Chicago

A ROCKIN’ REVIVAL OF WEST SIDE STORY AT MARRIOTT Fans of musical theater in general and West Side Story in particular should thoroughly enjoy the Marriott Theatre revival. The production offers everything this demanding classic requires — intelligent directing, skilled high energy choreography, and a large talented cast, most of them triple threat singers, dancers,…

GROUNDHOG DAY DOES NOT BEAR REPEATING The Paramount Theatre has a well deserved reputation for presenting classy productions of musicals that approach Broadway caliber. That certainly can be said about the Paramount’s revival of Groundhog Day: The Musical. Unfortunately, a classy production is all the compliment that can be offered a tiresome show that runs…

NOT QUITE A ROYAL REIGN FOR QUEEN OF THE NIGHT After over 750 plus days dark, Victory Gardens Theater is mounting its first new production of their mainstage season and of the year.  Queen of the Night, written by travis tate, is a two-character play proving no one can get under your skin quite like family….

REDEMPTION ON REPEAT, BUT IT’S TOUGH TO GET THROUGH THIS SCORE ONCE When it comes to timing, the Paramount Theater has absolutely nailed the opening date of its latest large-scale musical. Groundhog Day: The Musical has officially opened the same week as the celebrated holiday. February 2 routinely marks Groundhog Day, a popular North American…

EVITA: SURPRISINGLY GOOD FOR YOU Evita at the Drury Lane Theatre is a prime example of a revival that preserves the virtues of the original musical while injecting enhancements that should refresh the viewing experience of even veteran fans of the show. This is the real life story of Eva Duarte as a teenager, who…

SISTERS DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES I cannot think of a better way to celebrate the beginning of Black History Month than with the musical musings and distinguished divas now honored at the Mercury Theater Chicago. Director Daryl D. Brooks has remounted his hit 2018 musical revue, Women of Soul, championing a half-century of the celebrated…

SIMPLY SUBLIME What a wonderful way to kick off Black History Month in the Windy City. The Goodman Theatre is revisiting a thoroughly engaging production of August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean. For a three-hour-plus play, there wasn’t a wasted second. Originally staged back in 2003, what a wonderful twentieth year celebration offering this is….

RELENTLESS: A BOLD DEBUT As the snow falls, a fire is currently smoldering centerstage at Theater Wit. This slow-burning ember is better known as the World Premiere, Relentless. Playwright Tyla Abercrumbie’s ferocious, fierce, determined and monolithic three-hour play is definitely a conversation starter. This parable confronts the societal pandemic of racism that has plagued this…

THE SECRET IS OUT: COUNCIL IS A WINNER The First Folio Theatre has come up with an unexpected winner in David Rice’s world premiere adaptation of Agatha Christie’s light novel of international intrigue The Secret Council, originally titled The Secret Adversary when it was first published in 1922. Andrés Enriquez and Melanie Keller The novel…

FIREFLIES SHINES BRIGHT AT NORTHLIGHT Fireflies at the Northlight Theater takes audiences back to the fraught year of 1963 in the Deep South, where racial tensions burn hot, as black people attempt to assert their Civil Rights in the face of violent, often deadly white resistance. Playwright Donja R. Love has concentrated his single-act drama…

FIREFLIES FAILS TO TAKE FLIGHT The old adage, behind every great man is an even greater woman, has never been truer than in the new play, Fireflies, now being staged at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie. A thinly veiled, fly on the wall look at a day in the life…

WASHING AWAY DOUBTS ABOUT GREAT THEATER And now for something completely different for the holiday entertainment season, a one-man show called Dishwasher Dreams performed by a Bangladesh actor and playwright named Alaudin Ullah. For about 90 continuous minutes at the Writers Theatre, Ullah escorts the audience on a memory trip through his life as a…

AN UPDATED AND STILL OUTDATED KISS In William Shakespeare’s 16th-century comedy The Taming of the Shrew, a wandering fortune hunter named Petruchio does battle with a fiery independent woman named Katherine. The woman’s wealthy father, weary of dealing with his bumptious daughter, hires Petruchio to woo and wed Katherine for a considerable reward. Petruchio proceeds…

Pretty Woman: The Musical is an adaption of the 1990 motion picture that made a star of Julia Roberts as Vivian, a Hollywood prostitute who wants out of her life on the streets. Providentially, and illogically, Vivian meets starchy unmarried billionaire business man Edward Lewis and turns his cold heart to love in time for…