Pippin was a forerunner in the big swing of musical theater away from the happy-ever-after era that defined the genre’s “golden age.” The 1972 show by Stephen Schwartz (music) and Roger O. Hirson (book) ends not with a whizbang, all-hands-on-deck, colored-light spectacle of song and dance, but with a lone man standing onstage, divested of costume, […]
Author Archives: Catey Sullivan
Timely Twain
The dramaturgy displays alone for Mercury Theater Chicago’s Big River, based on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, taught me more about Mark Twain’s 1830s-set, biting antislavery novel than I learned from studying the book in junior high, high school, undergrad, and grad school combined. First off, the musical (music and lyrics by Roger Miller, book by […]
Lovely, dark, and deep
The woods are leaf-free spires of light, Cinderella’s sisters are outfitted in bad 80s prom dresses, and Rapunzel’s coil of blonde hair is a rope in the national touring production of Into the Woods. Directed by Lear deBessonet, Stephen Sondheim’s musical is one of endlessly intricate lyrics packaged in broad suggestions of time and place […]
Damn Yankees hits it out of the park
The devil goes down to Washington (D.C.) in the 1955 musical Damn Yankees, and he’s rarely been more irresistible than in his current incarnation at the Marriott Lincolnshire. Damn Yankees Through 6/4: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu 7:30 PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM; also Thu […]
Review: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Like the book, the Lionsgate movie offers a gently informative, often hilarious, and always empathetic depiction of a sixth grader yearning for, getting, and celebrating her first period.
Summer and smoke
Nilo Cruz’s 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics is a lit-fuse kind of drama, beginning with a slow but unmistakable simmer that ultimately detonates with scorching, devastating impact. Directed by Laura Alcalá Baker for Remy Bumppo Theatre, this lavishly produced, powerfully cast production shows just how relevant—and compelling—Cruz’s words remain. Anna in the Tropics […]
The beautiful business of show
First, some mathematical context: I’ve seen A Chorus Line at least 18 times since 1976, the year the first national tour rolled into Chicago. Prior to last week, I was certain the brilliant show about aspiring Broadway hoofers held no more surprises. How could it? I’ve known every word, lyric, cadence, and character in this […]
Review: 80 for Brady
Not even a (criminally underproduced) Billy Porter musical number can fix this nonsense.
Not so golden
The hardest working queen in showbiz? That’d be Ginger Minj (fight me). After three stints on RuPaul’s Drag Race (season seven, All Stars 2, and All Stars 6), the breakout star and two-time RDR finalist has kept busy with countless live shows, small screen hits, a trio of studio albums that showcase her Broadway-worthy belt […]
Stuck in a snow globe
Nearly 69 years since its birth as a smash movie, the seasonally ubiquitous White Christmas remains a good, old-fashioned holiday chestnut. It also remains an objectively odious, old holiday chestnut. To say it has not aged well is to put it mildly. To put it frankly, I would like to think this is not a […]
What’s new, pussy cat?
At 25 years old, The Lion King has been seen by more than 110 million people and played every continent but Antarctica. Between global warming and ticket demand, it’s probably just a matter of time. The latest U.S. tour to stop in Chicago feels significantly less lavish from earlier versions that blew audiences and critics […]
Bones and All
Despite its preponderance of blood and guts and sinew-slathering, bone-smacking gore, Bones and All isn’t exactly a movie about cannibalism.
The Last Manhunt
With The Last Manhunt, the epic story of Willie Boy the Desert Runner reclaims the narrative of a Native hero long portrayed by white men as a bloodthirsty child kidnapper.