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Theater Review: THE INHERITANCE, PART 2 (The Bent)
The Bent Theatre Company Tackles – and Conquers – Part 2 of Matthew Lopez’s Epic The Inheritance This past May, Palm Springs’ LGBTQ+ company The Bent Theatre staged The Inheritance, Part 1 as the final offering of their third season. They were justifiably proud to be the first non-professional theatre on the West Coast granted…
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Theater Review: THE MARK (Babes With Blades Theatre Company at the Edge)
A revolution without an end game misses the mark, but only by this much. Babes With Blades, a theatre company that uses stage combat to create striking, thought-provoking theatre, presents a world premiere production at the Edge Theatre in Edgewater. Ensemble member Jillian Leff’s The Mark is a dystopian drama that examines a society that…
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Theater Review: REVOLUTION(S) (Goodman Theatre)
A REVOLUTION LOST IN THE (BEAUTIFUL) NOISE Revolution(s) is the first Owen Theatre production of Goodman’s centennial celebration. With a book by Zayd Ayers Dohrn and music and lyrics by multiple Grammy winning, rap-metal legend Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave), the musical examines the effects of transgenerational economic and racial injustice in modern…
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Theater Review TEATRO ZINZANNI CHICAGO (New Show for Fall/Winter, 2025-26)
A CIRCUS OF CULTURE, A CABARET OF CONSCIENCE: STEP RIGHT UP TO THE UNITED STATES OF ZINZANNI The gorgeous Art Deco Spielgeltent still sits on the fourteenth floor of the Cambria Hotel in the Chicago Loop. The front staff are still exquisitely attired and well-mannered as they guide you to your table where, as always,…
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Theater Review: FOUR PLACES (4 Chair Theatre at the Bramble Arts Loft)
All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. — Leo Tolstoy The most remarkable thing about Joel Drake Johnson’s Four Places is how it prepares you for what’s to come in its very first scene and still manages to surprise you. Opening in an intimate black box…
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Theater Review: JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE (A Noise Within in Pasadena)
AMAZING THEATER HERE AND NOW Kai A. Ealy stands in a doorway wearing a coat that looks like it weighs forty pounds. Maybe it does. His Herald Loomis has just walked off seven years of forced labor on Joe Turner’s chain gang, and the weight is literal: bones, memory, rage, the specific gravity of stolen…
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Theater Review: MISERY (Merrimack Repertory Theatre)
MISERY LOVES COMPANY… AND A GOOD PLOT Karen MacDonald and Tom Coiner do a wonderful job of animating William Goldman’s stage adaptation of Stephen King’s intriguing, twisty novel by the same title. Best-selling novelist Paul Sheldon is rescued by Annie Wilkes, his self-described number 1 fan, following a car accident during a Colorado blizzard. In…
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Theater Review: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (North American Premiere Engagement at Chicago Shakespeare)
Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s North American premiere of Paranormal Activity is guaranteed to deliver the horror movie-style scares you’re looking for this Halloween season, but if you’re looking for thematic depth, you’re searching the wrong haunted house. Cher Álvarez and Patrick Heusinger Levi Holloway took on the nearly impossible task of writing an original story for stage…
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Theater Review: PRODIGAL SON (Athenaeum Theatre)
DON’T KILL THE FATTED CALF JUST YET — THE PRODIGAL SON RETURNS EMPTY-HANDED “I was fifteen. Do you remember fifteen? For me, it was a special, beautiful room in Hell.” That brilliant line opens Prodigal Son, an autobiographical play from Oscar, Tony, and Pulitzer Prize winner John Patrick Shanley (Doubt, Moonstruck). First opening Off-Broadway in…
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Theater Review: TALES FROM THE BEYOND (Write Act Repertory)
A MILD CASE OF THE CREEPS Ah, Halloween — All Hallows’ Day, Allhallowtide, Jack-o’-lanterns, the madcap lads of West Hollywood, the troops of pint-sized witches, Iron Men and Disney princesses marauding the city’s better neighborhoods lugging trick-or-treat bags bulging with Gummy Bears, Bit-O-Honeys, and Bazooka Gum, and of course the edgy saturnalia that infests Hollywood…
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Theater Review: HOUSE OF THE EXQUISITE CORPSE V: BLOOD AND PUPPETS (Rough House at Steppenwolf)
A BEAUTIFUL NIGHTMARE IN A HOUSE THAT BLEEDS ART As a fan of the horror genre in every medium, how could I resist the chance to review something as delightfully titled as House of the Exquisite Corpse. That said, given my predilection—some would say, obsession—for avoiding all information about a show prior to viewing it,…
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Theater Review: OAK (Raven Theatre Company)
AN OAK WHOSE ROOTS WON’T LET GO A flashlight illuminating a face from below: what else could follow that image but a ghost story. And what better time for a ghost story than the month that culminates in Halloween, that night when the boundary between this and the other world is at its thinnest, when…
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Theater Review: PARANORMAL INSIDE (East West Players)
A GHOST STORY THAT EXPLAINS ITSELF TO DEATH It’s 2012 in Sherman Oaks, CA, when Thai-American life-insurance salesman Max (David Huynh) begins sleepwalking and violently lashes out at his pregnant wife Bincy (Christine Corpuz), prompting her protective Thai-born father Somboon (Alberto Isaac) to spirit her away and attempt a homespun exorcism. Max survives a second-story…
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Theater Review: JEKYLL & HYDE (San Diego Musical Theatre)
RICHARD BERMUDEZ SLAYS TWICE IN SDMT’S JEKYLL & HYDE San Diego Musical Theatre is presenting a gripping revival of the 1997 Broadway musical adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 horror short novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, commonly called Jekyll & Hyde. The story follows idealistic London physician Henry Jekyll, who…
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Theater Review: DUTCHMAN (Trap Door Theater)
ON THE THIRD RAIL: STRONG ACTORS KEEP THIS DUTCHMAN FLYING The Trap Door Theatre is a quintessential Chicago storefront theatre — it’s housed in a converted garage, accessed through a narrow walkway, almost invisible from the street — that has built its reputation on offbeat, experimental productions. Their previous production was the divisive Ghost Fetus,…
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Theater Review: PIPPIN (Coronado Playhouse)
DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT SKIPPIN’ PIPPIN Pippin offers musical theater lovers the complete package: brilliant performances, terrific directing, a stimulating book by Roger O. Hirson and a cheeky, sophisticated score by Stephen Schwartz of Wicked fame that got more than one kid addicted to its still-in-print cast album and its soaring ballads and bouncy Broadway…
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Theater Review: HARD TIMES (Appalachian Stories by Ron Rash | Word for Word & Z Space)
FAITH, FLIGHT, AND THE FIGHT TO ENDURE In our current state of political unrest — with government shutdowns and widespread uncertainty about how to make ends meet — stories about the power of the human spirit feel especially vital. Z Space and Word for Word Theatre Company present Hard Times: Appalachian Stories by Ron Rash,…
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Theater Review: CROOKED CROSS (Mint Theatre)
THIS GRIPPING PRODUCTION IS A GEM — AND A WARNING Sally Carson began writing Crooked Cross while on vacation in Bavaria. This was in the early 1930s when Hitler was just rising to power. It’s a pity more people didn’t read her book. The novel, and later the play which she adapted from it, are…
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Theater Review: NOISES OFF (San Francisco Playhouse)
THE HILARIOUS NOISES OFF IS ON AT SF PLAYOUSE — OFF YOU GO The huge interior of an imposing English country estate by Heather Kenyon greets visitors to the San Francisco Playhouse, scene of an outlandish new production of Michael Frayn’s enduringly popular farce-within-a-farce Noises Off. The cast Seamlessly directed by Bill English, everything that…
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Theater Review: THE HOT WING KING (New Conservatory Theatre Center)
JUST HOW I LIKE MY THEATER — HOT, SWEET, AND SAUCY Now playing at New Conservatory Theatre Center, The Hot Wing King is a spicy tale of love, friendship, and a cooking contest gone gloriously overboard. Katori Hall’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, directed here by ShawnJ, brings its Memphis heat to San Francisco in a production…
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