For 66 years, Second City has set the standard for sketch comedy in Chicago and beyond. Its Mainstage shows are rooted in the theater’s long-perfected formula—a two-hour mix of political […]
This Avalanche Theatre world premiere, at the Bramble Arts Loft, might win the Adam Kaz Critic Award for Year’s Coolest Title. Time Is a Color and the Color Is Blue by […]
Serge buys a painting. Marc hates it. Yvan is verklempt over his friends’ feud and his coming wedding. That’s the plotline of Yazmina Reza’s comic drama Art, now being staged by […]
South Chicago Dance Theatre’s season eight, featuring surreal themes that challenge the mind and the body, premiered at the Auditorium on May 3. Although I had seen another company attempt a […]
For “Lakeview Day 2025,” the Chicago Humanities Festival featured two tyranny experts, each for an hour-long interview followed by a brief Q&A, on April 27 at the Athenaeum Theatre. The […]
The title of Jake Johnson’s latest book—Unstaged Grief: Musicals and Mourning in Midcentury America—is more than a bit jarring. It’s that part about “Musicals and Mourning” that seems so odd. […]
Theater fans can get a new appreciation of theater of the absurd this month with eight short plays being staged by Gwydion Theatre over the next few weekends. We saw three of […]
The ensemble A.B.L.E., Artists Breaking Limits & Expectations, presented a 90-minute “re-wiring” of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein April 25-27 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Upstairs Studio. Nine neurodivergent actors, including a team […]
The audience is given a fan as the entry pass to Story Theatre’s At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen, written by Terry Guest. There is no doubt that […]
Jason Lutes took some 20 years to complete his graphic novel, Berlin. Condensing Lutes’ 550-page magnum opus into theatrical language is no easy feat but Court Theatre has brought it […]
Kairos pits a newly formed couple against a sci-fi trope—technological revolution. When a new and selective procedure called Prometheus offers the couple synthetic immortality, they struggle, in a very human […]
Paul Stroili’s A Jukebox for the Algonquin, currently onstage at Citadel Theatre, does not take place anywhere near the famous literary watering hole. Instead, everything happens in a recreation room […]