Monday, September 17, 2018
ARMS HAS LEGS George Bernard Shaw was not amused when his serious-minded "pleasant play" Arms and the Man, produced in 1894, was diminished into the 1908 operetta The Chocolate Soldier. He i…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:57PM[SHARE]Thursday, September 13, 2018
FORGET STICKS AND STONES: WORDS WILL ALWAYS HURT YOU Who says words can't kill? In BigMouth, flawlessly intoning English, Walloon, French, and German (with captions), Belgian solo p…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:52PM[SHARE]Tuesday, September 11, 2018
THE RIGHT TO DO WRONG Count this among the finest offerings from a Chicago theater: Shattered Globe Theatre's kinetic staging of Chris Hannan's adaptation of Crime and Punishment is flawless…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:00AM[SHARE]Thursday, September 6, 2018
TRAPPED IN A DREARY DRAMEDY There's a tender scene at the start of HOMOS, OR EVERYONE IN AMERICA (a perversely paradoxical title) that wants to convince us that Jordan Seavey's lads really a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:22PM[SHARE]Thursday, August 30, 2018
NO CLOSURE FOR GENOCIDE Family is how history happens. As Arthur Miller wisely showed in All My Sons, The Gift and The Crucible, change radiates outward. Even, or especially, an …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:54PM[SHARE]Monday, August 20, 2018
A WAY TO GHOUL OFF THIS SUMMER It's not easy for a frightfest to work (or play) just as well as a laff-fest, let alone to be both: A delightful exercise in creepy-crawly quirkiness, Night…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:29PM[SHARE]LOVE ON A LINER, OR COLE PORTER'S SHIP OF FOOLS It's still "de-lovely," but, steeped in bon-vivant euphoria and Roaring 20s' hedonism, this 1934 musical is so silly it's hard to believe it c…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:55AM[SHARE]Tuesday, August 7, 2018
HOLDING OUR ATTENTION Playful and powerful, hilarious and anguished, Tommy Murphy's Holding the Man is a 2006 drama based on an immensely successful 1995 memoir. The author was apprent…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:27PM[SHARE]Sunday, August 5, 2018
DAMAGE CONTROL Sometimes everything old is just — well — old again: The fourth entry in Pride Films and Plays' five-show PAC Pride Fest, Hurricane Damage is a bittersweet w…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:57AM[SHARE]Sunday, July 29, 2018
CLASSICAL MARTYRS AS NEW JERSEY HOUSEWIVES Imagine Medea, Clytemnestra, Antigone and Cassandra — ancient anti-heroines with loathsome mates, a religious martyr, and a disrespected prop…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:09PM[SHARE]Monday, July 23, 2018
WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR SONG This time it's up close and down home. Rick Stone the Blues Man departs from the Black Ensemble Theater's standard tributes to superstars like Patti LaB…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:22PM[SHARE]Saturday, July 21, 2018
RIGHT PLAY, WRONG STOP The plays of William Inge, featured this season by Eclipse Theatre Company, offer a bedrock realism that fuels the down-home decency of his small-town characters. But …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:43PM[SHARE]Thursday, July 19, 2018
BLACK AND BLUE After winning a Tony last year for best revival of a musical, Oprah's once and future movie-turned-musical has finally hit her home town, part of a national tour. As alive as …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:36PM[SHARE]Tuesday, July 17, 2018
SIN AS CRAZINESS You don't see morality plays like Everyman anymore — and not just because it's not the 15th century. We shy away from such absolutes as Death and even Good De…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:58PM[SHARE]Monday, July 16, 2018
BEFORE THE CROWN PRINCE BECAME THE KING Legends require reclamation: Created by Floyd Mutrux, the huge hit Million Dollar Quartet reprised a once-in-four-lifetimes recording session in…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:18PM[SHARE]Monday, July 9, 2018
SERIAL SEX AS A CONTINUUM OF DESIRE There's not much to learn from Fucking Men —  an unabashed sexual merry-go-round and a late-night offering from Pride Films & Plays …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 09:00PM[SHARE]Sunday, July 8, 2018
IT’S LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT WITH THE BARD'S FIRST LOOK AT LOVE Happily, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare's first play, is not like the first pancake — a test case to be throw…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:47PM[SHARE]Sunday, July 1, 2018
REMAKE YOUR LIFE"AT YOUR PERIL With some plays what doesn't happen is the whole megillah. Jen Silverman's two-character one-act The Roommate, now simmering in a Chicago premiere by Steppe…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:55PM[SHARE]Saturday, June 30, 2018
OPEN SESAME SEASON Peter Pan never grew up. Likewise Alice in Wonderland, the Hardy Boys, Freddy the Pig, Nancy Drew, Huck Finn, or Donald Trump. It's a pity people do: Why must grown-ups le…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:26PM[SHARE]Friday, June 29, 2018
SEA WORLD AS A CITADEL OF CAUCASIAN COMMAND Orcas, it seems, can suffer for our sins. In Tilikum — a world-premiere from Sideshow Theatre Company — the struggle of indigenous peo…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:08PM[SHARE]Thursday, June 28, 2018
A DIFFERENT LOOK AT THE VIEW Now a nearly forgotten but seminal gay tragedy, it happened after Stonewall but before AIDS and Orlando's Pulse terrorist attack " a 1973 arson atrocity in The B…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:55PM[SHARE]Monday, June 11, 2018
BEAUTY AND BLOOD Guards at the Taj is, in the very best sense, unavoidable. To appreciate this grim and great drama by Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, The Lake Effect), …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 08:25PM[SHARE]Wednesday, June 6, 2018
OUR LOST DREAM CITY It's possible to think that it never happened, that we imagined its splendor to exalt our past. It was the most transient of treasures, with only the Museum of Science an…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:16PM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 5, 2018
THE UNCIVIL WAR Goodman Theatre's current epic won't be confused with other dramas. It explores the Civil War as seen and suffered by the slaves. Not the usual perspective but it delivers a …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:44PM[SHARE]Sunday, June 3, 2018
A LEAGUES OF THEIR OWN You can't keep a bad man down. Especially when he's Captain Nemo, the scourge of the sea. Returning to the watery roots of Moby Dick, Lookingglass Theatre Company laun…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:00PM[SHARE]Saturday, June 2, 2018
STRINDBERG SET IN SOUTH AFRICA Yes, it's Mies Julie, not Miss Julie, and it's by Yaël Farber, not August Strindberg. And that makes a monstrous difference. Repurposed to depict a differen…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:55PM[SHARE]Friday, June 1, 2018
A POWER COUPLE WORTH RECLAIMING Lest we forget two women who long ago shaped their future into our present, witness Bull in a China Shop. Written by Mount Holyoke alumna Bryna Turner, this c…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:32PM[SHARE]Sunday, May 27, 2018
EINE KLEINE SWEDISH SOLSTICE Some 40 years after its birth, A Little Night Music feels like it's always been here. Wisely and warmly, composer Stephen Sondheim and writer Hugh Wheeler, borro…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:01AM[SHARE]Friday, May 25, 2018
STOOD UP YET AGAIN… "Birth was the death of him": Terse to the point of cruelty, Samuel Beckett here devours the human experience in six words. Waiting for Godot, his minimalist masterp…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:32PM[SHARE]Tuesday, May 15, 2018
OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF CENTENARIANS "Life is short. It's up to you to make it sweet." No cliché in Emily Mann's moving 1993 play, this is one of many hard-earned pearls of wisdom in her gener…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:45PM[SHARE]Monday, May 14, 2018
PATTI QUAKES, PATTI SHAKES. PATTI GETS HER CAKES You can only listen and love: The former Patricia Louise Holt-Edwards oozes energy on stage. She kicks off her shoes in sheer delight. Loving…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:19PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
