Areas We Cover

Categories hhhh

image - 2025-02-03T092338.004

Theater

  • Theater Review: WOMEN OF SOUL (WITH A TRIBUTE TO ARETHA FRANKLIN) (Black Ensemble Theater)

    By Lawrence Bommer | October 29, 2018
    in ,

    A CELEBRATION OF DIVAS Three years ago, Black Ensemble Theater’s associate director Daryl D. Brooks created a kinetic tribute called  Men of Soul. The revue embraced solid singers whose hearts were as strong as their lungs. Now proper, perhaps overdue, homage is paid in a celebration called  Women of Soul (With a Tribute to Aretha Franklin). Seeing…

  • Theater Review: CIRCOLOMBIA: ACÉLÉRÉ (The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare on Navy Pier)

    By Lawrence Bommer | October 28, 2018
    in , , ,

    A COLOSSAL CIRCUS CARAVAN FROM COLOMBIA Three rings do not make a circus, any more than “two boards and a passion” make a play. Sometimes all you need is fifteen performers for sixty power-packed minutes. That’s the fantastic formula working in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s all-purpose Yard space on Navy Pier. Making its North American debut…

  • Theater Review: THE LITTLE FOXES (Antaeus Theatre)

    By Samuel Garza Bernstein | October 27, 2018
    in ,

    THE DEVASTATION OF POWERLESSNESS When the curtain comes down at the end of The Little Foxes you hear a remarkable sound: 80 people letting the air out of their lungs. We have all been holding our breath, tingling with anticipation and horror. This is an Antaeus Theatre Company audience. Logically, every single person watching knows…

  • Theater Review: VIETGONE (East West Players)

    By Tony Frankel | October 26, 2018
    in ,

    GOING, GOING, VIETGONE Prior to last night’s L.A. premiere of Vietgone, the actor playing playwright Qui Nguyen tells us that his 2015 play is about his parents (“who this play is absolutely not about”), who met and fell in love in 1975 in an Arkansas relocation camp for Vietnamese refugees, jokingly adding that we were…

  • Theater Review: HELLO, DOLLY! (National Tour)

    By Lawrence Bommer | October 25, 2018
    in , ,

    IT ONLY TAKES A MUSICAL To start with, let’s agree to never say “Goodbye, Dolly.” Thornton Wilder’s genius for the common touch isn’t just a golden legacy in  Our Town  or  The Skin of Our Teeth, two perfect comedies of life. There’s almost as much warm wisdom in  The Matchmaker, Wilder’s craftily-plotted 1955 mating romp that Michael Stewart and…

  • Theater Review: DEAR EVAN HANSEN (National Tour)

    By Tony Frankel | October 23, 2018
    in , , ,

    A SHOW FOR FOREVER That  songwriters and lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul — critical darlings for  La La Land  (film), Dogfight (Off-Broadway), and A Christmas Story (Broadway) — are in effect the Rodgers and Hammerstein of this generation is as alarming as climate change. At least their true colors as creators of whitewashed pop and unintelligent lyrics…

  • Theater Review: OPPENHEIMER (Rogue Machine at Electric Lodge in Venice)

    By Samuel Garza Bernstein | October 23, 2018
    in ,

    PARTNERING ARROGANCE WITH SACRIFICE In taking residence at the Electric Lodge, their new digs in Venice, Rogue Machine makes an audacious choice with the American premiere of Tom Morton-Smith’s Oppenheimer, first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London. The play takes over three hours, a cast of 24, and multiple physics lessons to tell…

  • Theater Review: PRIVATE PEACEFUL (Greenhouse Theater Center in Chicago and on tour)

    By Lawrence Bommer | October 22, 2018
    in , ,

    TRENCH STAGEFARE It’s a small-scale marvel, a feat to treasure: In only 80 minutes director/adaptor Simon Reade and performer Shane O’Regan do total justice to  Private Peaceful, Michael Morpurgo’s 2003 anti-war novel for older children. Not to be missed at Chicago’s Greenhouse Theater Center, it’s an enthralling achievement, this solo reenactment of childhood, peace, coming of…

  • Theater Review: FRANKENSTEIN (Remy Bumppo Theatre Company at Theater Wit)

    By Lawrence Bommer | October 19, 2018
    in ,

    MARY SHELLEY’S ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: FRANKENSTEIN’S TRICK IS OUR TREAT Creating a Halloween story for all seasons in a novel that launched a terror genre, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley named Dr. Victor Frankenstein the “modern Prometheus” (the monster, among other deprivations, has no name). It’s a sardonic slam at this very debatable benefactor for making this re-animator…

  • Theater Review: IT’S ONLY A PLAY (Pride Films and Plays at the Pride Arts Center)

    By Lawrence Bommer | October 18, 2018
    in ,

    THIS TURKEY IS SO SCARY, YOU HAVE TO KEEP REPEATING TO YOURSELF, “IT’S ONLY A PLAY… IT’S ONLY A PLAY…” There’s a glaring contradiction in  It’s Only a Play: Written by the usually crafty Terrence McNally, a 20-time Broadway playwright, this two-act love letter to Broadway theater and its “plays of fools” — depicted in full…

  • Theater Review: PIPPIN (Mercury Theater Chicago)

    By Lawrence Bommer | October 14, 2018
    in ,

    THE HOLY ROMAN EMPEROR AS FLOWER CHILD Some shows stay young by never growing up: Stephen Schwartz’ silly-stupid 1972 musical is the (im)perfect example of a musical that’s saved by its songs and spirit. A sort of ninth-century, one-ring circus crammed with presentational glee, it was practically a tribal sequel to Schwartz’s Godspell (with homage…

  • Theater Review: FLYIN’ WEST (American Blues Theater)

    By Lawrence Bommer | October 12, 2018
    in ,

    FLYIN’ HIGH: THE HEARTLAND SOLIDARITY OF SODBUSTING SISTERS For a while it must have seemed like a black Eden. Founded in 1877, Nicodemus, Kansas was a Reconstruction success story founded on a racial covenant. It offered a second chance for former slaves and future dreamers: The reputedly all-black town was the enlightened creation of the…

  • Theater Review: CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY (Raven Theatre in Chicago)

    By Lawrence Bommer | October 9, 2018
    in ,

    CRUMBS IS A RICH MEAL Much like Lorraine Hansberry and Tennessee Williams, Lynn Nottage is a memory-monger. She sees truth in small stuff that looms larger later. And as with Arthur Miller or Clifford Odets (especially the latter’s  Awake and Sing!), she also has the gift of moral magnification: She can make family feuds stand for…

  • Theater Review: EVERYTHING THAT NEVER HAPPENED (Boston Court in Pasadena)

    By Samuel Garza Bernstein | October 8, 2018
    in ,

    ANCIENT LIES AND MODERN QUESTIONS Theatrical magic happens when all the elements of a production come together to form a seamless whole; when the text, direction, acting, and technical contributions feel so organically intertwined that it is hard to tell where one person’s work ends, and another’s begins. Everything That Never Happened at the Boston…

  • Theater Review: ROPE (Actors Co-op in Hollywood)

    By Tony Frankel | October 4, 2018
    in ,

    HERE’S SOME GOOD NOOSE FOR YOU Amid the jukebox musicals and feel-good issue plays of the moment, thank the macabre heavens for two grippingly disturbing entertainments. The first is Echo Theater Company’s Gloria killing them across town at Atwater Village Theatre. The other is Actor Co-op’s splendidly unsettling Rope, Patrick (Gaslight) Hamilton’s 1929 play about…

  • Theater Review: CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (National Tour in Chicago)

    By Lawrence Bommer | October 4, 2018
    in , , ,

    MORE LIKE A SILVER TICKET Saccharinity, like speed, can kill: The guilty pleasure of loving chocolate can, it seems, cover a multitude of sins. Harnessing “pure imagination” as well as a sweet tooth, the 2013 British musical  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory  milks, so to speak, Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s novel. This adored adventure, of course, connects…

  • Theater Review: UK UNDERDOG (Zephyr Theater)

    By Joan Alperin | October 2, 2018
    in ,

    HE’S NOT GOING TO THE DOGS, BUT THE PROCEEDS ARE There are many reasons to see writer/performer Steve Spiro’s entertaining and touching one man show, a powerful and emotional true story now playing at the Zephyr Theatre. Nicely shaped by director  Ann Bronston, Spiro brings his childhood and subsequent years to life in a palpable way…

  • Theater Review: NELL GWYNN (Chicago Shakespeare)

    By Lawrence Bommer | September 30, 2018
    in ,

    THE BELLE OF COAL YARD ALLEY LEAVES YOU GWYNNING FROM EAR TO EAR When you’re mistress to a monarch, your perch is precarious. Envy supplants praise as, moving from “rags to royalty,” your origin pursues you through slander and shaming. Lacking the protection of marriage, seldom measured by your merit (just your maneuvers), the royal…

  • Theater Review: AMERICAN HERO (IAMA Theatre Company at the Pasadena Playhouse)

    By Samuel Garza Bernstein | September 29, 2018
    in ,

    FEAR THAT TASTES LIKE CHICKEN IAMA Theatre Company’s 2018-19 season opener, Bess Wohl’s American Hero (a Pasadena Playhouse guest production at the Carrie Hamilton Theatre) is a portrait in miniature of the underemployed working poor’s quiet and not-so-quiet desperation. There is superb teamwork between the actors, and when it is at its best, the play…

  • Theater Review: MAME (Musical Theatre Guild)

    By Samuel Garza Bernstein | September 24, 2018
    in ,

    THE ENDURING LEGACY OF JERRY HERMAN AND THE ‘STAR VEHICLE’ The chief pleasure in Musical Theatre Guild’s presentation of Mame at the Alex Theatre is hearing the music, full-out, as written, unencumbered, and unembellished. I mean that in the best sense. Jerry Herman’s score is lush and lovely, and it requires no reinvention. In the…

[my_pagination]

Search Articles

[searchandfilter id="104886"]

Please help keep
Stage and Cinema going!