Chicago

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. — John Keats Sleep-deprived and fortified with four cups of coffee, I hauled my cranky, cynical self on a Sunday morning to the Chicago Children’s Theatre in the West Loop to watch the opening production of their 20th season: a musical of Leo Lionni’s Frederick, a Caldecott Honor…

TWO CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR An aging, reclusive movie star strikes up a relationship with a struggling writer. It may sound familiar but this isn’t Sunset Boulevard, more’s the pity. The star in question is screen legend Ava Gardner, who, in the late 1980s, contracted British journalist Peter Evans to ghostwrite her autobiography….

THREE WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL In 1978, five women gather in an upper-middle-class home in Karaj, Iran, to primp and prepare themselves; one of them is getting married and being that they are her closest friends, the others are there to make sure she is at her best, both aesthetically and emotionally. It’s a scene…

STUNNING AND UNSETTLING, MR. WOLF IS AT THE DOOR Steppenwolf Theatre’s Chicago premiere of Mr. Wolf is a searing examination of parental sacrifice, loss, and the elusive nature of home. Under K. Todd Freeman’s direction, this production takes what could be an exploitative premise and instead delivers something hopeful and profound. Caroline Neff, Namir Smallwood,…

NOBODY PUTS THIS BABY IN A CORNER A set doesn’t get any sparser than the one for Gangsta Baby, in the sense that there isn’t one. You step in off the street into a basement with two dozen chairs arranged along the walls. In a corner is a small built-in kitchenette, original to the building….

A CLAUSTROPHOBIC MISERY AT CITADEL Citadel Theatre’s production of Misery by William Goldman, based on the novel by Stephen King, is a respectable staging that scratches the itch for a spooky night out this fall, even if it doesn’t fully deliver the chest-tingling suspense of King’s original. As a frequent reader of King’s thrillers, I considers Misery…

TAKE A TRIP DOWN THIS RABBIT HOLE Coping with familial grief has long been fertile ground for theatre, from Rabbit Hole to Hamlet to Antigone, performed almost 2500 years ago at the birth of the art form. The 43rd season opener for Lifeline Theatre, Rabbits in Their Pockets—directed with an eye for character detail and…

A STAR VEHICLE ON THE ROAD TO FRANCIS GUINAN I confess to some amount of trepidation as I settled into my seat at the Goodman Theatre, launching its centennial season with the world premiere of Lee Kirk’s Ashland Avenue, directed by Susan V. Booth. For weeks I’d been inundated with promotional images of television star…

A CLIFFHANGER For the Midwest premiere of TL;DR: Thelma Louise: Dyke Remix, a rock musical by Ellarose Chary (book & lyrics) and Brandon James Gwinn (music and lyrics), the entirety of the Theo Ubique space is transformed by set designer Rose Johnson into the world’s coolest garage; an entirely appropriate location for the world’s coolest punk rock garage band; they don’t have a…

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE… Early in the proceedings of Things with Friends, the new play by Kristoffer Diaz (Hell’s Kitchen, The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity) a character dismisses another’s trauma with a snide, “I’m sorry. We all wish we didn’t see things fall”, to which the other responds, “Some of us actually wish that things…

WHO NEEDS A HEALTHY CORTEX WHEN YOU’VE GOT THIRTY-TWO SHOWSTOPPERS? The urge to create has served as a muse for countless forms of art: literature, opera, film, and theatre are littered with examples of the form. Opening the new season of Pride Arts at Center on Halsted A New Brain, a musical by multiple Tony winners,…

The circus is in town! The entrance to the Cambria Hotel on West Randolph Street in Chicago is so nondescript as to be almost invisible. Barely wider than its revolving door, you could walk right past it and not even know it was there. Once inside the tiny lobby, you’re directed to the back where…

MUFFLE THIS MUFFED; IT’S COMEDY LOST IN THE NOISE The films of Christopher Guest are sui generis. From hundreds of hours of improvisation, his talented troupe of actors create memorable characters whose consistent hallmark is their sincerity of purpose. There is nary a wink at the audience nor a trace of self-consciousness. These characters are…

Redtwist’s Smashing New Play Rattles the Status Quo with Laughter and Wisdom Are there limits to happiness? Can any one of us remotely comprehend the countless forms it can take? Those two questions rest at the heart of Sarah Ruhl’s rakish rebel of a play, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, now stirring things up…

RIDE THIS TRAIN TO THE END OF THE LINE One of Chicago’s oldest store-front theaters, City Lit, opens its 45th season with a production of Pulitzer winner, Stephen Adly Gurgis’ Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train. The play debuted almost twenty-five years ago to mostly strong reviews and has been revived frequently; its minimal set and…

FROM TWEE TO TRÈS MAGNIFIQUE It’s fascinating how some stories lend themselves better to one medium than the other. In 2001, the French romantic comedy, Amélie was an unexpected worldwide hit and briefly made an international star of its beguiling lead, Audrey Tatou. I’d watched it on release (in the theatre, natch) and thought it…