Catey Sullivan, Author at Chicago Reader

Seven Black men in black suits and white shirts performing onstage. The man int he middle is on knees with a microphone in his left hand. They all have their right hands raised.

Song and dance, but not enough story

by Catey Sullivan May 26, 2022May 26, 2022

Here’s the TL;DR version of what to expect from Ain’t Too Proud, the new jukebox musical about soul/blues/disco/rock hitmakers The Temptations, whose catalog of songs spans the 1960s and the height of the Motown era through the disco beats of the 1970s and beyond. The music—featuring more than 30 tunes from the Motown catalog—is irresistible […]

Two Latino men sit in half-light on either side of a pot on top of a metal crate. The backdrop is covered with graffiti. The man on the left wears a baseball cap, dark sweatshirt, and dark pants. The man on the right has a ponytail and is in lighter clothing.

Theater Review

Brothers on the run

by Catey Sullivan May 4, 2022May 4, 2022

In Exal Iraheta’s Last Hermanos, a pair of Latinx half-brothers find themselves at a crucible somewhere in the hot, hostile wilderness of a Texas state park. The “pick-up” that was to ferry them to the next spot on their journey doesn’t show. Julio (Roberto Jay) and Miguel (Esteban Andres Cruz) are rapidly running out of […]

A young Black woman in a blue dress comforts a Latina woman in a gray dress and yellow cardigan.

Theater Review

He’s just not that into you

by Catey Sullivan May 4, 2022May 4, 2022

Its title and structure clearly classify William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well as a comedy. By definition, tragedies end in death, comedies with weddings. Nobody dies during All’s Well, but the climactic wedding in the final act hardly ends with the happy couple basking in the rosy romantic glow of a strongly implied happily […]

Film

Morbius

by Catey Sullivan April 8, 2022April 12, 2022

If it were just a ride in a theme park, Morbius would be fun enough. But it is not.

Film

At the Siskel Center, Rogers Park is Tuesday’s star

by Catey Sullivan April 4, 2022April 5, 2022

Like the rest of us in 2020, film director Michael Glover Smith found his carefully laid plans laid to waste by a microscopic agent of chaos and destruction.

Film

The Automat

by Catey Sullivan April 1, 2022March 31, 2022

In Lisa Hurwitz’s charming, informative film, the era of the Automat gleams anew, as everyone from Colin Powell to Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Brooks recall their appeal.

A white woman in a flannel shirt and baseball cap sits left at a bar table. A Black woman stands to the right next to the table. Behind them is the rest of the bar and other patrons in soft focus.

Theater Review

Sweat, tears, and blood

by Catey Sullivan March 31, 2022March 31, 2022

Lynn Nottage’s gripping drama Sweat launches a new direction for Aurora’s Paramount Theater, a 1,000-plus seat, 87-year-old Versailles-on-acid space known for award-winning musicals. Directed by Andrea J. Dymond, Sweat is the first production in the new Copley Theatre, a minimalist steel-and-glass black box across the street from the larger venue. Dymond’s airtight ensemble makes the […]

Three actors stand behind a bar. Small Pride flags are visible on the wall of bottles behind them.

Theater Review

Laced has echoes of Stonewall and Pulse

by Catey Sullivan March 31, 2022March 31, 2022

Sam Mueller’s Laced lives in the shadow of the Pulse nightclub mass shooting, but it is rooted in a club that preceded Pulse by several generations: Stonewall. Through Mueller’s monologue-dependent script, About Face Theatre creates a contemporary story that also gives voice to the history that helped forge it. In director Lexi Saunders’s raw, emotive […]

Jason Richards in a purple suit stands to the left of Ginger Minj, who is wearing a white-and-pink dress with a large white wig.

Performing Arts Feature

Ginger Minj is who she is

by Catey Sullivan March 7, 2022March 7, 2022

For six years, Ginger Minj has been turning down offers to star in La Cage aux Folles. “Ever since the Trailblazer Awards I’ve been getting inquiries,” the three-time Drag Race contestant says of the 2016 event where she brought La Cage book writer Harvey Fierstein to tears and the house to its feet with her galvanic […]

Two actors sit on vintage couch. Actor on left wears a pink wig and short skirt. They are embraced by actor in skirt and cardigan.

Theater Review

Killer queen

by Catey Sullivan March 2, 2022March 2, 2022

For lo these past 20 years, Hell in a Handbag has been camping it up under the indefatigable leadership of founding artistic director David Cerda, whose encyclopedic knowledge of drag, pop culture, and their endless intersections serves him well in his latest parodic endeavor, The Drag Seed (first produced by Hell in a Handbag in […]

Film

Rumble

by Catey Sullivan February 17, 2022February 17, 2022

It’s an unoriginal story told with predictable dialogue, but it’s not as bad as nails on a blackboard.

Film

I Want You Back

by Catey Sullivan February 11, 2022February 11, 2022

Thank Saint Valentine for the artists who make us laugh.

Eight women in glittering gowns stand in a row, arms upraised.

Theater Review

Soul sisters

by Catey Sullivan February 9, 2022February 9, 2022

If you’re looking for respite from the slush-bound, gawdawful doldrums of February (and who isn’t?), Mercury Theater Chicago offers a scorching-good respite in Women of Soul. Rebooting the show they debuted in 2018 at Black Ensemble Theater, writer/director Daryl D. Brooks and musical director Robert Reddrick don’t shy away from taking on the tunes that […]

A Black man in a golf shirt stands behind a table, leaning in toward a Black woman in slacks and an orange blouse with a beige jacket who stands in front of the table.

Theater Review

The movement at home

by Catey Sullivan February 2, 2022February 2, 2022

Donja R. Love’s Fireflies (the second in his trilogy, The Love* Plays, each focusing on a different era of Black American history) is at once brutal and hopeful, the hate and violence-soaked former threatening throughout to extinguish the hard-won gleam of the latter but never quite succeeding. It’s 1963 when we meet Olivia (Chanell Bell) […]

Film

Run away from Flee the Light

by Catey Sullivan February 2, 2022February 2, 2022

Exorcisms, demons, girls wildly dancing in their nighties under a full moon, zombification, reincarnation, witches, ghosts, and possession all come into play as the plot lurches along.