Chicago

KNIGHTS AND ACROBATS AN ODD PAIR AT LOOKINGGLASS Circus Quixote—Lookingglass Theatre’s fun spectacle best suited for a family crowd—is an ambitious attempt to merge Miguel de Cervantes’ timeless tale, Don Quijote of La Mancha, with impressive circus artistry. While the production offers tantalizing talents, it ultimately feels like an unfinished work. Michel Rodríguez Cintra The…

Frida … A Self Portrait Enlightens and Beguiles with Impressive Force You’d have to go a long way to find someone with as potent a life force as Frida Kahlo’s. She left this branch of existence just over 70 years ago, in 1954, and still, there’s something about her spirit that continues to enthrall the…

A BRILLIANTLY BRACING LOOK AT LOVE’S OTHER SIDE Romantic love is rarely easy. Even when a relationship progresses from first attraction to full commitment to picture-perfect nuptials, there are no guarantees. Since its 1983 debut in San Francisco, Sam Shepard’s hour-long one-act Fool for Love, written after a difficult divorce, has become a template for…

NOW VS. THEN A historic confrontation between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., America’s most influential conservative intellectual, took place on February 18, 1965 in a packed Cambridge Union in England. Broadcast live on the BBC and later re-broadcast across America, the question up for…

Steep Theatre Company’s A Slow Air: An Astonishing Journey Into Forbidden Territory “Estrangement” is an unfriendly word that carries with it all kinds of negative connotations–hostility, alienation, distrust, anger and, somewhat paradoxically, very often confusion. It’s also a word that many people are ashamed of or are uncomfortable talking about; especially when it’s a part…

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE FUN HOME One of the first penetrating statements Alanna Chavez makes very early as Alison Bechdel in Porchlight’s Fun Home, now playing at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, is that she “doesn’t trust memory”. To compensate, her character discovers cartooning as the most suitable vehicle for chronicling her journey…

EXCAVATING THE PAST TO SOLVE PUZZLES ABOUT THE PRESENT Family is so integral to our identity that it’s difficult not to be enthralled by them. A complicated source of delight, distress, curiosity and mystery, no matter how much they change and evolve, grow or shrink, they remain a source of limitless fascination. The spirit of…

A HEARTWARMING ADAPTATION The world premiere of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women adapted by Lauren Gunderson as a co-commission from Northlight Theatre, City Theatre, People’s Light, and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is a delightful yet imperfect exploration of the beloved classic novel. By framing the story with Alcott herself as a narrative presence, Gunderson offers audiences a meta-theatrical…

AN INCREDIBLE SCORE; A FINE PRODUCTION; A FUNNY AND POIGNANT FRACTURED FAMILY PORTRAIT; WHY, THEN, DOES THIS REVIVAL NOT EMOTIONALLY RESONATE? Court Theatre and Timeline Theatre‘s joint production of the sung-through musical Falsettos offers a technically superb exploration of a family in flux during the cusp of the AIDS crisis with exceptional vocal talent and…

INTO THE WOODS ACCOMPANIED BY TWO PIANOS? IN A STOREFRONT THEATRE? IT’S A DREAM COME TRUE Kokandy’s production of Into the Woods directed by Derek Van Barham with music direction by Nick Sula is a clever reimagining of this Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine classic for a storefront theatre space. Most notably, this production reimagines the orchestrations…

ROYAL SHAKESPEARE’S RADIANT PERICLES All the indicators promised that it’d be special: after a 30-year lull, England’s Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) entered a new and ongoing partnership. Part of this refreshed collaboration included bringing RSC’s production of Shakespeare’s seldom seen Pericles to Navy Pier. But it wasn’t until the first…

The devil’s voice is sweet to hear. — Stephen King, from the novel Needful Things Steppenwolf’s production of Leroy and Lucy by Ngozi Anyanwu is a seductive and life-affirming reimagining of the legend of Robert (Leroy) Johnson and his deal with the devil. Little is known about Robert Johnson’s life, largely because it was so…