Porchlight Music Theatre designates its current staging of Rogers and Hammerstein’s classic, “The King and I,” “an intimate version of the grand love story.” Add “elegant” and “creative” to the playbill. Director L. Walter Stearns’ final Porchlight production as artistic director delivers its promised intimacy at Stage 773’s North Theatre, which seats less than 200. […]
An energetic ensemble cast, combined with expert tap dancing and gorgeous costumes, makes “42nd Street” at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire a must-see. Before appearing on the Broadway stage in the 1980s, “42nd Street” was a movie musical that came out during the Depression, serving as pleasant distraction amid bread lines and surging unemployment. With […]
When Evanston native Anna D. Shapiro won a Tony award for directing “August: Osage County” in 2008, it changed her life. Only the second American woman to ever receive the award for Direction of a Play, Shapiro now finds herself in the enviable and unfamiliar position of being able to pick and choose her projects. […]
Based on Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard,” playwright Tanya Saracho tells the story of a Mexican family’s legacy being disrupted by drug cartels. A poor carpenter becomes a hired gun. Shifting power and money is changing the roles of the working class and the privileged in modern day Nuevo Leon, Mexico. A mother and daughter return to […]
Writers’ Theatre Artistic Director Michael Halberstam seduces you intellectually.
Wilmette native Sarah Ruhl is one of the most accomplished and acclaimed playwrights in contemporary theater. Beginning April 30, Goodman Theatre presents the world premiere of Ruhl’s “Stage Kiss,” which it commissioned, while her adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s classic “Orlando” closes this weekend at Court Theatre. Known for her quirky plays that tackle everything from […]
Porchlight Theatre presents the Midwest Premiere of “Meet John Doe,” a musical based on the Frank Capra film. During the Great Depression, a columnist saves her job by creating a news story. Her fake suicidal man garners the city’s attention and sells newspapers. To keep up the charade, Ann hires a John to play the […]
At a few moments during “Black Watch,” it sounds as if fighter jets are actually dropping bombs inside the Broadway Armory on Chicago’s North Side. Everything seems joltingly real—the roar of aircraft, the shock of explosions, the flashes of light. But as impressive as those effects are, what makes playwright Gregory Burke’s “Black Watch” so […]
Two North Shore natives have collaborated once again to bring innovative and captivating theater to Chicago in the Court Theatre’s production of “Orlando.” Director Jessica Thebus instills playfulness and poignancy in Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” which explores what it means to be a man and a woman through sex and history. “Orlando” […]
The acting is brilliant in this production in which actors play people who are trying to be actors. It’s a two-hour, no-intermission staged reality show about theatre. A community center offers a 6-week creative drama course. A free-spirited teacher takes a class of 4 through weekly acting exercises. Although the activities seem daft, the sequential […]
