In Jen Silverman’s 2018 play, Witch, the devil goes down to a quiet English village and finds a lot more than he bargained for, including a supposed witch who is surprisingly resistant to selling her soul. Loosely based on The Witch of Edmonton, a 1621 play by Thomas Dekker, William Rowley, and John Ford, Silverman’s […]
Author Archives: Emily McClanathan
Posted inTheater Review
All about their mother
The four sisters in Teatro Vista’s ¡Bernarda! often complain about the heat, but the stifling Spanish summer is no match for the passions roiling under their mother’s roof. This stylish, sexy new adaption of Federico García Lorca’s 1936 play, The House of Bernarda Alba, is written by Emilio Williams, directed by Teatro Vista producing artistic […]
Posted inBooks Issue
For all the 90s church kids
I didn’t expect a book with chapter titles like “Nothing’s Funnier Than Naked” and “Welcome to Ass Planet” to make me tear up on public transit, but Lillian Stone’s Everybody’s Favorite: Tales From the World’s Worst Perfectionist accomplished this feat. Amid the bodily humor, cringey anecdotes, and irreverent one-liners, the Chicago-based comedy author and reporter […]
Posted inBook Review
Family secrets with a touch of the supernatural
In Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home, a new collection of seven short stories by Ana Castillo, family secrets inspire several characters to travel to Mexico and retrace their relatives’ footsteps. Sometimes the answers they find feel like “flying sacks loaded with surprises that hit you right in the chest and [leave] you gasping for air.” Others […]
Posted inFilm
Doug Adams wrote the book on the Lord of the Rings scores
At Howard Shore’s invitation, Doug Adams—a Chicago-based author and musicologist—observed, documented, analyzed, and eventually illuminated the composer’s work in a 400-page book titled The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films.
Posted inArts & Culture
London Road centers voices of survivors
British imports are common enough on Chicago’s stages. The plays of Simon Stephens regularly appear at storefront theaters; Court Theatre will revive Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead next season; and Six continues its Broadway reign following its 2019 North American premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. But it’s safe to say that Chicago audiences […]
Posted inTheater Review
White saviorism: the musical!
The Book of Mormon is back in Chicago, slightly rewritten since it last played here in 2018 but still the same wildly irreverent take on that most quintessential of homegrown white American religions: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After the hit musical opened on Broadway in 2011, it played in Chicago four […]
Posted inTheater Review
Soviet slapstick
Heading into opening night of Dying for It at Artistic Home, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Moira Buffini’s adaptation of The Suicide, a 1928 satire by Soviet playwright Nikolai Erdman that was banned by Joseph Stalin. Frankly, the subject matter sounded a bit niche—or maybe I was just feeling rusty on Soviet history […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Steeped in history
In the most famous lines of his 1855 poem “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman writes, “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” After reading S. L. Wisenberg’s insightful new book, The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home, it’s clear that she, too, contains […]
Posted inTheater Review
Quantum romance
Simon Stephens’s play Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle is set up as a classic story of culture clash: a quirky, talkative woman from New Jersey strikes up a conversation with a reserved Londoner in a train station, ignoring all social cues that he’d rather be left alone. But when she arrives at his butcher shop a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Beyond Jane Eyre
Although Charlotte Brontë’s Villette has long been overshadowed by Jane Eyre—its “more popular younger sister,” in Sara Gmitter’s words—the 1853 novel takes the spotlight at Lookingglass Theatre next month in a world premiere adaptation written by Gmitter and directed by Tracy Walsh. Based on a period of bereavement, homesickness, and unrequited love in Brontë’s own […]
Posted inTheater Review
Searching for an emotional connection with Dear Evan Hansen
I’ve now seen the North American tour of Dear Evan Hansen twice in Chicago, and both times I’ve come up short trying to feel the emotional connection that so many fans have with this show. My first viewing was before the pandemic, and I hoped it might hit differently in 2022. After all, the musical […]
Posted inTheater Review
Miami death trip
Teenagers tend to be reckless, sure, but few would gather in a spooky tree house to summon the spirit of Colombian drug cartel leader Pablo Escobar. But then, most aren’t as hardcore—or foolhardy—as the members of the Dead Leaders Club, a group of private school girls in Miami who dabble with supernatural forces in Our […]
Posted inTheater Review
Stranger things
What if the person you love—the one you want to spend the rest of your life with—were to confess a secret so bizarre, so disturbing, that it makes you question whether you know them at all? How do you truly accept every part of a person when you can’t begin to understand one of their […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Beyond the mustache
Larry Yando has been a prominent presence on stages in Chicago and beyond for many years, including as Ebenezer Scrooge in the Goodman’s annual production of A Christmas Carol (this year marks his 15th outing). He plays Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express at Drury Lane Theatre through October 23. (Read […]