Writers Theatre Archives - Chicago Reader

A woman stands behind a library counter. In front of the counter a Black police officer and another woman are facing off with each other.

Sanctuary stories

by Catey Sullivan July 7, 2023July 7, 2023

At the crux of writer/director Kareem Fahmy’s promising but incomplete drama is a father and a daughter, whose relationship is cruelly subject to the seemingly random structures of immigration policy and international border protocols. Any reunion between Shirin (Aila Ayilam Peck) and Peyman (Rom Barkhordar) will happen at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, […]

A woman with long curly hair sits on top of a table at left. She is wearing a long dress in an orange, brown, and red pattern, with a brown cardigan over it. The table is white Formica, with scalloped edges and flowered patterns in the corners. At right in a chair sits a man in an Irish fisherman's sweater and gray pants. He is looking at the woman, who is staring off in the middle distance. She is wearing headphones.

Theater Review

Dublin songs

by Kerry Reid March 2, 2023March 11, 2023

Romantic regret and stubborn optimism seem as intertwined in the national character of Ireland as a Saint Brigid’s cross, and those qualities suffuse Once, the 2012 musical adapted by Irish playwright Enda Walsh from John Carney’s original 2007 screenplay of the same title. That this Irish tale, which is not quite a love story but […]

Two women stand on either side of a cardboard puppet set, manipuating small cardboard figures. The woman on the left is all in black, with part of her face obscured. The woman on the right wears a light orange turtleneck and a gray cardigan sweater. They are in shadow, with light coming through the center of the cardboard frame around the puppet stage.

Theater Review

Practical holiday magic

by Irene Hsiao December 6, 2022December 6, 2022

Uncle Joe was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The cardboard boxes littered the floor, filled with Joe’s tools, Joe’s college textbooks, Joe’s albums and manuals, Joe’s CDs, Joe’s tax returns, Joe’s unfinished projects, and all manner of Joe’s mess and memorabilia, stacked in a circle radiating outwards from a […]

A white woman in dark clothes stands left, her head bent one side and one arm upraised over her head. On the right in the background is an Asian man wearing a white shirt, holding a piece of paper in front of his face. It is a shadowy stage.

Ghost Light

Lucky Plush helps two artists deal with their Unfinished Business

by Kerry Reid October 18, 2022October 18, 2022

Kurt Chiang and Melinda Jean Myers (known to friends as Mindy) have wanted to collaborate for years. But it took a pandemic for the former Neo-Futurist artistic director and the Lucky Plush ensemble member to finally develop a full-length piece together. Unfinished Business, the fruit of that longed-for collaboration (much of it conducted remotely, and […]

Four Asian actors are pictured in a dining-room set. An older man is seated left, with an older woman standing directly across from him. She is flanked by a younger man on the left and a younger woman on the right.

Theater Review

Pecking themselves to death

by Irene Hsiao October 12, 2022October 12, 2022

Albert Chen (Christopher Thomas Pow) is sitting on a park bench eating what appears to be a burrito or a hot pocket when a hunched old man, dressed in an intersection of athleisure and preppie that signals respectability, comfort, and a baseline certainty of invisibility, shuffles in. “Hey! You Chinese?” he hollers. Albert, though he […]

A line of Black dancers of all genders. The male-presenting dancers are shirtless and wear dark trousers. The female-presenting dancers are in cream-colored slip dances.

Arts & Culture

Some best bets for the fall harvest of performance

by Kerry Reid, Irene Hsiao and Deanna Isaacs September 16, 2022September 16, 2022

It’s impossible to summarize everything that’s happening onstage this season. (It’s also hard to tell you exactly what COVID-19 precautions are required at venues now; we suggest checking ahead and being prepared to show proof of vax, and wearing a mask as a courtesy to other patrons.) But here are ten offerings that promise to […]

A Black woman with blonde hair and wearing a light sequined gown stands at the microphone center, her arms outstretched. Behind her sits a band of Black musicians.

Theater Review

Fields of glory

by Catey Sullivan July 6, 2022July 6, 2022

In Pearl’s Rollin’ With the Blues, Felicia P. Fields gets a showcase for her indomitable vocals. The Tony nominee (for The Color Purple) is a bona fide star in the land of musical theater, her voice an irresistible mix of low-down growling blues and clarion-clear belt. As the titular chanteuse in Writers Theatre’s world premiere […]

Two women in white fencing clothes. The woman on the left is white, and is in a kneeling crouch. The woman on the right is Black, and is looking down at the other woman, holding her fencing sword pointed down.

Theater Review

Babes with blades

by Kerry Reid May 19, 2022May 19, 2022

Whether by design or happenstance, Writers Theatre has focused on the theme of women in competition and collaboration this season. In Eleanor Burgess’s Wife of a Salesman, two actors portraying Linda Loman and the “woman from Boston” in a contemporary riff on Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman wonder why their characters in the play-within-the-play […]

A younger blonde woman in a pink dressing gown sits in a chair on the left. In the background is an older woman in a brown dress sitting on the bed. The costumes and furniture suggest the 1940s.

Theater Review

Meta Miller

by Kerry Reid March 16, 2022March 16, 2022

Eleanor Burgess’s Wife of a Salesman, now in a world premiere at Writers Theatre under Jo Bonney’s direction, starts out with a “what if” premise: namely, what if Linda Loman, the long-suffering wife of Arthur Miller’s tragic American Everyman, Willy, met “the woman in Boston” with whom her husband had an affair and asked her […]

Best of Chicago

Best trajectory from ‘delightful child’ to survivalist soccer player

by Marissa Oberlander March 2, 2022March 15, 2022

Sophie Thatcher Monica Vitti. Peter Ivers. Béatrice Dalle. Esoteric influences the impossibly cool Sophie Thatcher pays tribute to on her impossibly cool Instagram account, which all have me running for Wikipedia to keep up. After her breakout turn on Showtime’s Yellowjackets, this 21-year-old product of the Chicago theater scene has literally become her generation’s Juliette […]

Tabla player in background on left, man in purple T-shirt and jeans sitting on the right with arms outstretched

Theater Review

Dreams of his father

by Kerry Reid December 23, 2021January 10, 2022

Alaudin Ullah was on the cusp of something big. Well, what too often passes for something big when you’re an actor in Hollywood of South Asian ancestry—the chance to audition for the role of a terrorist in a blockbuster by a big-name director. But then Ullah got a call from his brother, telling him that […]