You may not have known Linsey Falls’s name, but if you spent much time in the audience at Chicago non-Equity and storefront theaters over the years, you almost certainly knew his face and his voice. His expressive features, big eyes, and mischievous grin lit up the stage in comic roles, and his malleable voice and […]
Tag: Lifeline Theatre
Dark comedy goes nuclear in Cat’s Cradle
Heather Currie directs John Hildreth’s laugh-a-minute adaptation Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut’s satire about the U.S. nuclear program and all-around ignorant hubris. The story is told in flashback by a writer, possibly named Jonah, or maybe John (Tony Bozzuto), trying to write a book about the end of the world while perhaps living through said event. […]
Southern stories
I first saw Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland’s autobiographical From the Mississippi Delta over 30 years ago in the old Goodman studio theater space. Though it’s been revived many times since, I hadn’t seen it again until the current Lifeline and Pegasus Theatre Chicago coproduction at Lifeline. It’s a testament to Holland’s gift for dialogue […]
Warm and fuzzy
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 […]
Collected stories
When Sharon Evans started producing solo work at Live Bait Theater in the late 1980s, storytelling hadn’t yet become a cottage industry in Chicago. “At that time it was a very unusual thing to do,” Evans says. “I remember being told that no one would pay to see a solo performer on an extended run.” […]
Ewe oughta know
Lifeline Theatre’s acclaimed KidSeries has had good luck with the silly bucolic tales of Doreen Cronin (illustrated by Betsy Lewin), from 2003’s production of Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type to 2012’s Duck for President. A large part of the success of these family musicals comes from the fact that adapter James E. Grote and […]
#1 Victorian ladies detective agency
Six years ago, Lifeline Theatre unveiled the world premiere of Christopher M. Walsh’s Miss Holmes—a cunning gender-bent take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Baker Street polymath that predated the film Enola Holmes by several years (though not the young-adult series of novels by Nancy Springer). Now Katie McLean Hainsworth’s Sherlock and Mandy Walsh’s Dr. Dorothy Watson […]
La Esquina, Creepshow, Miss Continental, and Miss Holmes
At the corners of Cullerton and Carpenter sits La Esquina, a community center that opened this spring to provide free art classes and provide safer space for neighborhood youth to explore their creativity. Tonight, La Esquina hosts their first annual expo and fundraiser at Thalia Hall (1807 S. Allport). From 5-9 PM, this event is […]
A cluttered Passage
Though it has some of Lifeline’s patented how-do-they-do-that effects, like a completely persuasive storm at sea achieved with nothing but video, some noise, and actors purporting to be blown around, Middle Passage is too cluttered to be satisfying. Rutherford Calhoun’s misadventures on the high seas include a captain mad enough to compete with Ahab, participation […]
Bunnies, Rollins, and poetry
Looking for some action? We can’t promise that, but we do think you’ll have a great time at the following events! Reader, read on. FRI 4/15 Barbara Burdick opened Cuddle Bunny in Lakeview (2901 N. Clark) in June of 2020, inspired by the animal cafes of Japan. At the shop, visitors can enjoy hanging out […]
Best performance space for dealing with interior microclimates
Lifeline Theatre Anyone who frequents establishments in the summer months knows that there are generally two temperatures: not cold enough and Hell has frozen over. Even so, some locations deal with that microclimate variety at any time of year. So, when it comes to dealing with indoor temperature changes, no one does it better than […]
The unforgettable Jane Blass
Actor, singer, and all-around raconteur Jane Blass, who called Chicago home from 1988-2006 before she relocated to New York, where she performed on Broadway and in the touring companies of many shows, died at 59 after a long struggle with stomach cancer on August 6. Dorothy Milne, her friend and cofounder of the long-running women’s storytelling collective the Sweat Girls, compiled these remembrances from those who knew and loved her in Chicago and New York.
BoHo and Lifeline examine the public and private split
The Pursuit of Happiness and Pride and Prejudice confront the limitations of Zoom culture with exhilarating results.
Middle Passage is part voyage of the damned, part picaresque
Lifeline’s staging of Charles Johnson’s novel has sea legs.
Leaping into live performance for February
Our critics suggest ten ways to fill out that slightly longer calendar this month.