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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 / Nimoy Theater)
WHEN INTROSPECTION FLATLINES David Roussève’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—an…
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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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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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