Mercury Theater Chicago Archives

A man and woman in 1980s club regalia, including fringed leather jackets and leopard-print leggings, stand holding hands center stage.

Hair metal hijinks

by Marissa Oberlander July 26, 2023July 26, 2023

The Mercury Theater production of this five-time Tony-nominated musical re-creates the 80s with such abandon that the audience’s fervor was palpable (and loud) on the night I attended. Tommy Novak’s staging of Rock of Ages creates a fun environment where musical theater mainstays intermingle with fresh standouts on the local scene. Reminiscent of the Emcee […]

Four women are shown in what looks like a storage room. Two of the seated women are very pregnant. One woman is standing behind them, and the woman seated on the left holds a model of a fetus.

Theater Review

Unleashed moms

by Bridgette M. Redman May 18, 2023May 18, 2023

Mother’s Day weekend provided the perfect time to open this irreverent, boisterous look at three women’s journey from two blue lines on a pee stick to graduation day. Running at Mercury Theater Chicago’s Venus Cabaret, the musical by Julie Dunlap and Sara Stotts features first-time mom Rachel (Tafadzwa Diener), second-time mom Angie (Jacquelyne Jones), and […]

A white actor and a Black actor, dressed as Huck Finn and Jim, stand together onstage, with a rough blanket held over their heads.

Theater Review

Timely Twain

by Catey Sullivan May 4, 2023May 4, 2023

The dramaturgy displays alone for Mercury Theater Chicago’s Big River, based on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, taught me more about Mark Twain’s 1830s-set, biting antislavery novel than I learned from studying the book in junior high, high school, undergrad, and grad school combined. First off, the musical (music and lyrics by Roger Miller, book by […]

A band onstage. At left is a male keyboard player. In the front at the microphone is John-Mark McGaha, wearing a charcoal-gray suit. Behind him is a male trumpeter. A male saxophone player is in the rear at right, and next to McGaha on the right of the photo are two women standing and singing into microphones.

Theater Review

Here he is, baby

by Kerry Reid March 2, 2023March 2, 2023

Artists Lounge Live, started by the husband-and-wife team of Michael and Angela Ingersoll, specializes in presenting tribute shows to various musical legends. (Michael Ingersoll was in the original tour of the Four Seasons-inspired bio-musical Jersey Boys, and Angela has played Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow.) Now they’ve brought in John-Mark McGaha, an Alabama-born […]

Alexis J. Roston, a Black woman, portrays Billie Holiday. She is wearing a sleeveless white formal gown with a gardenia in her hair and long beaded white fingerless gloves. She is standing in front of an old-fashioned microphone, caught mid-song.

Theater Review

A heartbreaking Lady Day

by Marissa Oberlander February 9, 2023February 9, 2023

Alexis J. Roston’s sixth go-round playing jazz legend Billie Holiday in the last year of her life is beautifully layered, heartbreaking, and still affirming of the great vocalist’s accomplishments, against a multitude of odds. After a decade on and off in the role, Roston is now a codirector in Mercury Theater’s production of the Lanie […]

Four actors in costume as the Golden Girls stand onstage, wearing nightgowns and bathrobes. Three of them are standing in front of a couch, with their hands raised and looking terrified. The fourth, playing Sophia, is standing facing them with a large knife upraised in their hand.

Theater Review

Not so golden

by Catey Sullivan January 18, 2023January 18, 2023

The hardest working queen in showbiz? That’d be Ginger Minj (fight me). After three stints on RuPaul’s Drag Race (season seven, All Stars 2, and All Stars 6), the breakout star and two-time RDR finalist has kept busy with countless live shows, small screen hits, a trio of studio albums that showcase her Broadway-worthy belt […]

Six people representing the characters in Clue are in a library set. Two Black men stand behind the couch. Three white women and a white man sit on the couch. They are all holding weapons associated with the game and the show (knife, rope, candlestick, etc.)

Theater Review

Catch the Clue bus

by Marissa Oberlander October 28, 2022October 28, 2022

The game Clue taught me what “confidential” means, that a conservatory is just a fancy greenhouse, and that Miss Scarlett is always the right choice. Any armchair detective that could identify those little toy weapons in the dark with their eyes closed will enjoy this new stage adaptation of the 1985 movie based on the […]

The cast of Mercury Theater Chicago's Priscilla Queen of the Desert stands in front of the prop tour bus. The three drag performers who are at the center of the show are in the center of the photograph wearing bright sleeveless jumpsuits and exaggerated wigs, striking poses. They are surrounded by "tourists" in shorts and camping shirts, taking their photographs.

Theater Review

Queens of the road

by Kerry Reid July 27, 2022July 27, 2022

In 1994, an Australian road comedy about three drag artists heading off in a beat-up tour bus across the Outback felt like a breath of fresh air in a cinematic landscape that tended to focus stories with “gay themes” on the tragedy of AIDS, and that still tended to view being trans as a punch […]

Eight women in glittering gowns stand in a row, arms upraised.

Theater Review

Soul sisters

by Catey Sullivan February 9, 2022February 9, 2022

If you’re looking for respite from the slush-bound, gawdawful doldrums of February (and who isn’t?), Mercury Theater Chicago offers a scorching-good respite in Women of Soul. Rebooting the show they debuted in 2018 at Black Ensemble Theater, writer/director Daryl D. Brooks and musical director Robert Reddrick don’t shy away from taking on the tunes that […]

Interior of Venus Cabaret, lit with soft purple lighting effects.

Performing Arts Feature

Welcome to Venus

by Catey Sullivan January 20, 2022January 20, 2022

Back in December, there was a shining sliver of time when it looked like we—as individuals, as artists, as arts institutions—were forging a clear, or at least clear-ish, path forward. Hundreds of people were back at work on live, in-person shows. A Christmas Carol burned bright at the Goodman. The Snow Queen got a shiny […]