Robert Falls Archives - Chicago Reader

Dancing on the edge of disaster

by Kerry Reid April 13, 2023April 24, 2023

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 […]

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.

Arts & Culture

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 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 […]

A middle-aged white blonde woman stands behind a kitchen table, leaning in toward a young white man with darker hair who is sitting at the table.

Theater Review

A swing and a miss

by Catey Sullivan October 19, 2022October 19, 2022

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 […]

Black-and-white image of Susan V. Booth sitting on metal steps leading up to an el station. The steps have signs warning "Stop. No Entry." She is wearing dark trousers, a long-sleeved shirt, and a pullover sweater

Ghost Light

Susan V. Booth talks about coming home to the Goodman

by Kerry Reid August 10, 2022August 10, 2022

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 […]