‘King Liz’ goes courtside for a story about gritty world of sports agencies
"Get out of my way. I feel like making some money today." Few of us can imagine sweeping into our workplace and making that pronouncement in anything other than an...
Home > Reviews
All Stories
Review: ‘My Way Residential’ a truthful immigrant story set in a U.K. nursing home
A couple of years ago, the feel-good channels of social networking lit up with a story about a Dutch nursing home where college students live rent-free. The idea of old...
Summer theater guide 2017: Our list of 30 shows
Summer in Chicago focuses on outdoor fun, whether it's at music festivals, street fairs, ballgames or beaches. But Chicago's red-hot theater scene also has plenty of option. Here are 30...
Review: Pip’s travels are long but worth the trip in ‘Great Expectations’
In "Great Expectations," Charles Dickens crafted an indelible portrait of a young man of no means whose desires to be a "gentleman" almost come true — but with tragic consequences....
Luis Alfaro delves into family mythology in ‘St. Jude’
As a playwright, Luis Alfaro is best known in Chicago for his contemporary updates of Greek tragedies, such as "Oedipus El Rey," which reimagines the story of Oedipus through the...
Women with suitcases are on a symbolic journey in Trap Door’s ‘Empty Sky’
On the heels of its timely and sardonic production of "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui," Trap Door Theatre takes a turn toward the elliptical and symbolic with "Into the...
Watch out, Young Jean Lee’s ‘We’re Gonna Die’ will get to you too
"Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful," They Might Be Giants sang years ago. Young Jean Lee's "We're Gonna Die," now getting a heartfelt and high-energy production with...
Can’t beat the Cubs, can they join them?
We all know the litany of complaints about life near Wrigley Field. Nonexistent parking. Drunk people committing various, um, quality-of-life offenses. But for decades, the Cubs and the local cultural...
No noir is left unturned in Hell in a Handbag’s ‘Lady X’
What's your poison? Noir? Musicals? Gender-bending camp with a twist of melodrama? Well, guys and dolls, stir your stumps upstairs to Mary's Attic, where Hell in a Handbag's "Lady X:...
Tennessee Williams doesn’t yet sound like himself in ‘Not About Nightingales’
Before HBO's harrowing prison drama "Oz" and before "The Shawshank Redemption," there was Tennessee Williams' "Not About Nightingales." Well, sort of. Though written in 1938 for the Group Theater —...