Tag: Vol. 25 No. 32

DAMON, RING AND F. SCOTT, Writers’ Theatre–Chicago. Continuing the crusade he began with a respectable but somewhat flat one-man show about Ben Hecht, writer-director J.R. Sullivan here honors three more literary lights whose reputations have faded somewhat over the years. But instead of paying tribute to Damon Runyon, Ring Lardner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald with […]

The Napoleonade, Eclipse Theatre Company. In this ribald spoof, the 18th-century concept of the “feast of reason” turns into a feeding frenzy of false glory. Written in 1994 by Trevor Anthony and Thomas McCarthy, then grad students at the Yale School of Drama, this irreverent 65-minute “burlesque of conquest” compresses Napoleon’s career from 1798 to […]

Factory Theater By Adam Langer Not long ago the Factory Theater raised eyebrows with Second City Didn’t Want Us, a reportedly mean-spirited send-up of that most sacred of Chicago improv institutions. Partly because the show smacked of sour grapes and partly because I thought I might laugh too hard and blow my cover as an […]

A Village Voice reporter last fall quoted me as saying that Goodman Theatre artistic director Robert Falls “talks a great show….But it’s backfired on him because he can fail to deliver.” What he left out was the context of my criticism: Like any artist Falls can fail, but when he does deliver, his productions are […]