Sometimes when the lights go down and a theater stage stirs to life, you’re carried away and dropped into lives and experiences that uniquely sharpen your understanding of what it takes to either survive or thrive. The low boiling excitement filling the air opening night for Victory Garden’s How to Defend Yourself let you know …
How to Defend Yourself Radiant on Lincoln Avenue Read More »
Nancy Pelosi might be a fascination you never knew you had. A production premiering over the weekend at Victory Gardens Theater for an abbreviated run could dispel any doubt. On the surface, an examination of one of the most enigmatic and pivotal political figures in the country would appear tempting, but prohibitively daunting. Access and …
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Whether they paint, sculpt, dance, write, design or work in the musical sphere, artists are remembered either for their renown or for their impact. The Elmhurst Art Museum’s exhibition simply titled Sandra Jorgensen movingly commemorates both. An accomplished modernist artist who also led a distinguished academic career, Jorgensen’s name is frequently associated with a Chicago …
Artistic Legacy on Display at Elmhurst Art Museum Read More »
Probably one of the most enduring and compelling attributes common to the arts is their lack of complacency. Creativity has a need to push and explore and change and innovate and, in the end, excite. That may be why in its 15th year, Chicago’s Too Hot to Handel: The Jazz – Gospel Messiah felt like …
Too Hot to Handel: The Jazz – Gospel Messiah Still on High Sizzle Read More »
Looking back at someone’s lifetime achievements does much more than chronicle their mastery of craft. If done with the hope of exposing a glimpse of the person as a human being as well as an artist, a retrospective can disclose how talent, savvy and knowledge of self can propel a person into lasting fame. Andy …
As Ronnie Marmo so skillfully reminds us in his ravishing one-man show, you can pay a very high price for telling uncompromising truths. Just entering its second extension at the Royal George, I’m Not a Comedian…I’m Lenny Bruce takes us back to the 60s and reintroduces us to a man known more for his penchant …
The first moments of Parallel Lives, a new Deeply Rooted Dance Company work performed over the weekend on the Logan Center stage, singe like an electric charge. The music, composed by Evangelos Spanos, pushes and insists as does the solo dancer at the stage’s center. She’s focused, graceful, exact, urgent and transfixing. After helping to …
Deeply Rooted Dance Theater Perennially Exciting Read More »
You don’t often hear about how enticing the story driving The Light in the Piazza eventually becomes. An unlikely love story viewed from the vantage point of an over protective mother; it’s so consciously refined that Piazza’s core message can be obscured in its romantic beauty. Very much in the way the love between Clara …
Worthy Message at the Heart of The Light in the Piazza Read More »
And you thought you knew all there is to know about Christmas. Even if you do, you’ll still fall for Eleanor’s Very Merry Christmas Wish – the Musical. Enjoying its hard-won debut at the Greenhouse Theatre on Lincoln Ave. near DePaul, Eleanor’s more than anyone could ask from a Christmas story. A labor of love …
Eleanor’s Very Merry Christmas Wish – The Musical, Has it All Read More »
When something this wild is that wonderful, you can expect praise to flow far and wide. Eclipse Theatre’s season closes big this winter with Christopher Durang’s wonderfully absurdist jewel, Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them, now playing to contented audiences at the Athenaeum. The title tells both everything about the play …