Saturday, November 11, 2017
TO THIS WE'VE COME (AGAIN) Playing Chicago t0o briefly at the Studebaker Theatre, historically important and artistically wondrous, this co-production between Chicago and Long Beach Opera is…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:59AM[SHARE]Friday, November 10, 2017
PASSIONS OF A PITY PARTY We're born alone. We die alone. But in between we need people"for love or money. That's searingly so for Jordan Berman. The gay anti-hero of Significant Other …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:52AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 7, 2017
DEATH DANCES TO LIFE'S BEATS It took us from Mozart to Mexico. Now, alas, it's over for another year—Chicago Sinfonietta's much anticipated, annual A DÃa de los Muertos Celebrati…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:00PM[SHARE]Monday, November 6, 2017
THE ULTIMATE 'PROOF OF PAIN' "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." He certainly doth in the Book of Job. In this brief but telling chronicle, a catalogue of catastrophes is visited on …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:44PM[SHARE]Friday, November 3, 2017
WEBBER RETURNS TO HIS ROCKIN’ ROOTS "Out of the guitars of babes": The 2003 film was a four-star charmer: Jack Black, a screen actor with the chops to be richly ordinary, depicte…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:27PM[SHARE]Thursday, November 2, 2017
START THE PRESSES! Imagine the Hardy Boys times ten or Nancy Drew's crew times five and you're still not close to Newsies, perpetual motion in a blast from the past. Never before witnesse…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:02PM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 31, 2017
HOME HEALING FOR BROKEN DREAMERS How much "home" can first-generation Americans abandon in order to make a new one? Acculturation, assimilation, adjustment"they're not necessary evils but th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 07:45PM[SHARE]Sunday, October 29, 2017
VENGEANCE STALKS THE CENTURIES, ORÂ DO DO THAT VOODOO It's a (forced) marriage made in musicals. You don't immediately think of Marie Laveau and Medea as soul sisters with a common cause: …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:27PM[SHARE]Friday, October 27, 2017
THE SPARK OF LOVE, OR CURRENT EVENTS Sarah Ruhl's 2006 drama In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play ruefully wonders whether sex can be turned on like a light bulb. Or is love the best…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:49PM[SHARE]Monday, October 23, 2017
A SEX STRIKE FOR SMALL STAKES, OR JONESING FOR LESS Maybe—dammit!—we get the comedy we deserve, cut to fit and ready to wear. Take Lysistrata Jones (please). Aristophanes' …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:03PM[SHARE]Saturday, October 21, 2017
HIS FALL FROM GREATNESS By 1980 Tom "Tennessee" Williams was on a constant skid: His last great play, The Night of the Iguana, had premiered two decades before. Ever since, the once-supre…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:07PM[SHARE]Thursday, October 19, 2017
DANCES OF THE DEAD Both classic ballet and romantic fantasy, Adolphe Adam's 1841 masterwork is for a rightly renewed reason a worthy offering by Chicago's Joffrey Ballet. Playing the gorgeou…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:26PM[SHARE]Monday, October 16, 2017
DANCING OUT A DREAM Billy Elliot was born to dance; likewise his cinematic tale just had to become a musical. But it's a case of apples and oranges: If you loved the Universal Pictures…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:16PM[SHARE]Sunday, October 15, 2017
CHARLES DICKENS, RINGMASTER EXTRAORDINAIRE This exuberant offering first appeared 16 years ago: Lookingglass Theatre Company reinvented Charles Dickens' tough-loving and always topical Ha…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:58PM[SHARE]Saturday, October 14, 2017
LOST IN TRANSFUSION Halloween is dangling out in the future, which means that Washington D.C. is finally getting competition in the terror market. The indefatigable Sean Graney, disruptive d…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:35PM[SHARE]Friday, October 13, 2017
A TWENTY-YEAR ALIEN INVASION The azure takeover began in 1991. Six years later, Blue Man Group—the company that is a show—debuted in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood. 20 …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:48PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 11, 2017
THORNTON WILDER'S SURVIVAL SAGA It's a play for all seasons and all sorrows: Writing during the uncertainty of a world war, Thornton Wilder intended The Skin of Our Teeth to be a three…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:50PM[SHARE]Monday, October 9, 2017
THE ULTIMATE FRENCH KISS It was a one-off last night at the Athenaeum Theatre. But a long run on the road continues to beckon to Awesome Company's bravura showcase Piaf! The Show (whic…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:14PM[SHARE]FEAR FACTOR: 1692 = 2017 325 years ago, a witchhunt gave this continent one of its most chilling and cautionary cases of panic-peddling and persecution: In assorted "witch trials" the suppos…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:02AM[SHARE]Saturday, October 7, 2017
HE STILL GOT THAT SWING In his 75 years of marvelous music-making, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington really was American nobility if not royalty. The sultan of swing was alsoy the jazz king, a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:54PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 4, 2017
SINGING, SURVIVING, AND SPIRIT It's a fine fit: As much as molding character is the goal of the imaginary Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys in Choir Boy, it's also the purpose of Chica…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:20PM[SHARE]Saturday, September 30, 2017
MORE “FUN” THAN THE FIRST TIME AROUND Wise and warm, the 100-minute family memoir Fun Home charts the twisted courses of two generations of the Bechdels—a self-shamin…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:55PM[SHARE]Wednesday, September 20, 2017
MORE PLAYS ON THE PIER Tuesday night's "consecration of the house," attended by Chicago's Mayor Emmanuel, was a celebration that this care-ridden city badly needed. The big news is the gr…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 12:46PM[SHARE]Tuesday, September 19, 2017
UNSTOPPABLE AND UNSPARING This week Goodman Theater's season-opener, a landmark drama from 1955, exploded into relevance. A rarity worth a return, Arthur Miller's original 120-minute, one-ac…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:44PM[SHARE]Monday, September 18, 2017
A PAINTING IS A PORTAL Art is never still, not just still lifes but landscapes, genre scenes, even abstract configurations and, especially, portraits. Every painting is a time capsule that a…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 06:43PM[SHARE]Saturday, September 16, 2017
ORWELLIAN OR TRUMPIAN?:Â 1984Â MEETS 2017 Everything evil is new again: What George Orwell wrote 69 years ago still remains ahead of our time—but, with a President in power who pur…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:28PM[SHARE]Tuesday, September 12, 2017
A THUG BECOMES A MUSE "Fish out of water" humor meets showbiz stereotypes—that's the gag-winning formula in the 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway, starring John Cusack, Jennifer Tilly…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 01:29PM[SHARE]Monday, September 11, 2017
FACING FATALITY It's the last play written by John Millington Synge. This Irish minstrel-playwright died in 1909 at only 37 after penning stunning beauties—Riders to the Sea and his…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 05:21PM[SHARE]A STUNNING RECLAMATION OF OUR 16th "AND BEST"PRESIDENT Right now—bar none—the most stirring chronicle on a Chicago stage is Shattered Globe Theatre's enthralling 155-minute Th…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 04:42AM[SHARE]Saturday, September 9, 2017
WHEN MEDICINE GETS SICK "First, do no harm." A no-brainer, this unarguable warning in the Hippocratic Oath apparently defies and defines the medical profession in 2017. Mercy Killings …
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 03:48AM[SHARE]Thursday, September 7, 2017
BECOMING A "MAN" A brand-new musical about the past intersects the present with a vengeance. A world premiere from Permoveo Productions and Pride Films & Plays, The CiviliTy of Albert…
SOURCE: Stage and Cinema at 02:22PM[SHARE]Loading more stories…
