Chicago

ART, DESIRE, AND SURVEILLANCE IN CASTRO’S CUBA Scheherazade spins a tale of longing in this richly acted production In the middle of the night, two sisters are violently yanked from their beds by armed militia. Pulled into their living room, their assailants scream at them, demanding the location of banned print materials. When their search…

A CHORUS OF EXILE IN AN ARCHITECTURE OF ISOLATION Theatre Y’s North American premiere immerses its audience in complicity and unease Makai Walker Before we get into the merits of Elfriede Jelinek’s Charges (The Supplicants), now at Theatre Y in its North American premiere, we need to talk about Steven Stoll’s set: a series of…

TOLKIEN’S CLASSIC QUEST BECOMES INVENTIVE ENSEMBLE STORYTELLING A clever, resourceful adaptation that turns theatrical minimalism into maximum adventure. Taking you “There and Back Again” in the best possible way, this sparkling production is a delight. The first thing that hits you when you walk into the upstairs theater at the Greenhouse is Jacqueline Penrod’s gorgeous,…

A SAVVY, GLORIOUS UPDATE It took three productions, but Goodman’s Centennial Season has finally hit its stride. Pour one out for Richard Greenberg, one of the great American playwrights of the last several decades, who, even after his death last year, has graced us with a stellar update of a screwball gem from 1928. Philip…

It’s the little ways you try together; cry together; lie together—that make perfect relationships         – Stephen Sondheim, Company Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, in a high stone tower, there lived a beautiful woman who hated her husband of twenty-five years and waited every day for him…

“A teasin’ squeezin’ pleasin’ kinda time.” — Shania Twain As drama goes, you can’t get more low stakes than the driving event of Hugo Timbrell’s My Life as A Cowboy, now playing at the tiny Open Space Arts theater in Uptown, and extended to March. Conor, a seventeen-year-old gay man in Croydon, a dreary suburb…

This oral history of the Irish-American journey soars when it sings A history lesson masquerading as a jukebox musical, The Irish … and How They Got That Way is the creation of Pulitzer winner Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes) who wrote the book, and wove in a selection of standards spanning centuries old folk music from…

COSÌ FANTASTIC This was my third time seeing Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte. The second was Lyric’s 2018 production. While I was concerned about the three-and-a-half-hour runtime on a Sunday afternoon, I need not have worried. I had an absolute blast! The cast was outstanding, both as to their gorgeous singing and their laugh out loud…