Rohina Malik’s Yasmina’s Necklace, now playing at the Goodman Theatre’s Owen Theatre, is a play that, while extremely funny, has a very dark core, as its title character brought a lot more baggage with her than merely what she carried when she came with her father as a refugee from the Iraq War. That coming […]
Wayne Self’s Upstairs A Musical History, currently running at the Pride Arts Center, is a bit of a contradiction. Its title says it is a “history,” yet the program notes clearly identify it as “a work of fiction.” No one really knows what caused the fire that led to the deaths of 32 people at […]
José Rivera’s 1993 apocalyptic absurdist comedy Marisol has always had at least one central flaw: for a comedy, it isn’t all that funny. A lot of what was funny in 1993—making fun of the French, for example—feels flat today. Not that there are no laughs (there are); it just doesn’t feel as topical as it […]
Theater troupe “26” is known for presenting shows comprised of twenty-six sketches, one for each letter of the alphabet. The scenes are minimally staged, with quick and often amusing changes aided by music and campy voiceovers. “Netflix and Kill,” running at Pride Arts Center in Rogers Park until the 28th, has fun with horror tropes […]
No, that is not the sequel to a Matchbox Twenty song. Went to a play tonight and wrote the review, yeah; I always hurry with things like that A green light recommend , a great show to exalt…and so very darned entertaining… And don’t think, don’t think I’m complaining… But, baby, it’s 4 AM and […]
The title of The Gift Theatre’s final production of 2017, A Swell in the Ground, comes from a famous poem by Emily Dickinson. Being chaperoned in a carriage by Death himself, the narrator “paused before a house that seemed / a swelling in the ground,” clearly her grave. A Swell in the Ground, written by […]
Alias Grace, a 1996 novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood is a deep and unnerving psychological study of a real-life convicted murderer, Grace Marks, who prosecutors said helped commit a particularly heinous double homicide when she was just sixteen. After her death sentence was commuted, though, and for the duration of her life, there were […]
According to the League of Chicago Theatres, there are about 200 theatre companies in the city of Chicago. Wikipedia also lists about this many, as well as thirty long-standing companies that are now defunct. And that doesn’t even begin to include the multitudes of companies that have appeared for a show or three only to […]
“When will people learn not to suck so badly?” That is the ultimate lesson not just from Joe Maddon but from Underscore Theatre’s latest original musical, Carrie 2: The Rage (An Unauthorized Musical Parody). Like its more famous predecessor, Carrie 2 was a movie based (this one very loosely) on the 1970s Stephen King novel […]
Interrobang Theatre’s Chicago premiere production of Dawn King’s Foxfinder has a timely feeling to it. The opening play of the company’s eighth season, thematically entitled, “What Is Truth?” Foxfinder seems uncomfortably familiar. It takes place in a time of political upheaval, a time when England’s food supply has dwindled and, as often happens in a […]