Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Michael Brosilow. It’s been five years since the Den Theatre, Wicker Park’s popular home to numerous companies, produced a play of its own, but the drought is over. With Joel Drake Johnson’s Four Places, directed by Lia Mortensen, the theatre steps boldly back into […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Joan Marcus. “Love is love is love,” proclaim T-shirts you will undoubtedly see in the crowd at the Chicago Pride Parade at the end of June, and you’ll be hard pressed to find a better visualization of that sentiment than William Finn and James […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Joel Maisonet. How much is a human life worth? That question—and exactly how one could determine such a thing—lies at the center of Kenneth Lin’s new play Life on Paper, now playing at Jackalope Theatre in a production directed by Jackalope Artistic Director Gus […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Liz Lauren. I spent four decades as an English teacher. Each year, before the Shakespeare unit, I spent a day telling the story of Henry VIII; it wasn’t directly related but it was a part of the history that made the Elizabethan Age possible, […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Anna Gelman. Organic Theater Company director Brian Wakefield and his talented team of actors must have had a wonderful time working with Czech playwright Vaclav Havel’s The Memo. Wakefield has created a production of so much visual absurdity that it almost dwarfs the absurdity […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Liz Lauren. This having been the 200th anniversary of the debut of the horror classic Frankenstein, we in Chicago have been treated in the past several months to several theatrical versions of the story. The fourth and final version is now onstage at Lookingglass […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by KBH Media. Anyone who takes on the task of writing or producing a new musical automatically gets kudos from me, since they are so complicated to create and see through to the stage. And crafting one that flits in and out of reality while […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Michael Brosilow. “I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Liz Lauren. I generally am a big fan of plays that celebrate and/or deconstruct theatre itself, so I looked forward to seeing Northlight Theatre’s Into the Breeches, Park Ridge native George Brant’s comical exploration of a group of women trying to keep a local […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Exit 63. FDR said that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and he meant that to be comforting, but it overlooks the fact that fear can be a devastating thing. Fear is an emotion that really requires very little to […]