Court Theatre Archives - Chicago Reader

A woman in a long red dress and fur-trimmed cloak stands left. On the right is a man in a gold gown and a crown, carrying an evergreen branch.

Court’s The Lion in Winter slices through the surface

by Kelly Kleiman November 15, 2023November 15, 2023

The arch dialogue in James Goldman’s 1966 drama The Lion in Winter (turned into a 1968 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole) about the eventful Christmas of 1183 at the English court hasn’t aged well—it calls too much attention to its own cleverness while often failing to advance either the plot or our understanding […]

Charlique Rolle is pictured wearing black clothing and sitting on a stool.

Ghost Light

Charlique Rolle takes over at African American Arts Alliance of Chicago

by Kerry Reid September 28, 2023September 30, 2023

Charlique Rolle knows what it takes to keep a strong vision going in challenging times. The executive director of Congo Square Theatre Company came into that role in the summer of 2020, when nobody even knew when it would be safe to return to live performance. Rolle worked with artistic director Ericka Ratcliff and the […]

Oedipus sits center on a stone altar, wearing a long robe and dark glasses. A Black woman is on his left, wearing a white-and-gold robe, and a Black man is on his right wearing a tan tunic and trousers.

Theater Review

The Gospel at Colonus gets a rousing revival at Court

by Kerry Reid May 24, 2023May 30, 2023

Lee Breuer’s 1983 reimagining of Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus as a Black Pentecostal church service (featuring music by Bob Telson) didn’t make it to Chicago until 1990. But that local premiere at the old Goodman Theatre (where the Art Institute’s modern wing now stands), featuring the Five Blind Boys of Alabama and “Pops” Staples, among […]

Audrey Francis, a white woman in blue jeans and a black jacket, is standing left, and Glenn Davis, a Black man in dark trousers and shirt, is standing right in front of the empty new theater at Steppenwolf.

Ghost Light

It’s season-announcement season

by Kerry Reid April 13, 2023April 14, 2023

The warmer temperatures, blossoming flowers, and budding trees aren’t the only harbingers of spring. It’s also the season of the season announcements, with the major Chicago companies letting us know what to expect in 2023-24 on their stages. The Goodman presents the first season selected by Susan V. Booth, who took over as artistic director […]

A woman with long blonde hair sits at a pub table next to a man with short brown hair. They both wear jeans and work shirts, with pints of beer in their hands.

Theater Review

A universe of privation

by Irene Hsiao February 21, 2023February 21, 2023

No wings close the expanse of earth that widens the Court Theatre stage to a landscape in Caryl Churchill’s Fen, directed by Vanessa Stalling, with scenic design by Collette Pollard. The terraced land, hemmed in scalloped edges by shining metal borders, looks like the ocean, diminished and immobilized in its crash against the massive concrete […]

Three women are standing together, shot from below. There is a gray background behind them. They are unsmiling, staring into the middle distance. The woman in the middle has her arms crossed over her chest.

Ghost Light

Caryl Churchill gets some love from Chicago theaters

by Kerry Reid February 3, 2023February 6, 2023

British playwright Caryl Churchill is having a bit of a moment this month in Chicago. Court Theatre opens her rarely produced 1983 play, Fen, under the direction of Vanessa Stalling on February 10. And Curious Theatre Branch opens This Is Not a Churchill—four plays inspired by her work—this weekend at the Facility Theatre in Humboldt […]

Theater Review

Apartheid and Antigone

by Sheri Flanders November 23, 2022November 23, 2022

Exquisitely paced and intellectually explosive, The Island at Court Theatre is a profoundly moving work of art. From the first moment, this production (directed by Gabrielle Randle-Bent, Court’s associate artistic director) seizes the audience and thrusts them into the world of two political prisoners of apartheid and doesn’t let go, even long after the play […]

A traditional Victorian dining room set. A young Black man is seated at the table center. On either side of him are two older Black women, both gesturing toward him and talking.

Theater Review

Elderberry wine in new bottles

by Kelly Kleiman September 14, 2022September 14, 2022

Long before the term “meta” entered common parlance there was Arsenic and Old Lace, a 1939 play by Joseph Kesselring about how plays are ridiculous. It’s also a play about the difference between reality and appearance, embodied by the saintly Brewster sisters and their killer elderberry wine. Arsenic and Old Lace Through 10/2: Wed-Fri 7:30 […]

Black-and-white image of Susan V. Booth sitting on metal steps leading up to an el station. The steps have signs warning "Stop. No Entry." She is wearing dark trousers, a long-sleeved shirt, and a pullover sweater

Ghost Light

Susan V. Booth talks about coming home to the Goodman

by Kerry Reid August 10, 2022August 10, 2022

The past two years have seen more upheavals and changes in leadership at Chicago theaters than at any time in my memory, exacerbated by the long COVID-19 shutdown. So perhaps it makes sense that Goodman Theatre went back to the future, so to speak, by announcing Susan V. Booth as their new artistic director late […]

Angel Ysaguirre and Charles Newell of Court Theatre stand in front of a Tony Awards backdrop on the red carpet. Ysaguirre has white hair and wears a light pink suit. Newell is bald and in a black suit.

Ghost Light

Tonys, tech awards, and terpsichore

by Kerry Reid June 16, 2022June 16, 2022

Lots of behind-the-scenes news in Chicago theater, and some well-deserved plaudits to note as well this week! At the Tony Awards this past Sunday, longtime Chicago sound designer and composer Mikhail Fiksel took home the top prize for his work on Lucas Hnath’s drama Dana H., which ran locally at the Goodman in fall of […]

A diner set. A young Black waitress in a yellow uniform stands next to a Black man seated at a table in the forefroung. We see three other Black men behind them; one in a booth on the left, a younger Black man standing by the register, and a man behind the register.

Theater Review

Diner dialogues

by Kelly Kleiman May 25, 2022May 25, 2022

This is an impeccable production of a play whose weaknesses outweigh its considerable strengths. It’s the 1960s episode of August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, tracing a century of life in the African American Hill District, and urban renewal shadows everything. (Jack Magaw’s set presents this vividly.) The diner where the play takes place is nearly empty […]

Vintage photograph of the audience at the Studebaker

Ghost Light

The Studebaker gets ready to roll

by Kerry Reid May 20, 2022May 25, 2022

Last August, I caught up with Jacob Harvey just as he was taking over as the new (and first-ever) managing artistic director of theaters for the Fine Arts Building. At the time, he noted that with the loss of the Royal George as a midsize rental house, the soon-to-be-remodeled Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts […]

A South Asian woman in a dark top and light trousers kneels, lunging forward toward the right side of the photo, drenched in a blue light.

Arts & Culture

Springing ahead with live performance

by Kerry Reid, Deanna Isaacs and Irene Hsiao April 4, 2022April 6, 2022

While the BA.2 variant of COVID-19 looms as a possible impediment to attending live performances (even as some of us now qualify for a second booster), shows are booming. We’ve got a baker’s dozen of events to consider if you feel up to getting out and about in the next couple of months. We also suggest […]

Woman in red stands left, actor in black clothes and cap is center, man in white T-shirt and brown trousers stands to the rear at the right. They are standing on a floor covered with sand, in front of a wall of dark glass sliding doors.

Arts & Culture

Sea changes

by Kerry Reid March 8, 2022March 8, 2022

In his preshow speech, Court Theatre artistic director Charles Newell asked the audience how many had ever seen Henrik Ibsen’s 1888 play The Lady from the Sea before. “We’re at Court Theatre and we’re doing an Ibsen play only four people have seen,” he responded. That alone helps make the case for this production, which […]

Theater Review

Less is Moor in Court Theatre’s stripped-down Othello

by Sheri Flanders October 21, 2021October 21, 2021

Othello is usually viewed as “Shakespeare’s Race Play” and somewhat rightfully so—after all, the Bard almost never wrote Black characters. In our society race overshadows everything, so much so that much discourse around Othello tends to obstinately revolve around whether or not the play is “racist”—as if an inanimate object were able to take offense […]