‘Firebirds’ tells the real-life story of cheerleaders afflicted by mystery illness
In 2011, a group of 18 high school girls — many of them cheerleaders — in the New York town of Le Roy began exhibiting strange vocal and physical tics....
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‘Silent Sky’: Story of women astronomers told with warmth at First Folio
When someone has been stuck in the shadows of history, the light that finally shines on her accomplishments seems all the brighter — even if it bends and refracts through...
Insightful ‘Born Yesterday’ clearly has stayed up all night
A businessman with a crude way of talking and an outsize — but easily bruised — ego arrives in Washington, convinced he can bully and buy his way into getting...
Review: Dark ‘Arturo Ui’ wasn’t intended to be this relevant
He's petulant and greedy, surrounded by thugs who take out enemies real and perceived at the drop of a hat. He mouths populist bromides while engaging in the worst excesses...
Review: Teens in ‘Sycamore’ take their cues from John Hughes
A vague whiff of a John Hughes movie hangs in the air over Sarah Sander's "Sycamore," in which three disaffected suburban teens attempt to figure out how to claim their...
Fleet ‘Romeo and Juliet’ hurries our young lovers toward their fates
What's in a name? That which we call a rose is just as bittersweet in miniature form. And so it is with Chicago Shakespeare's "Short Shakespeare! Romeo and Juliet," now...
Torture is in the eye of the beholder in ‘Skin for Skin’
The ghosts of Abu Ghraib haunt the world of Paul Pasulka's "Skin for Skin," while suggesting that the recent shameful past can only be read as prologue to our present...
Review: Fast feet in ‘My Brother’s Keeper,’ but story can’t keep up
When you're basing a show around the Nicholas Brothers, who created what Fred Astaire called the greatest dance sequence ever filmed — well, brother, those are some big tap shoes...
‘Bog of Cats’: A spurned daughter comes back in angry Irish take on ‘Medea’
The narrative terrain in Irish playwright Marina Carr's work bursts with ghosts. But we're far away from, say, Conor McPherson's "The Weir," where a newly arrived transplant from Dublin finds...
‘Unseen’: Play about conflict photographer can miss the bigger picture
If one seeks a personalized metaphor for the tortured morality of being a Western superpower, look no further than conflict photographers. They run around war zones — many of those...