Goodman Archives - Chicago Reader

Frank Galati, an older balding white man with a full beard and glasses, is seated and photographed at a rehearsal. He is wearing a black shirt with the sleeves rolled above his elbows, and his arms are crossed over his chest. There is a big smile on his face.

In the room with Frank Galati

by Mark Larson January 17, 2023January 19, 2023

Actor, director, playwright, screenwriter, and professor Dr. Frank Galati died on January 2, 2023, but his impact on those he worked with and loved (they were one and the same) and his legacy are imperishable. He won two Tony Awards in 1990 for adapting and directing The Grapes of Wrath, and was a nominee in […]

A group of six Black actors (three women, three men) crouch in a circle, their arms stretched out and supporting each other.

Ghost Light

Looking back at some of the best productions and biggest stories of 2022

by Kerry Reid December 13, 2022December 28, 2022

During 2020, my running joke was that, although there weren’t any plays happening, there was always plenty of drama to report on in Chicago theater. In fall of 2021, we started seeing some theater return, though the season was cut short by last December’s COVID surge. (Not to be confused with the one we’re currently […]

A young Latinx woman in white robe and blue shawl covering her head kneels center stage. On her right, slightly in the shadows, is an older white man in a monk's robe.

Theater Review

You say you want a revolution?

by Kerry Reid November 3, 2022November 4, 2022

When it comes to bold and audacious stagings of Measure for Measure (for my money, the most unpleasant of Shakespeare’s “problem plays”), it’s hard to top Robert Falls’s dark take-no-prisoners 2013 production at the Goodman, which reimagined Vienna as Times Square, circa the late 1970s. (Think David Simon’s The Deuce on HBO.) But Henry Godinez’s […]

Arts & Culture

The drama of addiction

by Amanda Finn April 14, 2022April 14, 2022

There are currently two plays running in Chicago that talk about self-medicating, addiction, and how one’s actions impact those around them. One involves working-class people, a snapshot of reality for many across the country, and the other a figure in popular culture, a wealthy man whose lived experience is far from the reality for most. […]

Performing Arts Feature

It’s become a different world

by Mark Larson January 20, 2022January 20, 2022

We see a show and later learn that it had to close abruptly. We can empathize with the actors’ disappointment and distress because we can visualize their faces and recall their voices. But how has the pandemic impacted those we see only briefly in the lobby as we enter or don’t see at all? How […]

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.

Performing Arts Feature

Plays in a pandemic

by Kerry Reid December 22, 2021January 6, 2022

By the time this year ends (it is gonna end, right?), Reader critics will, by my count, have reviewed 69 live theater and dance performances. That’s far less than in most years, but a veritable cornucopia after the onstage famine that began in March 2020. But just when we think it’s safe to go back […]

Older woman in white blouse stands left, while younger woman in blue striped shirt sits on floor. Both are looking at a cream-colored garment coming out of a suitcase.

Arts & Culture

The real stories of a queer SWANA family

by Ata Younan December 15, 2021December 16, 2021

Tucked into the corner of an expansive artist studio that he rents in Edgewater with 13 other creative friends, Martin Yousif Zebari spent the latter half of 2020 sewing and writing. When he wasn’t designing and constructing “entire gaudy outfits” for himself or hooded scarves for his friends, he managed to write his first full-length […]

Fannie Lou Hamer in green print dress, holding sign reading "To Hope Is to Vote."

Theater Review

Fannie Lou Hamer takes us to church

by Sheri Flanders October 27, 2021October 27, 2021

Fannie (The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer) by Cheryl L. West, now onstage at the Goodman Theatre, delivers a sorely needed injection of patriotism into our cynical electorate. But don’t balk at the word “patriotism”—this show is a far departure from your high school assembly. Fannie was presented abridged last fall in public […]

Woman stands in front of columns and fountain in Millennium Park, surrounded by suitcases

Arts & Culture

Destinos showcases local and international theater companies

by Kaylen Ralph September 23, 2021September 30, 2021

By definition, futurology is the study of current trends, the findings of which can be used to forecast future developments. It’s also a schema that applies perfectly to this current, uncertain era of Chicago theater, and one that is the driving ethos behind Teatro Vista’s 30th season, the first to be helmed by the company’s […]