Chicago

AN OCCASION WHERE YOUTH IS NOT WASTED ON THE YOUNG The Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras (CYSO) consists of more than 100 musicians. They’ve received an international reputation as a premier orchestral ensemble, and recently performed at the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah Country Club.  At their Fall Concert  in  Orchestra Hall, the youth performers file to their chairs…

WORTH THE FARE Hellcab opened in Chicago in 1992 for a 12-performance run and the immediate audience buzz had the show playing for the rest of the decade. Now it is is back at the Profiles Theatre to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary. To the legion of playgoers who flocked to the original production for…

RETRO GERSHWIN STILL BESTS TODAY’S STANDARDS Like the unsurpassable Crazy for You, My One and Only is more than more than a dozen recycled Gershwin tunes. In the spirit of those daffy Jazz Age musicals and Gershwin’s own Princess Theatre offerings (here the model is Fred Astaire’s 1927 romp Funny Face), this Tony-winning song-and-dance spectacle,…

MINING MEMORIES Adam Guettel’s Floyd Collins remains the ultimate spelunking musical as it depicts a cave explorer entrapped by both hard rock and a media spectacle. The Burnt Part Boys, a 90-minute slice of coal by bookwriter Mariana Elder, composer Chris Miller and lyricist Nathan Tysen (originally premiered by Playwrights Horizon), is less ambitious and…

NOT IN THE CARDS Northlight audiences should cut the theater’s revival of The Odd Couple some slack. The production took a major hit when co-star George Wendt was forced to drop out of the show only a few days before the scheduled opening for medical reasons. So the production pulled Marc Grapey out of the…

THERE’S A HOLE IN DONUTS’ PROMISING STORY Arthur Przybyszewski, the gray bearded and ponytailed proprietor of a donut shop in Chicago, enters his store one morning to find it vandalized. Two policemen and the whistleblowing next-door neighbor are already there, witnesses to the trash, tossed chairs, and graffiti. Arthur enters without a word, examines the…

TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE PLAY Developed by Raven Theatre’s Workshop Series, these ten hit-and-run “playlettes” by John Weagly take only 52 minutes to rearrange reality into quirky juxtapositions and odd angles. Everything seems immediately familiar, then instantly not: An apparently innocuous wolfman refuses to be called a werewolf as he suffers a stomach ache from the…

HERE. THEN. NOW. WHEN? WHAT? WHY? Which 1970’s TV show had the nicest Nazi’s’”was it Wonder Woman or Hogan’s Heroes? Which cartoon character is stoned most of the time’”was it Shaggy from Scooby Doo? Why did the Howells pack so many clothes when they were only going on a three hour tour?   As three grown…

MONKEY BUSINESS Barrel of Monkeys has spent more than 10 years teaching writing workshops at Chicago schools, but they are best known for turning the creative writing from elementary school kids into songs, sketches, and dance numbers which are performed at their weekly show, That’s Weird, Grandma. Now they’re letting an impressive list of local…

THE MADNESS OF SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER Back in 2010, First Folio presented David Rice’s site-specific theater piece, The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe: A Love Story. If any show should be heaped with awards for concept of a production – this is it. But in this year’s restaging, director Michael Goldberg proves he knows how to…

KINETIC COOL IN MILLENNIUM PARK As evidenced at last night’s opening, Giordano Dance Chicago’s Fall Engagement’”a two-night gig at the Harris Theater’”is a major installment in the company’s very welcome 50th anniversary season. The most exciting part of the program is the world premiere of company member Autumn Eckman’s G-Force. Almost living up to its…

A RUSH TO DOOM As the breathless title suggests, there’s nothing placid or contained about Liz Duffy Adams’ hyper-poetic hybrid of interior monologues and frantic dialogue. The metaphorical/microcosmic setting is a speeding American train whose eight highly driven passengers represent Western culture literally hurtling to some unsought doom. A Midwest premiere, Adams’ “comi-threnody” gives Will…

A FELLOWSHIP IN THE RING The Opponent is a play about the gritty world of small time boxing. Brett Neveu’s world premiere two-hander at A Red Orchid Theatre explores the relationship between Tremont (aka Tre), a white, middle-aged, ex-boxer who operates a  gym in Lafayette, Louisiana,  and Donell, a young black fighter who works out in the…

I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE TITLE MEANS Every once in a while, a theater company falls in love with a script and simply must stage it. I can’t imagine any other reason that Seanachaí­ decided to present In Pigeon House, a surreal Vaudeville by Honor Molloy which, even with Brian Shaw’s vibrant staging, Patrick…

WHEN POLITICS GO FOWL All aboard!   Duck is hitting the campaign circuit so be kind to your web-footed friends by taking the family out to see Duck for President; meanwhile, don’t forget to vote. Based on the popular 2004 bestseller by Doreen Cronin and Besty Lewin, Lifeline brings the farm to life in this quirky…

A DEATH OF FRESH AIR During the height of WWII in Germany, a recently orphaned adolescent girl named Liesel is taken in by a poor couple in The Book Thief, now receiving its  world premiere production at Steppenwolf. Liesel finds solace in books, and, as a survival mechanism, has taken to stealing them, whether from the…

THE DANGERS OF TECHNOLOGY – ON STAGE AND OFF Playwright Jennifer Haley is definitely onto something in her play Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom, now receiving its Chicago premiere at Strawdog. In a suburban neighborhood in Anytown, USA, the local teens have become addicted to an Xbox video game in which the dissociative kids can…