Terry Green, an old-timer when it comes to Chicago theater, took me to task on Facebook this week for giving short shrift to many of the early artistic glories of the Next Theatre Company, which declared itself busted on Monday — after 34 years on the edge.
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Prior to his appearance at the Mission Theater (at iO) Wednesday afternoon in front of sold-out crowd of improv students and performers, John Cleese turned to me and said, "Don't be alarmed!" and then engulfed me in a bear hug and planted several kisses on my neck. Well. Hello.
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Long before she won the Pulitzer Prize for "Ruined," her searing drama about abused young women in the Congo seeking respite from soldiers on both sides of a civil war by working in a bar/brothel, Lynn Nottage bellied up to a different African bar. There, she hoped to examine the costs of war...
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As an annoying pooch jumped over a llama Wednesday night at the Allstate Arena, as annoying pooches are wont to do, the llama shot its fellow llama a knowing look that truly said it all in that minimalist llama way: What the heck are we both doing here, night after night, surrounded by dogs,...
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Friday | "The Mousetrap": Jonathan Berry directs Agatha Christie's popular whodunit. Through Dec. 14 at Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd. in Skokie; 857-673-6300 or northlight.org
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SHOWCASE
Original Theater Loop Video-
In this archival sketch from The Second City, actors Dick Schaal and Valerie Harper play Catholic high-school kids on a date.
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This week’s Theater Loop Showcase is soprano Marina Rebeka from “Don Giovanni,” currently in a new production directed by Goodman artistic director Robert Falls at Lyric Opera.
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This week’s Theater Loop Showcase video is Jerod Haynes in “Native Son,” currently playing Court Theatre. Based on Richard Wright’s 1940 novel — in a new adaptation by Nambi E. Kelley — it’s the story of Bigger Thomas, an African-American 20-year-old...
FUNNY
SKETCH, IMPROV, STANDUP COMEDY AND VIDEOSAt Uncharted Books in Logan Square, I am crammed in so tightly that my back is touching the spines of dozens of used books. I feel a dusty copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s “Dianetics” poking into my side and hope it’s not an omen. Sound equipment is being fidgeted with and a...
DANCE
LAURA MOLZAHN COVERS DANCE IN THE CHICAGO AREA Khecari presents a dance performance in a dungeon
To find the latest performance piece by the rising experimental dance company Khecari — "rhymes with 'treachery,'" explains founder Jonathan Meyer — go to West Rogers Park on the Far North Side. Specifically, Indian Boundary Park on Lunt Avenue, an oasis of green hemmed in by...
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Sometimes very good things come in small packages. The Dance COLEctive's unassuming but decidedly artful "Holding Ground" is a short program of three short works. They lay it on the line and get out.
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If you've ever seen the New Zealand All Blacks' pre-game "haka," you'd probably call it a war dance.
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Making its Chicago debut, Beijing Dance Theater offers proof positive that good dancing doesn't necessarily mean good dance.
BROADWAY
Chris Jones covers the New York theaterWe're all vulnerable in love and marriage — even arty, self-aware British intellectuals who pride themselves on their carefully constructed and seemingly unimpeachable castles of wit, irony and intellectual fortitude.
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NEW YORK — As captain of “The Last Ship,” and the one who set this mostly autobiographical and wholly original Broadway musical on its daring course, the great songwriter Sting can take solace in his fleet of lovely melodies and sanguine lyrics, from gentle waltzes to...
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NEW YORK — Ayad Akhtar's "Disgraced" — a deftly crafted, theatrically compelling dissection of the intersection of sex, ethnicity and ambition — makes an intense and mostly effective leap to Broadway. It does so as protesters surround the Metropolitan Opera production of...
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Al Pacino is to return to Broadway in a new play by David Mamet next fall, the New York producer Jeffrey Richards announced Thursday.
BEYOND CHICAGO
THEATER FROM THE AMERICAN MIDWEST TO LONDON'S WEST ENDChristmas is coming, the goose is getting fat and theaters across the United Kingdom are poised for the annual glittery blizzard of pantomimes. If your taste runs to the traditional, then London can amply cater for you this festive season. Among the offerings are model Jerry Hall vamping it...
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