Outstanding entertainment has been Cirque du Soliel’s trademark since they went big time in the late 1980’s with their We Reinvent the Circus tour in the United States. Los Angeles, and soon the rest of the world, was stunned by their dynamic new approach to circus arts. Nearly forty years later and Cirque has become …
Cirque’s Wholesome and Hip Twas the Night Before…. Read More »
The New York Post’s Elisabeth Vincentelli summed it up perfectly when she said, “Big glitzy numbers are the toast of Broadway musicals. The only thing better? Big, glitzy numbers…with nuns!” Mercury Theatre’s brand new presentation of Sister Act proves how right she is. It’s hard to imagine that a theatrical performance of any kind could …
Stacey Rose’s latest play, America v.2.1 hits you like a blow out of nowhere, leaves you disoriented and keeps you incredulous; especially through the entirety of its first segment. The play’s subtitle, The Sad Demise and Eventual Extinction of the American Negro, was probably intended as a warning for what you were about to drop …
Unthinkable Realities Imagined in Definition Theatre’s America v.2.1 Read More »
The sensory impact of David Rice’s The Madness of Edgar Allan Poe: A Love Story, now extended to November 21st in Oak Park, may be it strongest asset. Performed by the Oak Park Festival Theater (OPFT), the play capitalizes on the suburb’s rich architectural heritage to transport audiences back in time and revive a forgotten …
Play Ingeniously Revisits Edgar Allan Poe and His Unsettling Fixation Read More »
Windy City Playhouse, king of the immersive theater concept in Chicago, is back with a brand-new spin on how to insert audiences into a theatrical performance. With Recipe for Disaster, they’ve gone in a completely different direction and partnered with Chicago restaurant royalty to show how malleable and fun live theater can be. Rick Bayless, …
Windy City Playhouse’s Marriage of Farce and Food a Recipe for Success Read More »
The amount of anticipation flowing through Briar St. Theater Wednesday night as a largely hyped audience filled their seats wasn’t expected. After 17 months, three eerily blue men dressed in black were about to retake the stage and prove “Blue is indeed Back”. This crowd was ready. Originating in New York in the 80’s before …
Ride Share, a thrillingly beautiful work written by Reginald Edmund and co-produced by Glencoe’s Writer’s Theatre and Black Lives, Black Words International Project, doesn’t pull its punches. Using the playwright’s personal experience as a Uber driver in our hyper-gig economy, Ride Share can legitimately be called autobiographical. But within minutes of the first lines being …
Commenting on a segment about modern air travel, a television news host recently stated that although she was not afraid of death, she did not want to die “terrified”. Titanic, (Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, 1912), now streaming from Chicago’s Court Theater, can be said to be a story about how 1490 people …
A Bracing and Brilliant Look at the Sinking of the Titantic Read More »
Chicago’s Goodman Theatre has slipped into its archival vaults to develop a free on-demand streaming option dubbed Encore. For those hungering for theatre and are flexible in the way it’s presented, this entertainment oasis is for you. Launched over the winter, the current schedule will feature five productions. Now running through April 12th, Pedro Páramo …
Could there be as many ways to react to this crazy pandemic as there are people enduring it? Over the winter, a survey asking how people were negotiating both the physical world and the digital universe during Covid generated a dizzying array of responses. Writer Karissa Murrell Myers used a big fistful of them to …
Strawdog’s How Do We Navigate Space? A Welcome Balm Read More »