Tony Frankel

THE MADNESS OF SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER Back in 2010, First Folio presented David Rice’s site-specific theater piece, The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe: A Love Story. If any show should be heaped with awards for concept of a production – this is it. But in this year’s restaging, director Michael Goldberg proves he knows how to…

I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE TITLE MEANS Every once in a while, a theater company falls in love with a script and simply must stage it. I can’t imagine any other reason that Seanachaí­ decided to present In Pigeon House, a surreal Vaudeville by Honor Molloy which, even with Brian Shaw’s vibrant staging, Patrick…

A DEATH OF FRESH AIR During the height of WWII in Germany, a recently orphaned adolescent girl named Liesel is taken in by a poor couple in The Book Thief, now receiving its  world premiere production at Steppenwolf. Liesel finds solace in books, and, as a survival mechanism, has taken to stealing them, whether from the…

THE DANGERS OF TECHNOLOGY – ON STAGE AND OFF Playwright Jennifer Haley is definitely onto something in her play Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, now receiving its Chicago premiere at Strawdog. In a suburban neighborhood in Anytown, USA, the local teens have become addicted to an Xbox video game in which the dissociative kids can…

AFTERGLOW It’s with good reason that Chad Beckim’s After has been extended at Profiles Theatre. Yes, Beckim’s script undoubtedly tries to cover too much territory as he tells the tale of Monty, who has been exonerated after serving 17 years for a trumped-up charge of rape. Yet even with faults in both the playwriting and…

THE LANDSCAPE OF THE SOUL Those who were lucky enough to witness the Joffrey Ballet’s Spring Desire program this year were treated to what  may well  have been the greatest dance program in years.   The Joffrey has reached a pinnacle of form, beauty, and transplendent theatricality that  other dance companies’”indeed, most theater events’”should strive for. Now, with their…

ONE TIME ONLY FOR ONE NAME ONLY WAS ONE TOO MANY TIMES Yes, America’s got talent. And the performers on stage at Black Ensemble Theater’s beautiful new digs are packed to the gills with charm, powerful voices, and boundless stage presence. But I can’t remember being this shell-shocked and mortified at the stupendous waste of…

NOISE IS OFF It is 1944 in a field near a watering hole in Kent, England. A strapping, fine-looking, and masculine young man purveys the view and strips off his shirt. Another young man enters with his bike; he is a rail-thin, bespectacled, academic-looking peer who is also handsome, but more like Harry Potter than…

A TRIUMPHANT MASTERPIECE Rare is the theatrical experience that is so haunting and so achingly beautiful that your soul actually feels caressed and nurtured. The transcendent production at hand is Chicago Shakespeare’s revival of Sondheim and Lapine’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Sunday in the Park with George. The musical fable is based on the short…