Twenty months and one (ongoing) pandemic since their last performance at the Auditorium Theatre, their home of 20 years, the Joffrey Ballet launched its new tenure on the stage at the Lyric Opera House with a dazzlingly triumphant program of three new works by Chanel DaSilva, Nicolas Blanc, and Yoshihisa Arai and a classic by […]
Category: Arts & Culture
Posted inTheater Review
Grimm examines fairy tales with a twist
If Cheers and Into the Woods got together for an unprotected hookup, the end result might be a bit like Michael Dalberg’s Grimm, now in a world premiere with Theatre Above the Law under Josephine Czarnecki’s direction. The conceit is that the characters from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales (Little Red, Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, […]
Posted inHistory
Queer history through the eyes of the Reader
“Y oung Hyde Park male seeks other young males to get it on with.” A phone number followed, along with the young man’s availability: days, as well as Friday and Saturday. The Chicago Reader’s first explicitly gay content came not in a blistering exposé, music feature, or show review, but in the classifieds, the backpages […]
Posted inTheater Review
Puppets and pandemic precautions clash in House of the Exquisite Corpse
After a long pandemic hiatus, it is once again demon puppet time at the Chopin Theatre, where Rough House Theater Company’s cabaret of ghouls returns for House of the Exquisite Corpse, a revamped, social-distanced take on its 2019 immersive play-slash-haunted-mansion Halloween special, The Silence in Harrow House. Co-artistic director Mike Oleon’s showcase spaces six puppet […]
Posted inTheater Preview
October ushers in bride of Frankenstein story at First Folio
Playwright Joseph Zettelmaier is a maker of monsters, a horror artist who retells classic tales with an emphasis on what makes these constructs human. First Folio Theatre, which has produced five of Zettelmaier’s plays in the past (including horror tales The Man-Beast, The Gravedigger, and Dr. Seward’s Dracula, along with two non-horror pieces, Salvage and […]
Posted inTheater Review
Amnesia wreaks havoc with a gay relationship in 4000 Days
If your partner met you today—instead of whoever you were on the first date—would they still fall in love? Peter Quilter’s queer 2016 dramedy makes literal an anxiety that looms over long-term couples, then dangles a sinister but merciful proposition: if you had a chance to walk away with a clean emotional slate, would you […]
Posted inTheater Review
A somber Thanksgiving unfolds in The Humans
Redtwist Theatre presents Stephen Karam’s celebrated family holiday drama to open its new season. It’s Thanksgiving 2015 on New York City’s Lower East Side and the Blake family has gathered at younger daughter Brigid’s rundown apartment to celebrate. As with virtually every family ever, each member nurses grudges, guards secrets, and leaves much of what […]
Posted inTheater Review
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog hams it up for a good cause
As the lights come up on this three-act show (full disclosure, my first live theater since COVID-19), Dr. Horrible’s maniacal laugh brings to life the demented claustrophobia we’ve all been feeling for the last year and a half. Played by a charmingly pathetic Kevin Webb, Dr. Horrible is the worst kind of Internet troll—a lonely […]
Posted inTheater Review
Y Tu Abuela, Where is She? explores identity and family codependency
As part of this year’s Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival, Visión Latino Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Y Tu Abuela, Where is She? Written by Puerto Rican playwright Nelson Diaz-Marcano and directed by Xavier M. Custodio, Y Tu Abuela is not the writer’s first collaboration with VLTC, a company of Latinx artists […]
Posted inArts & Culture
You’re not allowed to just be old and embrace it
Writers Heather Corinna and Kimberly Dark got together to discuss recent writing, menopause, body image, and more this summer while west coast resident Kimberly was in Chicago visiting her son and his family. The pandemic made it difficult for them to host a public event, so they decided to share their conversation with Reader readers. […]
Posted inTheater Review
This Wide Night offers a searing look at solitary confinement after prison
The walls of the grim and grimy London bedsit show faint outlines of the pictures that once hung upon them—a gallery of absence. It’s a simple but gut-punching reminder that the two women in Chloë Moss’s This Wide Night are defined mostly by what they don’t have. Namely, as recently paroled convicts, second chances—followed closely […]
Posted inTheater Preview
Moving through the violence in Othello
A year and a half after the stage went dark, Court Theatre presents its first live performance since the world was plagued with pandemic and the country with civil unrest. The chosen play is Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice, which places racial discrimination, misogyny, toxic masculinity, and all the ills not […]
Posted inGhost Light
Digital theater options haven’t fallen away
With so many theaters opening their doors again for live performances (we have at least a half-dozen new reviews coming up next week, which is the most we’ve run since March 2020), it might be easy to overlook the ongoing digital drama produced by local companies. But there are still plenty of online shows to […]
Posted inTheater Review
Nobodies knows the troubles they’ve seen
Early on in Songs for Nobodies, Bea Appleton observes that happiness is really just “ordinary misery without extraordinary fear.” Bea Who? Exactly the point. Joanna Murray-Smith’s musical play, which premiered in Australia in 2010, views five iconic women singers—Judy Garland, Patsy Cline, Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday, and Maria Callas—through the stories of the fictional “nobodies” who […]
Posted inDance
Dancing their Chicago style
Chicago street dancers represent in Red Bull Dance Your Style.