stillwell's 2012 adaptation of Orron Kenyatta's poetry (also directed by Stillwell),…
The deepfake AI-generated images of Taylor Swift swirling around the Internet inevitably came to mind on opening night of Goodman's Highway Patrol"if only to make me think that, all things c…
What if you took Winnie and Willie from Samuel Beckett's Happy Days and ran them through a blender with a Neil Simon midlife urban comedy, like The Prisoner of Second Avenue, tossing in a ca…
Magic in the Stars offers favorites for all ages. The post Disney on Ice is more than <i>Frozen</i> appeared first on Chicago Reader.
Seventeen blows in seven seconds. That's what it took to end Benny Paret's life, and forever change Emile Griffith's. The two men met for the third and final time in the ring on March 24…
Gioachino Rossini's rambunctious 200-year-old score for his comic opera, La Cenerentola, gets very serious attention in Lyric Opera's current revival of a 55-year-old production. Original di…
Trap Door Theatre kicks off its 30th season with a bang"or, perhaps more accurately, a ceaseless volley of cannon fire"presenting the mother of all anti-war plays. On a sparse stage decorate…
For a typical Chicago theatergoer attending A Red Orchid Theatre's local premiere of In Quietness (directed by ensemble member dado), the community it depicts likely seems as alien as it ini…
As an admirer of classic Broadway musicals, I was excited to catch Ginger Minj and Gidget Galore in The Broads' Way at Mercury Theater's Venus Cabaret. I wasn't disappointed. The pair perfor…
Longtime cabaret chanteuse Meghan Murphy has always had an outsize stage persona. For years her "Big Red" shows (the name refers to both Murphy's supermodel stature and flaming red hair) hav…
I've been seeing Beau O'Reilly's plays for over 30 years. But somehow it never occurred to me until taking in the current revival of O'Reilly's 2003 play, Hit Me Like a Flower, how much this…
Teatro ZinZanni Presents: Love, Chaos, & Dinner has been a reliably entertaining fantasia of top-tier circus hijinks since it debuted here way back in the before times of 2019. (For a fe…
The whole time I was watching Shrek: The Musical, I hoped I was witnessing a pre-Broadway tryout"something susceptible to fixing. But I should have known better"it is a final product of play…
Gregory Stewart's tribute to Nat King Cole doesn't break the predictable mold of biographical concerts/plays, but in the cozy environment of the Venus Cabaret space at Mercury Theater Chicag…
As small miracles go, American Blues Theater opening their lovely new two-theater venue on North Lincoln just in time for their annual presentation of It's a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago!…
Originally a 1952 teleplay, Frederick Knott's thriller hit the West End before being turned into a 1954 film by Alfred Hitchcock. Dial M for Murder got another theatrical makeover from Jeffr…
Who knew Betty Boop had imposter syndrome and was tired of being such a generational baddie? Also . . . who knew she was Black? In Boop! The Musical she is"and somehow the original cartoon c…