The last great production of The Cherry Orchard I saw was at Steppenwolf, nearly 20 years ago. Tina Landau turned the company’s upstairs theater into a near-immersive experience, with Riccardo Hernández’s set design incorporating swathes of lacy white cloth all around us—perfect for Anton Chekhov’s characters, who spend so much time hiding from visible truths […]
Tag: Robert Falls
In the room with Frank Galati
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 […]
You say you want a revolution?
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 […]
A swing and a miss
As the single most-produced contemporary playwright in the Goodman Theater’s history, Rebecca Gilman has provided audiences with some truly perceptive, unflinching depictions of life’s varied brutalities. 1999’s Spinning Into Butter took on racism at a small, supposedly progressive liberal arts college. Fourteen years before #MeToo, Boy Gets Girl stunned with its take on the nightmarish […]
Susan V. Booth talks about coming home to the Goodman
The past two years have seen more upheavals and changes in leadership at Chicago theaters than at any time in my memory, exacerbated by the long COVID-19 shutdown. So perhaps it makes sense that Goodman Theatre went back to the future, so to speak, by announcing Susan V. Booth as their new artistic director late […]
More changes at the top for Chicago-area theaters
Goodman, Congo Square, and Metropolis Performing Arts Centre in Arlington Heights all announce major changes at the top.
Live at the Goodman offers three views on loss and reinvention
Plays by Adam Rapp, Adrienne Kennedy, and Ike Holter make a livestream connection with audiences.
Stuart Gordon, legend of off-Loop theater and horror films, dies at 72
From Warp! to Re-Animator, Gordon told the stories he wanted to see his way.
On a bountiful opera weekend, Chicago Opera Theater climbs a peak
Chicago Opera Theater’s Everest is stunning contemporary opera.
The Winter’s Tale of our discontent
But at least “Exit, pursued by a bear” finally makes sense.
Tired of solicitations from big nonprofits? We have just the solution for you!
With the Executive Pay Test, it’s easier than ever to decide which group deserves your hard-earned cash!
David Cale shares his life story in We’re Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time
But this Goodman production should best be understood as a reliving than a true memoir.
Stacy Keach returns for another go at Hemingway and Pamplona
He’s fully recovered from the mild heart attack he suffered during last year’s world premiere.
The Goodman’s new Enemy of the People gives us a hero we can’t believe in
This Thomas Stockmann is courageous, tenacious, and a little nuts: a man of our times.
Reagan and Gorbachev meet cute atop a pile of nukes in Blind Date
Gaping conceptual hole aside, the Goodman Theatre staging is entertaining.