Chicago

A KILLER REVIVAL Drury Lane’s Dial M for Murder may be set in 1950s London, but under Adam Immerwahr‘s taut direction, the suspense feels freshly sharpened. Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation keeps the bones of Frederick Knott’s 1952 thriller intact while daringly reimagining one key element: Margot Wendice’s affair is now with another woman. It’s a…

A NEWFOUND(LAND) WAY OF LOOKING AT MUSICAL THEATER It’s always a joy — and a rarity — to see a musical I’ve witnessed before reemerge as something fresher than the first time I saw it. Such is the case with the astounding production of the popular musical Come from Away at Paramount Theatre in Aurora….

SINK YOUR TEETH INTO THIS BLOODY CUT OF MEAT At some time in the future, a band of rebels have staged a successful coup against the United States. The prevailing system of order has been violently overthrown. Cities are razed to the ground, with surviving citizenry housed in camps. Food is scarce. Medicine is scarcer….

CARB-LOADERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE! “For the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread…†Alright, so that’s not from Julius Caesar but Coriolanus, that other Shakespeare play about a politician undone by his own ambition and hubris (and that coincidentally also features a character called Brutus), but in this “ad-rap-tation” of the Bard’s…

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. — John Keats Sleep-deprived and fortified with four cups of coffee, I hauled my cranky, cynical self on a Sunday morning to the Chicago Children’s Theatre in the West Loop to watch the opening production of their 20th season: a musical of Leo Lionni’s Frederick, a Caldecott Honor…

TWO CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR An aging, reclusive movie star strikes up a relationship with a struggling writer. It may sound familiar but this isn’t Sunset Boulevard, more’s the pity. The star in question is screen legend Ava Gardner, who, in the late 1980s, contracted British journalist Peter Evans to ghostwrite her autobiography….

THREE WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL In 1978, five women gather in an upper-middle-class home in Karaj, Iran, to primp and prepare themselves; one of them is getting married and being that they are her closest friends, the others are there to make sure she is at her best, both aesthetically and emotionally. It’s a scene…

STUNNING AND UNSETTLING, MR. WOLF IS AT THE DOOR Steppenwolf Theatre’s Chicago premiere of Mr. Wolf is a searing examination of parental sacrifice, loss, and the elusive nature of home. Under K. Todd Freeman’s direction, this production takes what could be an exploitative premise and instead delivers something hopeful and profound. Caroline Neff, Namir Smallwood,…