It’s time for popular bands and up-and-coming acts to once again descend upon Grant Park for Lollapalooza. Not a fan? You can still spend time in the city at Pilsen’s Fiesta del Sol. Or, get your music fix in Rosemont, where Kelly Clarkson is making her latest tour stop. Then, visit Evanston for the annual […]
Young people can be so puzzling to older generations. Countless articles have asked, “What’s up with millennials, anyway?” And several recent plays at Steppenwolf Theatre, including “The Night Alive” and “Airline Highway,” zeroed in on this struggle for comprehension across the generational divide. In each of these plays, the story is propelled by the arrival […]
I wept and sniffled my way through much of the 1985 novel “Beaches” by Iris Rainer Dart, and again through the 1988 film of the same name, which starred Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey in a tale of opposites attract and a great friendship is born. When I heard that a pre-Broadway run of “Beaches” […]
Witty comebacks and laughable moments run throughout director Steve Scott’s production of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” now at the Goodman Theatre. The play first appeared on Broadway in 2013 and received the Tony Award for Best Play, among others. Based off the comedy play written by Christopher Durang, the story centers on the […]
It’s an epic adventure that takes place on the vast, merciless sea. It’s a tale about camaraderie, sacrifice, danger and the deepest, darkest revenge. It’s “Moby Dick.” The famous “Great American Novel,” written by Herman Melville in 1851, has been adapted into a thrilling theatrical production at Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre. Directed by David Catlin, “Moby […]
The future, or at least the kind of future we have imagined with artificial intelligence, holograms, time and space travel, and microchips inserted into our brains, seems very far away. And no matter how we envision that future in movies like “I, Robot,” “Gattaca,” and “Transcendence,” there are deep-rooted problems with morality, humanity and the […]
It’s 1922 in Ottawa, Ill., when Catherine Donohue begins working at the Radium Dial Company at the age of 19 to help support her family. She learns how to paint numbers on the faces of wristwatches and pocket watches and soon forms a strong friendship with three other women, Charlotte, Pearl and Frances. The four […]
While many theater groups take a pause for summer vacation, others keep busy in June and July. Highlights include the launch of a new season by the North Shore company Light Opera Works and a new version of a familiar story about a whale. “The Fantasticks“ June 6–14 It’s famous as the longest-running play in […]
One of the most striking and unusual things about the Goodman Theatre’s new production of “The Little Foxes,” a classic 1939 play by Lillian Hellman, is the music. An orchestral score, written for this staging by Richard Woodbury, swells for a minute or two at the beginning and end of each act—highly dramatic crescendos that […]
You don’t have to be a rabid Jane Austen fan—though I confess I am one—to love the world premiere musical “Sense and Sensibility” at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, directed by CST Artistic Director Barbara Gaines. CST commissioned the work by Tony Award-nominated composer Paul Gordon, who also provided book and lyrics as well as music. Gordon […]
