He is a Japanese ricksha driver, his body tattooed in blue and green and purple, and we can't take our eyes off him. This is because the other two characters onstage—a Gilded-Age American matron and a sybaretic expatriate photographer—are likewise riveted by his exotic body decoration, their shared curiosity drawing our gaze in his direction. Since we in.... Read More

Even sharing the stage with flying topiary animals and the ghost of a dead tiger, it commands our attention immediately: a gold-plated Desert Eagle .44 caliber semi-automatic pistol, alleged to have belonged to Uday Hussein—Saddam's playboy son—and looted by American troops during the invasion on the dictator's palace. The distinctive firearm is then passed from one owner to.... Read More

Broadway In Chicago has announced the upcoming 2013 fall season line-up. Broadway In Chicago's 2013 fall season will include BUDDY, FLASHDANCE, TO MASTER THE ART, EVITA, ONCE and ELF. The 2013 fall off-season specials include Emerald City Theatre's production of THE CAT IN THE HAT, WE WILL ROCK YOU and the return of Broadway's biggest blockbuster, WICKED. Read More

Broadway In Chicago has announced WICKED, Broadway's biggest blockbuster, will return to Chicago in celebration of its 10th anniversary on Broadway and play the Oriental Theatre (24 West Randolph) for a limited eight-week engagement, Oct. 30 to Dec. 21, 2013.

With music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin, Academy Award-winner for Pocahontas and.... Read More

"Teleportation" is the name given to slight-of-hand tricks involving an object disappearing, then re-appearing somewhere else. Actors can also find themselves working in two productions running concurrently, hurrying from curtain call at one theater to sign-in at another. The distance may span a few blocks or hundreds of miles, as it did for Philip E. Johnson in 2005,.... Read More

It started in 2001 with Bailiwick Repertory's production of Mark Ravenhill's Shopping And F**king, a brutal look at youths forced by poverty to commit distasteful deeds, its name derived from publishing trade jargon for a popular fiction genre featuring rich people behaving badly. David Zak, former Bailiwick artistic director, reminisces about displaying the uncensored title on the company's.... Read More

When Will Kern's Hellcab Does Christmas first opened in 1992, technical director Robert G. Smith had to remove the street doors of the Hull House at Broadway and Belmont in order to squeeze the front half of a Yellow Cab into the multi-purpose facility. Profiles Theatre's twentieth anniversary revival of the long-running hit, now titled simply Hellcab,.... Read More

Theatre In Chicago presents its annual list of the top-rated plays that were produced in the Chicago area for 2012. The list was compiled objectively from critics' reviews, based on the Highly Recommended to Not Recommended scale.

There are 20 shows on the list, produced by 14 different theatre companies. There were five repeats: Chicago Shakespeare Theater shows.... Read More

At heart, director William Brown is a minimalist, or perhaps more accurately, chamber musician. The Chicago theater veteran, who early in life saw his future as an opera singer, loves those intimate scenes for two or three actors getting deeply into the characters' lives -- what he calls parsing a text.

"I've been an actor.... Read More

If you don't know what a Klingon is, any Star Trek enthusiast will be happy to acquaint you with this tribe of warriors recognizable by their distinctively scarred foreheads—a hereditary deformity tracing its source to a plague centuries earlier. As with such fantasy-epics as The Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter series, the culture of the.... Read More

In the Chicago Theater roster of aquatic spectacle, Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses first comes to mind. Then, there was Pegasus Players' production of The Frogs in the Truman College swimming pool or The Neo-Futurists' Fake Lake in the Welles Park natatorium. Storefront-circuit regulars might even recall Michael Shannon, Amy Landecker and Guy Van Swearingen wrestling in a spa-sized hip-bath.... Read More

By now it's no secret that, every holiday season, the Goodman Theatre puts on a classic production of A Christmas Carol, that the House Theatre puts on a hip production of The Nutcracker, or that several theatres put on competing productions of It's A Wonderful Life. I have written about each of those in the past,.... Read More

Jackie Taylor, Founder and Executive Director of the Black Ensemble Theater, announces the Black Ensemble Theater's 36th Season of Excellence titled "Treasures and Tributes." The 36th season includes original musicals paying tribute to the Doo Wop era, Curtis Mayfield, Howlin Wolf, and Chicago's Golden Soul.

"After our record breaking first year in.... Read More

SPANK! The Fifty Shades Parody, the hilarious and naughty new musical parody of Fifty Shades of Grey, will dominate willing audiences at the Royal George Theatre Main Stage, 1641 N. Halsted, in a limited three-week engagement starting Wednesday evening, November 28. The production, which premiered in Springfield, MA earlier this month, is co-produced by the Just for.... Read More

At the gala 44th Annual Equity Jeff Awards held at Drury Lane Oakbrook on Monday, October 15, Goodman Theatre's "The Iceman Cometh" took top honors for a play in the large theatre tier with a total of six awards, including Production-Play, Director Robert Falls, Supporting Actor Brian Dennehy, Scenic Designer Kevin Depinet and Lighting Designer Natasha Katz. The.... Read More

In Wilkie Collins' early Victorian thriller, The Woman In White, the villainous Count Fosco is fond of small animals—even to traveling accompanied by a collection of caged birds and mice. Robert Kauzlaric's adaptation for Lifeline Theatre dispenses with the portable aviary, but retains the rodent contingent with a cameo appearance by a genuine live mouse.

"Fosco's affection for.... Read More

You almost expect to hear squeals of "Look! Dinosaurs!" the moment they appear. Indeed, so fascinating are the pair of reptiles who constitute half the onstage personnel in Remy Bumppo's production of Seascape that at one performance, an ostensibly adult theatergoer, finding herself in close proximity to one of the scaly beasts, couldn't resist trying to pull.... Read More

Moment opens on the Lynch family preparing a dinner to celebrate the homecoming of the clan's prodigal son. Frozen microwavable quiches have been purchased, celery and carrots are chopped on the counter, a carton of eggs is dropped on the floor. One sibling munches a sandwich, visitors sip chilled beer and the hostesses maintain their serenity with.... Read More

Edgar Allen Poe's tale of the doomed twin siblings in The Fall of the House of Usher is a classic in American literature. In the original telling, the fate of the doomed mansion is to sink into the marshy New England soil. In the film version, it's destroyed by fire. Sean Graney's adaptation, however, has the family.... Read More

The ETA Creative Arts Foundation was conceived as a self-contained organization, developing original scripts through its education and training programs, and then performing them under the supervision of artists affiliated with its teaching staff. The slate for their upcoming 2012-13 season, however, reads like a history of African-American Theater, with plays ranging from 1954 to 2007, each selected.... Read More