Kerry Reid, author at Chicago Reader

The setting is a family kitchen. Five people are gathered around it, toasting each other with tea glasses. The table is oval, covered with an orange tablecloth. The chairs are yellow. Three younger people are seated. At left is a bearded man with blue jeans and a pink shirt. Next to him is a clean-shaven young man in a black T-shirt and black shirt with vertical pinstripes. On the right is a young person who identifies as nonbinary in the show. They are wearing brown trousers and a teal patterned short-sleeved shirt with green animal slippers on their feet. Standing behind the table on the right is a bald bespectacled older man in a black turtleneck. To his left is a woman also older than those at the table in a short-sleeved white sweater. The feeling is one of joy and celebration.

Loss and joy

by Kerry Reid March 17, 2023March 17, 2023

“The shit we deal with in Baghdad, it doesn’t exist in America,” declares Sahir early in Martin Yousif Zebari’s Layalina, now in a world premiere at the Goodman under Sivan Battat’s direction. The newly minted Assyrian bridegroom is both right and wrong. The devastation of “shock and awe” bombing by American forces (followed by a […]

Zurin Villanueva as Tina Turner stands at a microphone center in a bronze-colored sleeveless satin minidress. To her right is Garrett Turner as Ike Turner in a pale salmon suit, holding a guitar. On the left are three Black women backup singers in sleeveless yellow dresses. A band comprised of six Black musicians (a piano player on the left, then three horn players, a drummer, and a bassist) are in the background.

Theater Review

Great songs, so-so script

by Kerry Reid March 17, 2023March 17, 2023

On the ticketing page for Broadway in Chicago’s presentation of the touring version of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, there’s a small line at the bottom: “Please note that Tina Turner does not appear in this production.” Given that Turner turned 83 last November and retired from performing at 69, the caveat hardly seems necessary. […]

A middle-aged Middle Eastern woman with long brown hair and round wire glasses sits at a sewing machine. She is wearing a black blouse or dress with red embroidered flowers and a necklace of red beads.

Ghost Light

International Voices Project opens The Shroud Maker

by Kerry Reid March 16, 2023March 16, 2023

Since founding the International Voices Project in 2010, Patrizia Acerra and her artistic associates have brought playwrights from around the globe to the attention of Chicago audiences. The annual International Voices Project Festival presents staged readings (often in partnership with other cultural institutions and consulates) that introduce writers who are largely unknown in the U.S. […]

At left stands Glenn Davis, a bald Black man in a dark gray suit with an insignia pinned to the lape. He is playing Vova, and stands slightly in front and to the side of a very long open file drawer. On the right on the other side of the drawer is Yasen Peyankov as Nikolai. He is an older white man with thinning hair and dark-rimmed glasses, and he wears tan trousers, a white shirt, and a brown cardigan wth the same insignia pinned to it.

Theater Review

The lies of others

by Kerry Reid March 15, 2023March 20, 2023

I’m just going to get the obvious adjective out of the way right now: Rajiv Joseph’s Describe the Night, now in its local premiere at Steppenwolf under Austin Pendleton’s direction, is definitely Stoppardian. As in much of Tom Stoppard’s work, the story spans decades—1920-2010, to be precise. And also as in Stoppard, an object (in […]

Eight actors of various races and genders from Avenue Q stand onstage in front of the set, which is a brick apartment building with a green door. The actor in the center holds Princeton, a puppet, and the actors on the right of the photo also are all holding puppets. The actors on the left are not holding puppets.

Theater Review

Street songs

by Kerry Reid March 15, 2023March 15, 2023

In what was seen at the time as quite the upset, Avenue Q took home the Tony Award for best musical in 2004, beating out the Wicked machine and the critically acclaimed Caroline, or Change. The 2007 documentary ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway lays out the behind-the-scenes stories of that season, culminating in Avenue Q […]

Four people are shown seated around a round wooden table. At lower left is a middle-aged man with dark hair, wearing a white shirt and brown sweater vest. At upper left is a younger woman with dark hair, wearing a green school uniform. At upper right is a middle-aged woman in a gray sweater, wearing a cross necklace. At lower right is another young woman with dark braided hair, wearing a top with black-and-white vertical stripes. White bowls with spoons are in front of each of them, and a black stewpot is in the center of the table.

Theater Review

Sisters in arms

by Kerry Reid March 10, 2023March 11, 2023

When it comes to Factory Theater, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Shannon O’Neill’s play The Kelly Girls, about two sisters in Northern Ireland, would be close in tone and spirit to the endearing Northern Irish comedy series Derry Girls. After all, Factory has been providing high-spirited pastiches/parodies that both satirize and celebrate the best […]

Melissa Lorraine, a white woman in a strapless black dress and black boots, with long blonde hair, stands in a light on the left, holding a microphone and reading from a notebook. A group of eight performers of different races, ethnicities, genders, and ages are moving offstage on the right. The setting is a concrete raw space with an orange ladder visible in the right rear corner and a chandelier visible overhead

Ghost Light

Home at last

by Kerry Reid March 3, 2023March 6, 2023

Theatre Y started searching for a permanent home in North Lawndale three years ago. As founding artistic director Melissa Lorraine puts it, “It’s been a little bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” The first place they considered, near the Pulaski Pink Line stop, was a little too small. The second, the Central Park Theater […]

A woman with long curly hair sits on top of a table at left. She is wearing a long dress in an orange, brown, and red pattern, with a brown cardigan over it. The table is white Formica, with scalloped edges and flowered patterns in the corners. At right in a chair sits a man in an Irish fisherman's sweater and gray pants. He is looking at the woman, who is staring off in the middle distance. She is wearing headphones.

Theater Review

Dublin songs

by Kerry Reid March 2, 2023March 11, 2023

Romantic regret and stubborn optimism seem as intertwined in the national character of Ireland as a Saint Brigid’s cross, and those qualities suffuse Once, the 2012 musical adapted by Irish playwright Enda Walsh from John Carney’s original 2007 screenplay of the same title. That this Irish tale, which is not quite a love story but […]

A band onstage. At left is a male keyboard player. In the front at the microphone is John-Mark McGaha, wearing a charcoal-gray suit. Behind him is a male trumpeter. A male saxophone player is in the rear at right, and next to McGaha on the right of the photo are two women standing and singing into microphones.

Theater Review

Here he is, baby

by Kerry Reid March 2, 2023March 2, 2023

Artists Lounge Live, started by the husband-and-wife team of Michael and Angela Ingersoll, specializes in presenting tribute shows to various musical legends. (Michael Ingersoll was in the original tour of the Four Seasons-inspired bio-musical Jersey Boys, and Angela has played Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow.) Now they’ve brought in John-Mark McGaha, an Alabama-born […]

A young girl in a bright pink sweater is sleeping with her head on a round able. A wooden box of yarn and knitting needles sit in front of her. Two people in dark clothing loiter nearby, as if interested in stealing the box without waking her up.

Theater Review

Warm and fuzzy

by Kerry Reid February 23, 2023February 22, 2023

Charles Dickens’s schoolmaster Mr. Gradgrind from Hard Times (he who insists, “Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts”) would feel right at home in the grim factory town run by a petulant archduke in Mac Barnett’s 2012 children’s book Extra Yarn. There, young Annabelle and her schoolmates are […]

Two performers in body suits covered in netting walk side by side down a catwalk. Silver "arms" wrap around their torsos. Behind them we see a guitarist and vocalist wearing black clothing with white diagonal stripes

Theater Review

Floor Show keeps swinging

by Kerry Reid February 22, 2023February 22, 2023

Alex Grelle and Jesse Morgan Young’s Floor Show premiered in a brief electric run in February 2020 at the Chopin. The plan was to bring it back later that spring. But then . . . you know. Blessedly, this compelling exploration/channeling of the chameleonic (and always self-aware) spirit of David Bowie—to call it a “tribute […]

A young woman with long dark hair in a red patterned blouse is kneeling in the foreground, looking at a photograph. Behind her is another woman with short dark hair, wearing khakis and a leather bomber jacket. Behind them we see a collection of old suitcases and crates, and white sheets hanging against the wall. A wooden platform is visible to their left

Theater Review

Sisters in war

by Kerry Reid February 22, 2023February 22, 2023

Dominick Alesia’s original musical, now in a world premiere with the Impostors under Stefan Roseen’s direction, follows a young girl, Amelia, as she searches through a country shattered by war for Miranda, the older sister she never knew she had. Along the way, much like Dorothy and Alice, she encounters helpmates who are on their […]

A scene from Trial in the Delta. At left, a middle-aged bald Black man in shirtsleeves, suspenders, and tie stands behind a table covered with law books. He is pointing toward a white man seated at a table whose back is to the camera. Several other white men are also seated, facing the Black man who is testifying. On the right is a white attorney in a dark suit and tie, who is holding a portfolio or notebook of some kind.

Ghost Light

Chicago Theatre Week kicks off

by Kerry Reid February 16, 2023February 24, 2023

Update February 24: Chicago Theatre Week has been extended through March 5. “If you see our show, that’s at least two spots on your bingo card!” That’s what Jimalita Tillman, global director for the Harold Washington Cultural Center, said at the Chicago Theatre Week kick-off party Monday night at Wicker Park’s Den Theatre. She wasn’t […]

Five actors in stand in line on a stage featuring a gloomy forest background, with fallen trees and a gray cloudy dome behind them. At left is the Baker, carrying a variety of tools and weapons on his belt. Next to him is Jack in a brown leather jacket and boots. The Witch stands center, looking outward with her arms partly raised, wearing a strapless purple gown covered with silver glittery streaks that suggest lightning. Cinderella stands to the right of the Witch in her ragged kitchen maid's clothes, holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. On the far right is Little Red in a red dress with a cloak of wolf fur over her shoulders.

Theater Review

Seeing the forest and the trees

by Kerry Reid February 15, 2023February 15, 2023

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical Into the Woods premiered three years before Robert Bly’s Iron John sent men into the wilderness as part of the “mythopoetic men’s movement,” complete with sweat lodges, drum circles, chanting, and other rituals designed to restore a pre-industrialization notion of masculinity, combined with Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” narratives. The […]

Hattie McDaniel (Gabrielle Lott-Rogers) stands left in front of a bar, in a vibrant blue gown, with a gardenia in her hair. Dottie (Mildred Marie Langford) stands right behind the bar, wearing a black-and-white maid's outfit. She is looking at a piece of paper containing a thank-you speech for the Oscars that the studio wrote for McDaniel.

Theater Review

#OscarsSoWhite

by Kerry Reid February 15, 2023February 15, 2023

This past fall, TimeLine offered a blistering revival of Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind, in which a Black actress in a 1950s Broadway play about lynching (penned and directed by white men, naturally) takes a stand against the insulting stereotypes in the script and the microaggressions in the rehearsal room. They’ve followed that up with […]

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