Chicago

SOUTH OF SETTLING PROVIDES AN INTIMATE LOOK AT FAMILY LIFE The best part of the Emmy-winning television series Friday Night Lights isn’t the football drama, but the amazing chemistry between the actors that play the power couple of Coach Eric and Tami Taylor as they navigate life in small town Texas. Set in neighboring Louisiana,…

SHANGHAIED It takes a rare courage to brave Chicago’s Navy Pier during the summer. A combination of lines and advertisements threaten to ensnare you and your wallet with just a simple misstep. And amongst all this, Chicagoans like myself will be confronted with the Kafka-esque fear of feeling like one of them’”by “them,” I of…

A FRAGILE PRODUCTION STILL RESONATES Stepping from the bustling, sunny streets of Lincoln Park into Steppenwolf’s Garage Theatre feels like traveling back almost a century into the sepia-toned vision of disillusionment and despair that marked the Depression era. The dark, claustrophobic space is perfectly suited for The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams’ portrait of a family…

LITTLE-KNOWN CHICAGO DISASTER BECOMES TOWERING MUSICAL Eastland: A New Musical is the Lookingglass Theatre’s stunning meditation on one of the most terrible disasters in Chicago history: On the morning of July 25, 1915, an excursion boat overloaded with 2,500 people tipped over while docked along the Chicago River in downtown Chicago. The death toll was…

ABBA-DABBA-DO Delivered by an exuberant and attractive cast of young singers and dancers, Dancing Queen is an all-singing-all-dancing, high-energy nostalgia show that tries to churn its audience with happy memories of the songs of ABBA and other disco flag-wavers of the 1970’s. Even with no story and no dialogue, the hits, as they say, just…

A TRIUMPHANT FLY TO BUZZ ABOUT I won’t try to tell you the plot of Anger/Fly, other than that a fly lands in soup and the world ends. In Theatre of the Absurd, plot is rarely the point – and even if it is, it’s nearly unintelligible. The setting and the characters, too, are lost….

THESE MUPPETS ARE NOT FOR PUBLIC TELEVISION There is something disconcerting about watching an R-rated Muppets show. After all, for decades the Muppets television shows and movies have been the gold standard for family entertainment, funny and endearing for children and droll and hip for adults. Now comes a 75-minute live show called Stuffed and…

A RUDE AWAKENING In his 2011 Northwestern commencement address, Stephen Colbert told alumni that they may have been told to follow their dreams, but that sometimes dreams can change, especially if your first dream is a stupid one. That’s not advice that protagonist John Chapman is prepared to accept in I am Going to Change…

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO THE WEDDING DINNER? Immediate Family, written by Chicago actor and playwright Paul Oakley Stovall, is part sitcom and part dysfunctional family drama, garnished with racial and gay humor that flows into racial and gay tensions. As directed by Phylicia Rashad, it’s a pretty good play right now, but needs some tweaking…

SHOULD YOU GO TO HELL? Sarte said that Hell is other people, but playwright Ethan Coen proposes that watching other people experience hell is supposed to be hysterical. Coen’s Almost An Evening is the inaugural show in Circle Theatre’s new, more intimate space, and while J. Christopher Brown’s production can be devilishly fun at times,…

[title of review] The Northlight Theatre decided to step off of the beaten path this season, putting on the relatively unknown cult musical [title of show]. The simple premise has two writers, Jeff and Hunter, who are trying to write a show about themselves writing a show ([title of show] refers to the New York…

THE  LIBRETTO NEVER REALLY WORKS, BUT THIS PRODUCTION SURE DOES Camelot is a good musical that should be better. After all, it was composed by the team of Lerner and Loewe, of My Fair Lady immortality. And it takes as its subject one of the great romantic legends in Western culture, the reign of King Arthur…

GO FOR THE PERFORMANCE, NOT THE SCRIPT Like most one-actor plays, the new show at Writers Theatre is more satisfying as a performing showcase than as a drama. The play carries the tantalizing title of The Blonde, the Brunette, and the Vengeful Redhead, identifying three of the seven characters impersonated by an exceptionally versatile actress…

BAD COP GOOD COP The cynical title My Kind of Town acknowledges the pop song that celebrates Chicago but also a likely culture of police brutality. This is the work of investigative journalist John Conroy, who wrote 22 articles on police torture in Chicago from 1990 to 2007. Conroy may not be an experienced professional…

WHAT’S GOING ON WITH THE STORY? The tortured elements in the  life of the great rhythm and blues artist Marvin Gaye would be  fascinating fodder for a  powerfully tragic stage play. Either that, or bypass  his story, concentrating instead on the ample material Gaye left behind for a terrific musical revue. The Black Ensemble Theater premiere of The Marvin…

AN INCREDIBLY BRIGHT LIGHT The Light in the Piazza opened on March 12 at Theo Ubique and has now been extended into midsummer, and counting. It’s gathered a sheaf of rave reviews and the tiny theater is sold out by the week, possibly the most improbable local hit in recent memory. It’s not that we…

GOING NOWHERE Regarded as one of Bruce Springsteen’s best works, the 1982 album Nebraska has inspired tributes from Johnny Cash, Aimee Mann, Chris Cornell and other artists moved by its bleak look at ordinary life. Now Tympanic Theatre Company has brought its tales of murder, mortality and the unfairness of life to the stage with…

A SMALL LITTLE CREATES HUGE RESULTS For its scintillating revival of A Little Night Music, Writers Theatre has condensed the Stephen Sondheim classic into a chamber musical. The action is played out on a small thrust stage enclosed by lacy floor-to-ceiling curtains. The only set is a raised two-step platform in the middle of the…

A WAR OF IDEAS For the first forty-five minutes of City Lit’s OPUS 1861, a miracle occurred: I wept. Consistently. The simple but mighty idea is this: six actors dressed in simple army fatigues (T-shirts, camouflage pants) perform an amalgamation of Civil War songs with letters from U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan. The letters varied…