Reviews Category
Spicy, Homespun Humor
Steel Magnolias – BrightSide Theatre
In 1985, New York actor Robert Harling was devastated to learn of the sudden death of his beloved younger sister to kidney failure. Because of her Type 1 diabetes, Susan had been warned that having a child would likely be dangerous to her health. However, she ignored her physician’s advice, gave birth and died before her son reached school age.
Read More
A Civil Rights Movement Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
The Healing – Black Ensemble Theater
Jackie Taylor, the amiable creative heart and soul of Chicago’s beloved Black Ensemble Theater, has declared 2020 as the company’s Season of Change. She opens with this original, ambitious musical battle cry, a movement against the injustice and bigotry that’s overtaking our country today, thanks to an administration that has set our country back 200 years. And this is just the beginning of Ms. Taylor’s aggressive theatrical approach in trying to helping combat the racism that’s reared its ugly head in America since the Orange Menace was elected.
Read More
You Gotta Have Friends
Middletown – Apollo Theatre
Dan Clancy’s sweet, sometimes piquant drama is a 90-minute, readers theater production that’s guaranteed to touch the hearts of every audience member. It’s a particularly meaningful story for that large, growing group of theatergoers called Baby Boomers, patrons who are contemplating or already enjoying their retirement years. Because it’s so mysterious: one minute you’re 20, in the 70’s; the next moment, it seems, you’re 70, in the 20’s! This is a gentle story that deals beautifully with all the joys and sorrows of life. It tells the tale of two married couples, both of whom love their partners deeply, and who’ve been close companions for several decades. In the end, this emotionally compassionate production reminds us that, in order to get through the ups and downs of living, you gotta have friends.
Read More
More Brecht Than Ibsen
Hedda Gabler: A Play with Live Music – TUTA Theatre
It’s always interesting and kind of fun to shake things up a bit, especially with a play. When a time-honored play has been adapted and produced in a fresh, starkly different style, it earns some attention. But when the drama is a groundbreaking classic that’s stood the test of time, a new interpretation becomes a little risky. If the writer can offer some new insight into the original work by updating it, then it makes sense to craft a new adaptation. Otherwise, it’s simply merely showing off.
Read More
Something You Don’t Know
Here Lies Henry – Interrobang Theatre
Henry enters an empty stage alone and addresses the audience. His task to tell the audience something they don’t know. Over the course of the night, he’ll tell you a lot of things, about life and love and loss. Some of them might even be true.
Read More
Happiness is a Warm Puppy
Dex & Abby – Pride Films & Plays
People who don’t understand their canine companions may say that dogs can’t talk. However, someone once wisely mused that dogs do speak; but only to those who know how to listen. In playwright Allan Baker’s heartwarming play, his two human characters, Sean and Corey, do indeed hear the voices of their beloved canine companions and usually pay close attention to what they have to say. And Dex and Abby have a lot to say about an array of topics. In honoring the memory of his own dearly departed pup, who has sadly crossed the Rainbow Bridge some years ago, Baker creates this warm, comic drama in which theatergoers are able hear the thoughts and feelings of both of the irresistible dogs in this play.
Read More
Haunting the Shadows
Mlima’s Tale – Griffin Theatre
Premiering two years ago at New York’s famed Off-Broadway venue, the Public Theater, Lynn Nottage’s 90-minute one-act cautionary drama is a departure from her other, better-known plays. Ms. Nottage holds the distinction of being the only female playwright to twice win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Her dramas “Ruined” and “Sweat” earned her this highly-respected accolade, while her other plays, which often focus on the world’s most marginalized individuals, include such titles as “Intimate Apparel,” “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark” and “Crumbs From the Table of Joy.”
Read More
Making History Come Alive
Middle Passage – Lifeline Theater
Winning the 1990 National Book Award for Fiction, Charles R. Johnson’s novel is a sprawling two-and-a-half hour saga about a freed, young African-American man who comes to understand firsthand the horrors of the slave trade. Co-adapted for Lifeline Theatre by Ilesa Duncan and David Barr III, this ocean adventure is a tale of self-discovery and growth, detailing a young African-American’s journey toward maturity.
Read More
Black Lives Matter!
Kill Move Paradise – TimeLine Theatre
TimeLine Theatre is the place in Chicago where we revisit those special individuals, real people or fictional representations, who’ve left a mark in history. At times, these wonderful plays and musicals remind us of events from the past, taking a close look at another time and place. But once in a while this treasure of a theatre forces audiences to examine events from the present, and we are presented with history—good or bad—in the making.
Read More
Melodramatic Flirting and Antagonism
The Layover – The Comrades
In this Midwest premiere of Leslye Headland’s 2016 drama, a one-act play about infidelity and the consequences thereof, theatergoers may walk away feeling disappointed. The play begins promisingly but, before long, it begins to veer into the land of incredible melodrama. Like most soap operas, we don’t really get to dive into the psyche of its characters, so we end up feeling kinda empty by the end. Yet, despite hungering for more information about these people, audiences may, after 100 long intermission-less minutes, be thankful to simply escape from these characters and their hokey and perverted world.
Read MoreRECOMMENDED SITES
