Chicago

ALMOST A FULL MOON The theater has been sorely affected by electronic communication. Since the advent of the internet, at least, the cumbersome amount of news bits and twittering has infected storytelling like a cancer. Modern playwrights must be so caught up in instant missives and self-promotion on Facebook (or some such nonsense) that even…

WHEN UNIONS RULED THE EARTH Outrageously overdue for revival (the last one was at Marriott Theatre in 2004), this irresistible 1954 Broadway classic harks back to a time when producers could actually pin a plot on a threatened strike by union workers in the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Solidarity, alas, isn’t…

CHICAGO CAD MAKES BAD LOOK GOOD Sassy and brassy Pal Joey is  a wondrous rouser that spins the tale of a roué gone rotten in Depression-era Chicago. Porchlight Music Theatre gained the exclusive rights to Rodgers and Hart’s original 1940 version of their masterwork, and is staging a  glorious revival at Stage 773 (they’ve even restored “I’m…

ALICE FALLS THROUGH  AT LOOKINGGLASS “I miss myself.” That’s the plaintive cry from  the titular character of  Still Alice, adapted from Lisa Genova’s book, and presented by Lookingglass Theatre Company.  The didactic  new work recalls Arthur Kopit’s Wings as it shares the struggle from the inside out of Prof. Alice Howland, a 50-year-old brain researcher who senses – but can’t…

A FISH OUT OF WATER Ten years ago, the Tim Burton film Big Fish with Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney, based on Daniel Wallace’s 1998 “novel of mythic proportions,” charmed audiences with its depiction of tall tales turned true. A tribute to storytelling as a gift from one generation to the next, Big Fish is…

THEATER OF CRUELTY (TO THE AUDIENCE, THAT IS) A blast from the past, this 1963 curiosity from the once-living Living Theatre is a tribute to author Kenneth H. Brown’s total recall and recreation of a very ugly world. Written when Brown was a 27-year-old former U.S. Marine, The Brig is his attempt to replicate the…

COMPRESSED CRUELTY IN A SMALL STRINDBERG SHOCKER August Strindberg, the “father of modern psychological drama,” told his publisher that Creditors, a drama that he prized as much as he did his masterpiece Miss Julie (also written in 1888) was “humorous, loveable, all of its characters sympathetic.” Nothing could be further from the truth – as…

YOU GOTTA HAVE FAITH The adventurous playwriting of Tarell Alvin McCraney, who  wrote  the successful “Brother/Sister Plays” (In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size, and Marcus),  is the reason he is Steppenwolf’s newest ensemble member. Now  comes the  fervently meant Steppenwolf Theatre Company world premiere Head of Passes, directed by Tina Landau. The play, McCraney’s African-American version of…

FORGING COMEDY FROM CHAOS Early in The Second City’s 101st revue Let Them Eat Chaos, the excellent Second City veteran Katie Rich sits on the stage alone and alternately chats with the audience, and sings and plays some simple notes on a mini-xylophone. Mixing romantic clichés with ribbing (every parent has a least favorite child,…

A FAMILY HAUNTED BY ITSELF Even among dysfunctional clans – an apparently exhaustible topic for today’s theater – Jason Grote’s self-haunted family in Maria/Stuart gets laurels for looniness.   Unflinchingly depicted in Marti Lyons’ Chicago premiere for Sideshow Theatre Company, these six relatives hide more secrets that the two-act, 130-minute drama is willing to divulge. Instead…

THE FUN IN FRAUD Famed impresario P.T. Barnum banked on one cynical truth: No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. The undisputed master of the “noble art of humbug,” Barnum grew rich by providing the gullible, sensation-seeking public an inexhaustible series of “Unparalleled Attractions Never Before Seen,” many sheer flimflam,…

YOU HAVE TO MEASURE CAREFULLY At the core of this dark and fascinating tragicomedy is a situation seething with modern irony: Can you be both above the law and beneath contempt? Angelo, a sex-hating Viennese puritan, has been rashly entrusted with enforcing repressive vice laws by the supposedly absent Duke. But in Isabella, a chaste…

SMOKIN’ Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller – you may not recognize who they are but you sure know what they wrote: “Love Potion #9,” “Bossa Nova Baby,” “Kansas City.”   A team famed for their much-recorded singles rather than their Broadway songs, they churned out classics over the last 60 years in all pop styles  – rhythm…

MAY THE RAP BE WITH YOU Before Othello: The Remix it was only Shakespeare’s comedies that received the Q brothers’ trademark, rap-happy revision’”Funk It Up About Nothin’ and The Bomb-itty of Errors. Who would have thought a tragedy could take it? It can. Boldly applying a hip transformation to Shakespeare domestic tragedy, this much-acclaimed venture…

NOT JUST FOR DUNGEONS & DRAGONS FANS Early in She Kills Monsters, the play’s protagonist, Agnes (Katherine Banks), strikes up a conversation with Chuck (Richard Traub), a high school student working at a comic book store. There’s a glimpse of what this scene might look like in a lesser production that chose to just play…

THE NEXT STEP(S) It’s an impressive lineup for this respected Chicago company’s annual “Spring Series”’”not just the always impressive Hubbard Street Dance Chicago but, here and elsewhere, the San Francisco-based Alonzo King LINES Ballet. That means that one dance features a sprawling expanse of 28 dancers on the Harris Theater stage, a crowd-control extravaganza to…

A DEATH IN THE UNION Hershey Felder has already regaled audiences at the Royal George Theatre with his uncanny and heartfelt recreations of George Gershwin, George M. Cohan, Frederic Chopin, Leonard Bernstein and Ludwig van Beethoven, honoring and invigorating the music as much as he concentrated their life stories. Now he delivers a solo tour…

WRITHING INTO REVELATION Alas, it’s over  – and way too soon. Luna Negra Dance Theater’s 2013 spring program celebrated works by two contemporary Spanish choreographers: guest artist Fernando Hernando Magadan and Luna Negra company member Mónica Cervantes.   Last night’s one-time-only performance at the Harris Theatre in Millennium Park, Made in Spain, confirms the troupe’s reputation for…