Month: March 2020

The Merry Widow

By Franz Lehár

Lyric Opera of Chicago

By Lori Dana

Most of us love a holiday tradition. The movies have White Christmas, the dance world has The Nutcracker Suite, and for those of us who love opera, the holiday season wouldn’t be complete without The Merry Widow. This time around, Lyric Opera of Chicago has gifted us with the equivalent ... 

Caffeine Theatre and Chicago Opera Vanguard’s latest endeavor is the American premiere of Boojum! Nonsense, Truth and Lewis Carroll, an ambitious piece of Australian musical theater that made its debut on the Sydney stage in 1986.

Penned by twin brothers Martin and Peter Wesley-Smith, Boojum! takes its name from Lewis Carroll’s epic nonsense ... 

Most would argue that theater is first and foremost storytelling. If that is true than Conor McPherson’s haunting play The Weir and Seanachai Theatre Company’s extraordinary production of it represent theater at its finest. I am constantly asked, “What’s the best show playing right now?” Normally this is a tough question, as there are always at least a few standout ... 

Theater is delightful when it takes something that you love and portrays it for all of its brilliance. Theater is remarkably amazing when it takes something that you’re not fond of and illuminates it for all of its glory. This is just is some of the magic of Bohemian Theatre Ensemble’s Regional Premiere of The Glorious Ones.

I am not fond of 16^th-century Italian farce. Generally, I ... 

Few performers can ever simply ease on down the road in The Wiz. Dorothy is Dorothy is Dorothy, ok, but all the other major characters are problematic; Scarecrow, Tinman, and Lion run perilously close to a minstrel show act, while the Wiz himself and all of the witches have their backs up against the worst of blaxploitation stereotypes. In the current production of The ... 

EXTENDED – OPEN RUN!

By J. Scott Hill

Nerdbait. Some celebs appeal more strongly to nerds than do others — think Kelly LeBrock in Weird Science, Carrie Fisher in Star Wars, and Alyson Hannigan in everything. MsPixy (a founding member of Belmont Burlesque Revue) has courted the title of “nerdbait”, occasionally performing striptease as a hoodie-wearing dorklette. She has taken her nerd-positive ... 

Christian Choate lived much of his short, tortured life in a trailer park in the Black Oak neighborhood of Gary, Indiana. He was abused — kept in a dog cage, routinely and severely beaten, and starved — by his father and stepmother until he finally died in 2009 at the age of thirteen.

Christian Choate’s body was hastily buried in a shallow pit and covered with cement, a grave in which he lay ... 

The world is a stage, life is a cabaret and Silk Road Rising delivers a charming world cabaret to the stage at the Chicago Temple. Silk Road Rising (formerly known as Silk Road Theatre Project) is passionate about its mission of presenting stories and perspectives through Asian American and Middle Eastern American lenses.

It has jolted its audiences with compelling drama and thought provoking comedy ... 

Hey Kids, Jesus is awesome! At least, the notion of Jesus is awesome when it inspires hysterically thought-provoking theater, as it does here in The New Colony’s world premiere if 11:11.

Playwrights Tara Sissom and Evan Linder delightfully imagine a Christian summer camp brimming with good intentions and charming characters. They are gearing up for the arrival of the kiddies but after a long inspirational ... 

I went to Oracle Theatre’s Halloween show last night. Disturbed – REVIEW – Chicago Stage Review

It was also an open house for their re-branding but it wasn’t a corporate re-branding as much as it was this company’s need to share their renewed enthusiasm about (what I like to call) the great commission of theater. You know, reinstalling enchantment in people’s lives, creating ...