Kelli Simpkins Archives - Chicago Reader

Five women stand in a line across the stage. The first four women are white, the woman on the far right is Black. The woman in the center is in black Grecian god-warrior garb. The second woman on the left is in contemporary clothes, sitting at her kitchen counter drinking wine. The other three are in flowing gowns and are positioned around the woman in the godlike clothing, looking at her with adoration and moving as if in a ritual dance.

The real Maenads of Monmouth

by Kerry Reid June 29, 2022July 28, 2022

Back in 2014, Theater Wit presented Madeleine George’s acerbic but aching comedy, Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England, in which the denizens of a small New England college town wrestle with the dusty past, as represented by the display of the title creatures in the campus museum—which no one ever visits. George’s play wove in […]

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 […]