Who knew Betty Boop had imposter syndrome and was tired of being such a generational baddie? Also . . . who knew she was Black? In Boop! The Musical she is—and somehow the original cartoon character created by Max Fleischer in the 1930s remains as coy and relevant as ever. With a spunky new theatrical […]
Category: Arts & Culture
Posted inTheater Review
Promises, Promises gets a rare revival with Blank Theatre
Don’t ask me how many times I’ve seen Billy Wilder’s Academy Award-winning 1960 film The Apartment. I honestly couldn’t tell you. I can tell you it’s my favorite movie, and it should certainly be on anyone’s list of great holiday films, as well. (If for no other reason, you should watch it for the glorious […]
Posted inTheater Review
The Other Cinderella still has soul and sparkle to spare
It’s been a minute since I’ve visited the Kingdom of Other: 13 years, to be precise. The last time I saw Jackie Taylor’s The Other Cinderella was in 2010, before Black Ensemble Theater moved to their spacious Clark Street home. (And it was certainly long before BET planned an expansion across the street that will […]
Posted inTheater Review
Islander loops together a minimalist but enchanting Celtic tale
If Laurie Anderson had done a mash-up of Scott O’Dell’s young adult classic Island of the Blue Dolphins and the 1994 John Sayles Celtic magic realist film, The Secret of Roan Inish, the result might be very similar to Islander. This minimalist but enchanting musical, which started life in 2017 on the Isle of Mull […]
Posted inTheater Review
The Buttcracker plays it naughty and nice
Fast becoming a staple of Chicago’s alternative holiday entertainment scene, The Buttcracker: A Nutcracker Burlesque is back for a seventh year of tinseled twerking and tasseled twirling. Dreamed up around a campfire by artistic producer and playwright Jaq Seifert, the queer-friendly, sex-positive show celebrates bodies of various sizes, shades, ages, and genders in an exuberant […]
Posted inTheater Review
Even goblins can’t chase away Hershel‘s Hanukkah fun
Things get meta pretty quickly when you walk into the theater of Chicago Loop Synagogue to see Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. Cast members come out to schmooze with the audience members (especially young ones). During the first 15 minutes of the show, we’re treated to a wonderful performance by a band of roving Eastern […]
Posted inTheater Review
The Golden Girls Save Xmas is festive, raunchy, and heartwarming
Hell in a Handbag Productions serves up a hefty helping of Christmas camp in this new episode of its “The Golden Girls: Lost Episodes” franchise, which purports to feature never-broadcast episodes of The Golden Girls, the 1985-1992 NBC sitcom about four over-60 women—three widows and a divorcee—sharing a home in Miami. In Handbag artistic director […]
Posted inTheater Review
Caveman Play lets the audience decide the course of humanity
Clare Brennan directs Savannah Reich’s 2017 silly/smart comedy about the dawn of civilization—and the audience gets to decide how it works out in the end. Dandelion (Tess Galbiati) and Rocky (Jack Rodgers) are the world’s first farmers. They’ve moved indoors. They’ve even adopted a cat—albeit a talking, often aggravated tiger called Douglas (Evan Cullinan)—and are […]
Posted inGhost Light
Remembering Marc Silvia, Debra Rodkin, and Ernest Perry Jr.
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions,” observes Claudius in Hamlet. And for Chicago theater artists, the last two weeks of November were particularly sorrowful, as three actors who helped shape and define the work that emerged here in the late 1970s and beyond—Marc Silvia, Debra Rodkin, and Ernest Perry Jr.—died […]
Posted inTheater Review
Paramount’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory adds a touch of bitter to the sweet
Whether you’re waiting anxiously to see Timothée Chalamet in Wonka (the musical prequel to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), or are rolling your eyes in anticipatory disgust (look, after the 2005 Johnny Depp cinematic debacle, I don’t blame you for being anxious!), Paramount Theatre’s current staging of the 2013 musical Charlie and the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Public and private politics in Vietnamese art
Subtly evoked or explicitly referenced, reclaiming individual narrative is a major subject for the Vietnamese artists whose work is on view in dual exhibitions at the John David Mooney Foundation: “A Village Before Us” and the Albert I. Goodman Collection of Vietnamese Art. The Goodman collection is one of the most complete collections of Vietnamese […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Desire lines
One of the most enduring legacies of colonialism is found in architecture, often built on the basis of separation. Divide-and-rule policies inform social structures in former colonies like India, where the separation of communities on the basis of class, caste, and creed is linked to the separation of laborers from their points of origin. Forming […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Discover Chicago’s layered history
Early one morning I stood on what might be the last undeveloped piece of land in the Loop’s radius. The site of the forthcoming DuSable Park is, currently, a soil mound bursting with prairie life located where the Chicago River punctures Lake Michigan’s mouth. This, says architect Ryan Gann, who is working with Ross Barney […]
Posted inTheater Review
Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol returns to Writers Theatre
Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol (devised and directed by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller, and Kyle Vegter) is a charming remix of an old classic, but with added layers for extra warmth this time of year. Imagine the timeless tale of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol with a modern upgrade, boasting a new […]
Posted inTheater Preview
Noor Inayat Khan: The Forgotten Spy brings a footnote of World War II center stage
Princess. Musician. Writer. Spy. The short description of all of Noor Inayat Khan’s identities during her brief lifetime reads like the title of a John le Carré novel. Yet despite the fact that her work as an undercover radio operator and liaison between the French resistance and British intelligence during World War II was an […]