Chicago

THE PARTY IS NOT OVER Whether the words flowed from the terrific team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the prolific and dynamic Sammy Cahn, or a very young Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne was a composer for all lyricists. As supple in his melodies as his writers were in their verse and lifting as much…

THE PAUSES THAT DON’T REFRESH Presaging more darkness to follow, The Room, the first play by the late Harold Pinter, is an hour-long psychological thriller from 1957. Full of dour portent, it’s further proof that Halloween only needs humans for horror. Creepily directed by Dado at A Red Orchid Theatre, this six-person one-act practically patents…

LYRIC BRINGS HOME THE GOLD Wagner’s Ring Cycle has arrived in Chicago and it is magnificent. If you’re like me and you’ve never seen it before, then prepare yourself for an experience beyond imagining. Richard Wagner’s epic fantasy features a cast of gods, giants, dwarves, and nymphs, a plot contrasting love and beauty with power…

THREE CATHERINES, YOU’RE OUT If you were one of his sextet of spouses, outlasting Henry VIII wasn’t just a feat of survival’”it became a political statement. The last and possibly least known of this Bluebeard’s six wives, Catherine Parr was the most learned and devout consort. A shrewd negotiator in domestic and foreign affairs, she…

FRIENDLY FOOLING Is stuff magical only because it can’t be explained? Perhaps it’s more than just the absence of logic, probability, or reason. There’s a presence too: Magic evokes a child-like sense of wonder in the oldest adults, rewarding their imagination more than their ignorance. At least that’s the working philosophy of House Theatre’s master…

LIEBESTOD WAS NEVER DARKER For three performances only, a beloved Chicago movie palace becomes  an opera house. Acoustically accurate but with sight lines that worsen toward the back, the Music Box Theatre, a Spanish Rococo treasure, is currently hosting Chicago Opera Theater’s local premiere of Swiss composer Frank Martin’s The Love Potion (Le Vin Herbé). Dissonant…

T&T&T&T&T&T… There’s a reason why Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, newly revived by the original New York producers, was a 16-year Chicago hit. Throughout the last century this fake pageant with real fun played to a million not so innocent bystanders. A huge hit showcased in three venues (a bar, chapel and reception room) in Pipers…

BLACKOUT LOVE Winsome and warm-hearted, Fly by Night is an affecting chamber musical which premiered in 2014 at Playwrights Horizon. The two-act labor of love by Will Connolly, Michael Mitnick and Kim Rosenstock celebrates human connectedness, most pointedly in love. In their tender-hearted, tough-minded work’”an Our Town where the place is NYC–the connections are also…

KILLER ROSES AND A HUNCHBACK HORROR As disease follows famine, the 100 Years War succumbed to the War of the Roses. It makes sense that the titles of the two parts of Barbara Gaines’ massive compilation  Tug of War are “Foreign Fire” and, now, “Civil Strife.” Whether a ground-grabbing feud between 15th-century England and France or…

LETTING GO, NOT GIVING UP This is a long and leisurely play that generically examines the leaving of life–as in how, when, why and where to say goodbye. Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s world premiere Visiting Edna, by Tony-winning David Rabe (author of the Vietnam War saga  Streamers), is a major debut for the Tony-winning troupe to launch…

FIVE FINGERS, ONE JOKE Unholy rolling, Hand To God is a one-joke coming-of-age comedy, a Twilight Zone episode on steroids. Robert Askins’ two-act 2011 travesty treats demonic possession as a schizophrenic rite of passage: A twisted teenager suddenly takes orders from the hand puppet at the end of his arm. Hell breaks loose. A Victory…

WHEN YOU WISH UPON A THEME PARK You just know that the title The Happiest Place on Earth is ironic–or, like Ringling Brothers’ “greatest show on earth,” bombastic. How could it not be, given the subject? Over the last 66 years, Disneyland, Walt’s first conceptual amusement park, has become a byword for bourgeois escapism from…

GOODMAN GIVES GOTHAM GLORY Wonderful indeed. Wonderful Town, Leonard Bernstein’s 1952 tribute to the ever juicy Big Apple, has been wrongly overshadowed by the other N.Y.C. musicals he wrote before and after’”On The Town and West Side Story. It more than holds its own. With captivating lyrics by the wizard team of Betty Comden and…

LIGHTS OFF BUT LIVING LARGE In The Heights, a two-time Tony-winning 2008 musical, celebrates a place that doesn’t quite reward the torrid devotion of its likable characters. They both delight in and want to depart from Washington Heights in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a close-knit neighborhood populated by Hispanics from Puerto Rico, Cuba and the…

DEATH BY COMMENTARY Glib, pat, and smug, Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fucking Bird disrupted and deconstructed Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. Audiences loved it for its bratty, “in-your-face” 21st century bravado. Now a Midwest premiere by Lookingglasss Theatre Company, Posner’s latest updating (downdating is a better term), Life Sucks is not to be confused with Mel Brooks’…

MAKE ROME GREAT AGAIN Julius Caesar:  It’s a strong choice for an election year, a timely reminder of why we prefer peaceful changes of power to assassinations and their inevitable knee-jerk revenge. It’s unsurprising that Shakespeare’s most political play centers on a political murder, the ultimate act of censorship, whether done in togas or, as in…

AN EXPERIENCE NOT TO BE MISSED On a website which attempts to list every Anton Bruckner orchestral recording offered to the public, the discography collector and annotator John F. Berky states that the Austrian composer “expanded the concept of the symphonic form in ways that have never been witnessed before or since. When  listening to a…

HELL IS THIS MUSICAL An achingly forgettable world premiere, Helldrivers of Daytona is a nasty piece of art. Flagrantly referencing those dreadful Elvis movie musicals (thus lowering the bar from the start), this tale of hotrod racers in 1965 perpetrates bikini-beach-musical clichés and an I.Q.-shrinking pandering to teenage trivia and spring-break fantasies. But, unlike intelligent…

WHITE TRASH DIRTY LAUNDRY Scarcity is a fine title for a play that lacks a lot. Ugly is as ugly does: Lucy Thurber’s bottom-feeding modern melodrama, a Redtwist Theatre Chicago premiere, works overtime to dumb down characters who, to start with, were ingrown, missing-link, birdbrained stereotypes. Like the Showtime series Shameless, the movie Deliverance, or…

SELF-RACIAL PROFILING FOR FUN AND PROFIT Reviewing stand-up comedy, as opposed to dramatic monologues or one-man shows, is not my forte. But occasionally a mind-opener like Ultra American: A Patriot Act, an 80-minute world premiere hosted by Silk Road Rising at the Chicago Temple, deserves to be dealt with as drama. In this not at…