T.I.C. TOP LIST - The Highest Rated Shows In Chicago
The "Theatre In Chicago (T.I.C.) Top List" is a list of the top rated plays now running in the Chicago area based on what the current reviews are saying. To see all of the play reviews go to Review Round-Up.
The recipient of more than 30 major awards, including Tony and Olivier awards for Best New Play, The History Boys follows a rambunctious group of clever young men as they pursue higher learning, games, sexual identity and a place at university under the guidance of three wildly different teachers and a headmaster obsessed with results. Set during the 1980s in northern England, it is a hilarious and provocative play about the anarchy of adolescence and the purpose of education - specifically, how history should be taught.
Listen to "Talk Theatre In Chicago" for an interview with director Nick Bowling, actors Will Allan and Donald Brearley, and dialect coach Eva Beneman about their work on The History Boys. Listen
On December 4, 1956, an auspicious twist of fate brought together Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Elvis Presley. The place was Sun Records’ storefront studio in Memphis. The man who made it happen was the “Father of Rock-n-Roll,” Sam Phillips, who discovered them all. The four legends-to-be united for the only time in their careers for an impromptu recording session that embodied the birth of rock ‘n’ roll and has come to be known as one of the greatest rock jam sessions of all time.
Listen to "Talk Theatre In Chicago" for an interview with actor Brian McCaskill, one of the stars of Million Dollar Quartet Stream or Download MP3
This is the story of how four blue-collar kids became one of the greatest successes in pop music history. They wrote their own songs, invented their own sounds and sold 175 million records worldwide – all before they were thirty! JERSEY BOYS features their hit songs “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Rag Doll,” “Oh What a Night” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a fun and endearing new Tony Award-winning musical, follows the story of six kids in the throes of puberty who are overseen by grown-ups who barely managed to escape childhood themselves. A hilarious tale of overachievers’ angst, the production chronicles the experience of adolescent outsiders vying for the spelling championship of a lifetime. This quirky yet charming show even includes audience spellers, guaranteeing a different show every time. Hot off the Broadway stage, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will now make its premiere at the Marriott Theatre - can you spell i-r-r-e-s-i-s-t-i-b-l-e?
Tony Award-winning Ensemble Member Mary Zimmerman returns to the Water Tower Water Works, following the successful run and three city tour of Argonautika, with her Lookingglass Original adaptation of one of the world's most enduring works of literature. When he discovers his wife in the arms of another man, King Shahrayar vows to ruthlessly murder every virgin in the kingdom. His brutality is interrupted only when he encounters the cunning maiden Scheherezade, whose captivating stories may just save her life. This boldly re-imagined visual feast celebrates the redemptive power of story telling.
Combining the best of the original stories by P. L. Travers and the beloved Walt Disney film, the Tony Award-winning Mary Poppins is everything you'd hope for in a Broadway musical—and like nothing you'd ever expect. Produced by Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, the show includes such wonderful songs as "Chim Chim Cher-ee," "A Spoonful of Sugar," "Let’s Go Fly a Kite," and, of course, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."
Politics and parody take center stage Upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare with the Second City’s rollicking musical parody of the rise and fall of ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich. Following a sold out run at Second City e.t.c., the limited engagement on Navy Pier will feature new music and frequent updates—incorporating Blagojevich’s brother, his $100,000 book deal and Roland Burris’s son—as the Illinois political saga continues to unfold. After each performance, the cast will improvise a 20-minute political comedy set based on audience suggestions.
Wedding bells have finally rung for amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey and novelist Harriet Vane! But their quiet, country honeymoon becomes a series of misadventures with exploding chimneys and unwanted guests, including a body found murdered in their own home. This inauspicious beginning begs the question: when life gets in the way, can love persevere?
Listen to "Talk Theatre In Chicago" for an interview with adaptor Frances Limoncelli and actors Jenifer Tyler and Peter Greenberg as they discuss the technical challenges of staging a mystery novel and speaking Dorothy Sayers' brainy dialogue, and romance on (and off) stage. Listen
Chicago Tribune-
Recommended
Chicago Sun Times-
Highly Recommended
Time Out Chicago-
Recommended
Chicago Reader-
Highly Recommended
NewCity Chicago-
Highly Recommended
Windy City Times-
Recommended
Chicago Free Press-
Highly Recommended
Copley News Service-
Recommended
Centerstage-
Highly Recommended
Chicago Theater Blog-
Recommended
Chicago Stage Review-
Highly Recommended
ChicagoCritic-
Highly Recommended
Steadstyle Chicago-
Highly Recommended
The pump boys sell high octane fuel on North Carolina’s Highway 57 and the sassy dinettes, Prudie and Rhetta Cupp, run the Double Cupp diner next door. Between changing tires and baking pies, the gang performs a rousing, down-home mix of country western, rock ‘n’ roll and blues in this charming tale of friendship, romance and life’s simple pleasures.
Chicago's oldest cemetery is the backdrop for Graceland, the story of four lonely Chicagoans whose lives collide one August weekend while the Blue Angels airshow is in town. As fighter jets buzz the skies from dusk till dawn, estranged brother and sister Sam and Sara try to make sense of their father's recent suicide. Sara's one night stand with Joe, an aging lothario, brings further trouble in the form of Joe's mercurial teenage son, Miles. Graceland is a World premiere comedic drama about the loneliness of family, the tenderness of strangers and the unexpected benefits of bad decisions.
Chicago Tribune-
Highly Recommended
Chicago Sun Times-
Highly Recommended
Time Out Chicago-
Somewhat Recommended
Chicago Reader-
Recommended
Windy City Times-
Highly Recommended
Chicago Free Press-
Highly Recommended
Copley News Service-
Highly Recommended
Centerstage-
Recommended
ChicagoCritic-
Highly Recommended
Steadstyle Chicago-
Recommended
Its official – the United States is moving forward. We have a new President taking office, sweeping international economic crisis, and the effects of global warming all around us. It’s time to fire up the Rahminator and transplant a little Midwestern charm to Washington making America: All Better!
Chicago Tribune-
Highly Recommended
Chicago Sun Times-
Recommended
Chicago Reader-
Highly Recommended
Examiner-
Recommended
Chicago Free Press-
Recommended
Centerstage-
Highly Recommended
Incest! Gang-rape! Drunkenness! Firebombing! Forced-Blindness! And that’s just the King James Version. When the creators of Love Is Dead: A NecRomantic Musical Comedy and The Best Church of God join forces, they can’t seem to help themselves. From James Asmus, Sean Cusick, and Mike Descoteaux comes an unbelievable yet faithful musical recreation of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction. With a woman turning in to a pillar of salt as the most boring part of the story, Sodomites!!! promises laughs and awe.
Time Out Chicago-
Recommended
Chicago Reader-
Highly Recommended
NewCity Chicago-
Highly Recommended
Windy City Times-
Recommended
Recognizing “The Odd Couple” as a magical place to explore the relationship between liberty and tyranny, Theater Oobleck returns to Oscar Madison’s apartment. When a time-traveling tourist on a prehistoric safari accidentally kills a butterfly, the Odd Couple’s poker table becomes the battleground for human civilization. The new play by Jeff Dorchen takes Neil Simon’s most famous play into Tom Stoppard territory in this examination of free will in a society where the super-privileged can redesign the fabric of time and space.
Time Out Chicago-
Recommended
Chicago Reader-
Highly Recommended
NewCity Chicago-
Highly Recommended
Centerstage-
Highly Recommended
Steadstyle Chicago-
Somewhat Recommended
When Flora’s fiancé breaks her heart, she vows never to fall for an unfaithful man again. Then she meets Eusebio, who sweeps her off her feet and off to America—away from her family and her familiar life in Puerto Rico. Thirty-nine years later, an angel visits Eusebio with a mysterious message that stirs up old secrets and causes Flora to question the life she has tirelessly built in a foreign land. Boleros for the Disenchanted is a bittersweet and ultimately uplifting story about the everyday reality of marriage and the often undignified struggle to hold on to love in the face of life’s unexpected challenges.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning “Buried Child” is a macabre look at an American Midwestern family with a dark, terrible secret; a secret which has all but destroyed the family. With its lower-class, sometimes humorous, recognizable characters and dialogue, “Buried Child” resembles the mid-century American realism and grotesquerie of Arthur Miller (“Death of a Salesman”) or Tennessee Williams (“A Streetcar Named Desire”). However, its roots in ritual and its approach to monumental, timeless themes of human suffering—incest, murder, deceit, and rebirth—resemble the destruction wreaked by the heroes of Greek tragedy.
Time Out Chicago-
Recommended
Chicago Reader-
Highly Recommended
NewCity Chicago-
Highly Recommended
Windy City Times-
Not Recommended
Centerstage-
Highly Recommended
ChicagoCritic-
Highly Recommended
