Our main raison d’etre: reviewing plays.
By Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association; photo by Michael Brosilow There are many ways to examine the catastrophe that was the sinking of the HMS Titanic on its maiden voyage in 1912. James Cameron’s immensely popular 1997 film version used the disaster as the background for a star-crossed love story between the totally fictional […]
By Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association; photo by CST. Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s upcoming musical It Came From Outer Space does not premiere until 2022, but that doesn’t mean that Barbara Gaines and company have to sit back and wait until then. Nope. This week, CST reveals a clever, inventive 45-minute “digital prologue” to the […]
By Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association; photo by Cody Nieset Are you missing the singular experience of attending a play performed live in front of you with everyone involved completely aware that there are no do-overs, no rewinds, no net? Well, the Goodman Theatre has not yet reopened to live audiences, but it does […]
By Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association The best science fiction is really about us all, who we are today, what we might become. Such is the case with Lauren Ferebee’s Goods, now premiering online in an Artemisia Theatre production. This powerful two-hander brings us into the cockpit of a space junk hauler as its […]
By Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association Playwright Anna Ziegler isn’t easy to pin down. Her topics range from a famously debunked transgender study (Boy) to the uncredited scientific contributions of the woman who discovered the double-helix model of DNA (Photograph 51). But at the core of her work is her sharp dialogue that explores […]
By Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association Though a live theatre version of Tom Stoppard’s 1972 radio play Artist Descending a Staircase does exist, the original fits so perfectly into today’s theatrical (non-)world that it is no surprise that Remy Bumppo Theatre chose it for production. The play is a humorous, romantic, and even tragic […]
By Karen Topham During the April 3, 2021 edition of Saturday Night Live, one sketch called ‘Proud Parents” revolved around a couple whose med school-bound son shocks them by informing them that he has decided to become a poet instead of a doctor. Their outrage at this revelation is perhaps best exemplified when one of […]
In I, Banquo, Tim Crouch’s one-man up close and personal examination of the events of Macbeth, the title character (hauntingly portrayed by Dan Waller under Marti Lyons’ careful direction) speaks from beyond the grave to his former best friend, the king-killing Thane of Glamis. As he recounts the events of Shakespeare’s play, he asks the […]
Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!, Steppenwolf Theatre’s latest addition to its NOW series of virtual plays, feels as if it has been ripped out of this month’s headlines (though it was written in 2018). A brief (half an hour or so) and intense examination of the ways in which all of the rules that must be followed […]
Review by Karen Topham, ChicagoOnstage, member American Theatre Critics Association. Although you’d never know it from all of the incarnations of A Christmas Carol you can find streaming this season, the tale of Scrooge’s redemption was far from the only one Charles Dickens ever set in the holiday season, and indeed is nowhere near the […]