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Theater Review: LIZARD BOY (SpeakEasy Stage)
GREEN SCALES AND SHAM I generally count on SpeakEasy Stage for stellar productions of innovative and ground-breaking plays and musicals. But that history, along with fine performances and charming musicianship from Keiji Ishiguri as Lizard Boy Trevor, Peter DiMaggio as his friend Cary, and Chelsie Nectow as Siren are not enough to rescue this production…
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Highly Recommended Event: THE 2025 3ARTS AWARDS CELEBRATION (Harris Theater)
CELEBRATING THE INDESPENSIBILITY OF CHICAGO’S CREATIVES Glowing cultural vibrancy and great world cities are so often intertwined they are effectively one. Scan the globe and nearly every city that enjoys high international prestige harbors a rich, and often dazzling, arts community. Whether it’s Paris, Cape Town, Mexico City, Lisbon, London or Hanoi, the arts explode…
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Theater Review: THE WILD DUCK (Shakespeare Theater Company in D.C.)
FOWL PLAY: WHEN THE TRUTH TAKES AIM IN THE WILD DUCK Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, now at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Klein Theatre (in a co-production with Theatre for a New Audience), is an excellent, superbly acted rendering of one of his rarely produced tragedies — a work as cynical and heavy-handed as it is…
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Broadway Review: LIBERATION (James Earl Jones Theatre)
A TIME WARP TO THE 1970s WOMEN’S MOVEMENT, REFRACTED THROUGH 2025 EYES STILL SQUINTING TOWARDS EQUALITY “Why does it feel somehow like it’s all slipping away? And how do we get it back?” Susannah Flood That’s one of the questions posed about the condition of gender equality in 2025 America at the start of Liberation,…
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Opera Review: EURIDICE (Haymarket Opera and The Newberry Consort in Chicago)
THE FIRST OPERA GETS NEW LIFE FROM HAYMARKET AND NEWBERRY CONSORT The origins of opera are somewhat obscure and not well-known. Haymarket Opera and The Newberry Consort, two of Chicago’s finest early music ensembles, aim to change that with this delightful concert performance of the first surviving opera. Written and performed for the marriage of…
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Theater Review: HELLO, DOLLY! (Musical Theatre West in Long Beach)
SWEET, CHARMING, AND BRIMMING WITH LIFE, HELLO, DOLLY! IS MUSICAL COMEDY HEAVEN It’s always extraordinary to hear a live orchestra in a musical these days — a rare and exhilarating luxury that immediately elevates the experience. Under the crisp and buoyant baton of Dennis Castellano, Musical Theatre West’s Hello, Dolly! fills the Carpenter Performing Arts…
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Theater Review: EVIL DEAD THE MUSICAL (Revolution Stage Company in Palm Springs)
BLOOD AND GORE HAVE NEVER BEEN SO MUCH FUN – OR TUNEFUL This Halloween season has seemed to be unusually focused on horror movies so it came as a welcome relief for Revolution Stages to produce Evil Dead The Musical, a side-splitting parody of the Evil Dead movie franchise. Five college students – Ash (Julian…
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Theater Review: JEKYLL & HYDE (Kokandy Productions)
TOWERING TALENT ELEVATES A MUSICAL AS SCHIZOPHRENIC AS JEKYLL & HYDE THEMSELVES Next up for Halloween, and my second gothic horror in as many days, is Kokandy Productions’ presentation of the musical, Jekyll & Hyde, first produced in 1990 with music by Frank Wildhorn, book by Leslie Bricusse, and lyrics by Wildhorn, Bricusse, and Steve…
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Theater Review: THE ADDAMS FAMILY, THE MUSICAL (Desert Theatricals)
SPOOKY CHARM MEETS UNEVEN MATERIAL The Addams Family: The Musical invites audiences into the delightfully macabre world of America’s favorite gothic household — and while the show itself can feel like it’s caught between a coffin and a hard place, Desert Theatricals’ production, which ran this past weekend at Rancho Mirage Amphitheatre breathes more life…
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Theater Review: BECOMING DADDY AF (UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA’s Nimoy Theater)
WHEN INTROSPECTION FLATLINES: DAVID ROUSSEVE’S BECOMING DADDY AF IS MORE LIKE WTF After more than twenty years away from full-length solo work, choreographer and storyteller David Roussève returns with Becoming Daddy AF, a 90-minute self-portrait presented by CAP UCLA that promises introspection but rarely delivers the emotional punch it’s built around. The premise is compelling…
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Theater Review: STRATEGIC LOVE PLAY (Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA)
STRATEGIC LOVE PLAY SHOULD COME WITH A WARNING As the old love adage goes: Boy meets Girl, Girl interrogates Boy, Boy tries to leave unsuccessfully, Girl and Boy reconvene… oh, wait, this is the new love adage. Or at least the modern dating app version presented in Miriam Battye’s new work, Strategic Love Play. Directed…
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Theater Review: PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT — THE MUSICAL (Palm Canyon Theatre)
WITH DISCO, DRAG AND DESERT DRAMA, PRISCILLA GLITTERS AT PALM CANYON THEATRE The Palm Canyon Theatre’s production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a glittery, high-octane joyride packed with campy humor, outrageous costumes, and jukebox favorites that never quit. Based on the beloved 1994 film, this jukebox musical bursts to life in a Sydney…
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Theater Review: THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (Saint Sebastian Players)
ST. SEBASTIAN PLAYERS HONORS SHIRLEY JACKSON’S EERIE INTELLECT There are more than a few reasons to head over to Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood and catch the St. Sebastian Player’s (SSP) production of The Haunting of Hill House. Chief among them is that it reintroduces us to one of the most interesting and underrated Gothic fiction…
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Theater Review: THE CHER SHOW (North Shore Music Theatre In Boston)
CLOTHES MIGHT MAKE THE MAN, BUT NOT THIS SHOW Costumes were essential to the success of superstar Cher. She and her singing partner and husband Sonny Bono first burst on the music scene in the 1960s in the brightly colored bell-bottoms and fur vests of California’s emerging hippie culture. Madeline Hudelson (Babe) and Frankie Marasa…
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Theater Review: STRANGE CARGO: THE DOOM OF THE DEMETER (City Lit & Black Button Eyes)
A Bite Out of Minimalism: Timothy Griffin’s imaginative adaptation turns Stoker’s most chilling chapter into a voyage of dread, myth, and mind In 1897, Bram Stoker published a gothic horror novel called Dracula and in doing so introduced to the world a character that has fascinated and terrified humanity for over a hundred years and…
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Theater Review: THE SOUND OF MUSIC (National Tour at The Nederlander in Chicago)
YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO SEE A BETTER PRODUCTION OF THIS EVERGREEN MUSICAL. JUST BRING SOME CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM. How do you solve a problem like the schmaltz in The Sound of Music? Or even, how do you review a populist juggernaut like The Sound of Music? It’s been sixty-five years since its first appearance on Broadway…
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Theater Review: CYMBELINE (Antaeus Theatre Company in Glendale)
THANKS TO ANTAEUS, CYMBELINE RIDES AGAIN Who knew Cymbeline could gallop? Director Nike Doukas’s new staging at Antaeus Theatre Company turns one of Shakespeare’s most notoriously unwieldy plays into something brisk, lucid, and surprisingly delightful. Though often dismissed as a late-period jumble, this Cymbeline proves that with intelligence and judicious trimming, even Shakespeare’s strangest hybrids…
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Theater Review: CHICAGO: QUEERLY ADAPTED FROM THE PLAY YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF THAT INSPIRED THE MUSICAL YOU CAN’T GET AWAY FROM (Redtwist)
ROXIE’S BACK IN TOWN! MY KIND OF PLAY, CHICAGO IS In Jazz Age Chicago, 1924 to be precise, Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner were tried and subsequently acquitted of murder. A young Tribune reporter and aspiring writer, Maurine Dallas Watkins, covered the two (unrelated) murder cases for the paper and later used them as inspiration…
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Theater Review: JULIA MASLI: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA (Pasadena Playhouse)
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA OFFERS UNITY THROUGH AN ABSURDIST GROUP THERAPY SESSION I had no idea what I was walking into when I drove out to the Pasadena Playhouse (more than an hour’s drive during traffic) to see absurdist clown Julia Masli entertain the crowd at a 70-minute absurdist clown’s group therapy…
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Theater Review: MOTHER MARY (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre)
LOVE IN UNEXPECTED PLACES Two women, from quite different backgrounds, meet in Boston in 1968, a time and a place where ancient grudges and present-day conflicts seem sure to keep them apart. And yet, their very differences bring them together. Adriana Alvarez (Jo) and Tara Forseth (Mary) convincingly portray a transformation from friendly kindness to…
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