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Theater Review: MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT (North American Tour)
HOLY GRAIL, WHOLLY DATED A high-energy tour packed with talent, nostalgic chaos, and humor that doesn’t always land in 2026 Risking impalement by a heavily armored knight, and death by cheeky British puns, I joined a lively crowd at Segerstrom Hall for Monty Python’s Spamalot. Shockingly, I am a virgin—to the musical, that is. The…
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Theater Review: STEREOPHONIC (National Tour, CIBC Theatre Chicago)
THEATER IN STEREOPHONIC A terrific docudrama about artistic temperament and the torment of creation David Adjmi’s Stereophonic, now playing at the CIBC, is an unusual piece of theater. It’s not about learning any life lessons, or coming to terms with things, and with one notable exception, none of the characters have a growth arc; further,…
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Theater Review: SOME LIKE IT HOT (National Tour, Broadway in Boston)
A REIMAGINING OF A HOLLYWOOD CLASSIC Frothy fun with an affirmingly progressive perspective The art deco sets (Scott Pask, scenic design), broad-shouldered plaids (Gregg Barnes, costumes), and jitterbugging choreography (Casey Nicholaw, who also directed) are a pleasing eyeful in Broadway in Boston’s energetic rendition of the Tony-award winning Some Like It Hot. But there’s more…
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Theater Review: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (The Streetcar Project Tour at A.C.T. in S.F.)
EVEN MORE TO DESIRE A stripped-down Streetcar that proves Tennessee Williams needs no scenery. Since struggle for power among the classes is one of the central themes in Tennessee Williams’ still-shocking A Streetcar Named Desire, it makes perfect sense that director and co-creator Nick Westrate would strip the Pulitzer Prize winner down to its rawest…
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Theater Review: CAMELTON (Stephen Cole’s One-Man Show About One Man’s Wild Ride)
THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MIDDLE EAST Stephen Cole’s backstage Qatar saga is stranger than fiction—and just as entertaining In the story category of “truth is stranger than fiction,” and well worthy of inclusion in an edition of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, comes the mind-boggling saga of how…
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Theater Review: THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET (Eddie Izzard; International Tour; Hollywood’s Montalbán)
A SOLO HAMLET BUILT ON PRECISION AND VELOCITY Inside the White-Box World of Izzard: One Performer, Twenty-Two Roles, No Safety Net Suzy Eddie Izzard—formerly known as Eddie Izzard until 2023 and now using she/her pronouns—is a groundbreaking British comedian known for her gender-defying stage persona. Now Izzard has taken up a new challenge, the actor’s…
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Dance Preview: GRAHAM100 (Martha Graham Dance Company International Tour in Chicago)
GRAHAM’S DANCE DYNASTY DESCENDS ON THE AUDITORIUM THEATRE Martha Graham Dance Company pairs signature works with a Bernstein-inspired Chicago premiere. On January 24, The Auditorium Theatre will host the living legacy of a pioneering genius. As part of its celebratory 100th anniversary international tour, the Martha Graham Dance Company will commemorate this unmatched milestone with…
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Theater Review: ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: HOW SHAKESPEARE INVENTED THE VILLAIN (Patrick Page at BroadStage)
A MASTER VILLAIN TAKES THE STAGE Patrick Page turns Shakespeare’s greatest monsters into a riveting, slyly funny tour through human nature— one blood-red spotlight at a time. Dubbed “the villain of Broadway” by Playbill, Patrick Page has never shied away from exploring his dark side. Now, with his tour-de-force solo show All the Devils Are…
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Theater Review: THE NOTEBOOK: THE MUSICAL (North American Tour)
Three Couples, Zero Accumulation With a score that forgets to remember, The Notebook drowns in its own mawkish bathwater There’s a musical version of The Notebook that might actually work. A decades-spanning romance built on longing, separation, and fading memory? That’s theater. What’s currently stinking up the Hollywood Pantages? That’s a $30 million hostage situation…
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Theater Review: THE SOUND OF MUSIC (National Tour at the Citizens Opera House, Boston)
THIS SHOW IS ALIVE … WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC A classic musical celebrates the power of music to promote authenticity How do you solve a problem like—presenting a musical that is so familiar as a movie that an audience may think they already know everything it has to offer? Director Jack O’Brien offers a…
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Theater Review: SIX (2025 National Tour, Boleyn Cast)
SIX QUEENS BEAT A FULL HOUSE A Clever, Electrifying Concert That Sometimes Overwhelms Its Own Story History serves us well in stories for musicals. From 1776 to Evita to Hamilton, all the plot is ready and waiting to be served up and put to music. So when you marry six women in thirty-four years, you’re…
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Concert Preview: THREADS OF GOLD—DOLLY PARTON GOES SYMPHONIC (National Tour)
THREADS OF GOLD—DOLLY PARTON GOES SYMPHONIC Her songs get the orchestral treatment in a cross-country concert experience Dolly Parton has never been one for half measures. When she says the threads of her life run through her songs, she means it. That idea is taken literally with Dolly Parton’s Threads: My Songs in Symphony, a…
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Concert Review: CHEYENNE JACKSON (Carnegie Hall Debut / National Tour Launch)
A BROADWAY BARITONE TAKES STOCK A career-spanning concert that blends ambition, gratitude, and sheer vocal muscle When Cheyenne Jackson stepped onto the stage of Carnegie Hall on December 8 and announced, “This is a dream come true in real time,” it didn’t feel like a rehearsed line. It landed as a genuine moment of arrival—one…
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Theater Review: MOULIN ROUGE (2025 Touring Production)
TRUTH, BEAUTY, FREEDOM, LOVE — MOULIN ROUGE! LIGHTS UP THE DESERT A pop-fueled fever dream lands at McCallum Theatre Moulin Rouge! The Musical took the stage of McCallum Theatre in all its splendor on Tuesday night, where it runs through December 14. I first saw this tour when it launched in 2022, and it was…
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Theater Review: HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD (National Tour, Emerson Colonial Theater)
SPECTACULARLY CONFUSING You don’t need me to tell you that J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has tapped into something deeply elemental for many people. Her stories about a young wizard and his education at Hogwarts, a school that teaches the magical arts while bearing a strong similarity to a traditional British public school, have…
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Highly Recommended CD and Tour: JOY TO THE WORLD (Chanticleer on Delos)
CHANTICLEER CLAUS IS COMIN’ TO TOWN The boys are celebrating their new album that rings, glows, and absolutely delivers The GRAMMY-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer rings in the season with Joy to the World, its luminous new Christmas album and first release on Delos, now available on CD and streaming worldwide. An elegant, glowing companion for…
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Theater Review: HELL’S KITCHEN (National Tour)
HELL’S ON FIRE Hell’s Kitchen, a jukebox musical featuring the music of R&B superstar Alicia Keys (with several new songs) and a book by Kristoffer Diaz, took Broadway by storm in 2024, racking up thirteen Tony nominations. And now, a little over a year later, its first national touring production has arrived in Chicago at…
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Theater Review: PARANORMAL ACTIVITY (North American Premiere Tour at The Ahmanson Theatre)
CAN HORROR WORK ONSTAGE? PARANORMAL ACTIVITY MAKES ITS CASE I imagine most people’s response to hearing that Paranormal Activity has been turned into a stage play is a raised eyebrow—doubt mixed with intrigue. How is that going to work? Horror—especially supernatural horror—isn’t a genre you often find in theatre. It thrives in film, where the…
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Concert Review: LENNON AND NILSSON: SONGS FROM THE LOST WEEKEND (Live from Laurel Canyon at The Carpenter Center)
LOST WEEKEND, FOUND MAGIC Lennon and Nilsson Get a Vibrant Tribute Live from Laurel Canyon, known for blending storytelling with faithful musical tributes, returned to the Carpenter Center on November 9 with Lennon and Nilsson: Songs from the Lost Weekend, a two-act concert chronicling the music, friendship, and notorious misadventures shared by John Lennon and…
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Theater Review: THE 4TH WITCH (Manual Cinema)
BLACK AND WHITE AND DREAD ALL OVER Chicago-based Manual Cinema employs an extraordinary suite of “old-school” technologies and techniques to bring a response to Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the Emerson Paramount theater as part of the Arts Emerson series. With no spoken dialogue, the company uses shadow puppets, projected pantomime, live music, and recorded sound effects…
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