Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Michael Brosilow. In an era when America is sadly renewing both its (previously hidden) xenophobia and its prejudices against LGBT people, Paula Vogel’s 2015 play Indecent seems frighteningly prescient. Indecent, just opened at the Victory Gardens Theatre in its Chicago premiere, tells the true […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Liz Lauren. There is quite a way to go and many excellent choices already, but there is a new front-runner for best play of 2018 in Chicago. Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s Nell Gwynn is thoroughly entertaining, exquisitely costumed, winningly directed and brilliantly performed. It is […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Marisa KM. It isn’t often that you see a musical in which the main character scowls for pretty much the whole show, but in Caroline, or Change, the title character has plenty to scowl about. Played by Rashada Dawan in a transcendent performance, Caroline […]
By Beverly Friend, Ph.D., Member American Theater Critics Assn; photo by Liz Lauren. Reviewers know — or are supposed to know — never to tell too much of a plot — never to provide spoilers. It was therefore a surprise to find the following note in the Goodman Press Kit: In hopes of maintaining the […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Steve Graue. George Bernard Shaw is a name mentioned in the same breath with Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett as the greatest Irish playwrights of all time. His Pygmalion, and its musical theatre adaptation My Fair Lady, are each classics of their genres. But […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Joe Mazza. There are some times when the script of a play is just so darned good that you don’t want to say much about it; you just want people to go and experience it. Such a case is the hauntingly beautiful Second Skin, […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Michael Brosilow. Rachel Bonds’ Curve of Departure is a little gem of a play. Set in a New Mexico hotel room where a “ragtag little group of humans” has gathered for the funeral of a man each of them loved at one point but […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Lindsay Williams. The Odessa catacombs are a multi-level series of mining tunnels running under the city and its immediate environs. The system twists and turns and climbs and falls, folding back on itself to such a confusing degree that no one has ever fully […]
By Joe DeRosa; photo by Eve Rydberg I was seven-years-old in April 1983, when I watched David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear. Ok, so, not really, of course, but that’s what it looked like to the live audience in New York and the millions who watched it on TV, including me. In his […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photos by Suzanne Plunkett. In this, the 200th anniversary of the writing of the classic novel Frankenstein, there will be no fewer than four distinct productions based on Mary Shelley’s emotional Gothic thriller. The rest of them will need to go a long way to be […]