Women love true-crime stories—so much so that SNL spoofed the fascination a few years ago with a song about women relaxing alone at home watching their favorite “Murder Show.” Fans of the podcast My Favorite Murder (aka “Murderinos”) are overwhelmingly female. When you’re raised from an early age to think that rape and murder are […]
Tag: Gift Theatre
Posted inTheater Review
My old Kentucky home
The Gift Theatre marks its return to live performance after a two-year absence with the Chicago premiere of Naomi Iizuka’s bittersweet ode to memory and place. Directed by Lavina Jadhwhani, it is a series of sometimes wistful, sometimes nostalgic, but always affecting monologues told by a succession of related characters in a Kentucky town, over […]
Posted inGhost Light
Fire in Oak Park and changes in Oak Brook and Jefferson Park
Oak Park Festival Theatre was one of the first companies back to live performance this year after the COVID-19 shutdown with their production of The Tempest, staged in their longtime outdoor home at Austin Gardens. They weathered that storm, only to suffer a fire on November 23 at their offices in downtown Oak Park, located […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman is Gorey-meets-Kafka
Gift Theatre brings a dark fable to life.
Posted inArts & Culture
Kentucky puts the “blue” in the Bluegrass State
Leah Nanako Winkler’s raucous and poignant family drama gets a stellar local premiere with the Gift Theatre.
Posted inArts & Culture
Wolf Play leads the pack
An adoptee seeks comfort and safety in lupine identity in Hansol Jung’s latest.
Posted inArts & Culture
Doubt: A Parable explores the Catholic Church at a crisis point
The 2004 Pulitzer-winner is relevant once again.
Posted inBlogs
Serpentwithfeet and more of the best things to do in Chicago this weekend
The film The Train of Salt and Sugar and more goings-on 6/29-7/1.
Posted inArts & Culture
Daniel Kyri turns in a triumphant performance in the Gift’s Hamlet
He brings utter control over the language and a quality of hard-won majesty to the role.
Posted inNews & Politics
Rahm’s Chicago Stories podcast takes you inside the mind of the mayor
We listened to all 18 hours of it so you don’t have to.
Posted inArts & Culture
Racism won’t even let the black hero of Hang Man get off in peace
Instead, Stacy Osei-Kuffour’s dark comedy leaves him dangling from a noose.
Posted inArts & Culture
Pilgrims, The Water Children, and six more new stage shows to see (or avoid)
A world premiere at Gift Theatre and a play about abortion are among this week’s notable plays.
Posted inArts & Culture
Baby Wants Candy, First Time or Fan, and seven more new comedy and stage shows
Two musical improv groups are among this week’s best bets.
Posted inArts & Culture
How Chicago theater artists are diversifying the city’s stages
Efforts are underway to make Chicago’s theater less uniformly white, thin, able-bodied, and gender-conforming.
Posted inArts & Culture
A gutsy new take on Shakespeare’s great Other
The Gift Theatre’s gutsy new take on Shakespeare’s Othello gives us a more Moorish Moor.