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AMERICAN SNIPER: The Sheepdog
The great films of Clint Eastwood have a fascination with the nature of male friendship. From Unforgiven through Invictus, Gran Torino, Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers, Mystic River, and...
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Ivan Jovic: An Interview with the Serbian Director
The world is awash with film and video. The internet and digital technology have made film making, film distribution, and film viewing commonplace. Fortunately the rise of film festivals has helped...
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John Caird’s TOSCA: Art and Politics Don’t Mix
John Caird’s magnificent production of Puccini’s Tosca is revolutionary. The director, who has already secured himself a position in theater history with his genre-defining eight-and-one-half hour...
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Sense and Sensibility, A New Musical: Charm, Beauty, and Wit
Many people have adapted Jane Austen’s work to the stage, but I know of none who has succeeded as well as Mr. Paul Gordon, author of the book, music, and lyrics. Sense and Sensiility is not only...
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MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET: The Testosterone Musical
The most high energy musical ever must be Million Dollar Quartet, the musical by Colin Escott, Floyd Mutrux, inspired by the fact that on December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis...
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THE OLD FRIENDS: Horton Foote’s Walpurgisnacht
Modern playwrights often produce plays of such psychological cruelty that the term “Walpurgisnacht” is used. Also known as “Witches’ Sabbath,” during this “Walpurgis” night, witch-like and demonic...
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LYRIC OPERA’S DER ROSENKAVALIER: The Mystery of Time Passing
In April 1945, when the US army was requisitioning Richard Strauss’s villa in the Bavarian Alps, the frail 81-year-old composer emerged, blinking. Many years had passed during which the world had seen...
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The Raven Theatre’s A LOSS OF ROSES: The Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary
The story of Chicago’s role in fostering the career of Tennessee Williams is well known. But Chicago’s role in the career of America’s other great playwright, William Inge, is not as familiar. In 1944...
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Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s Othello: The Dark against the Light, Prose...
What is particularly, and shamefully, interesting to us now is the fact that a black man should be acceptable, to an audience inclined to xenophobia, as a great leader of men. Othello’s colour had no...
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SHAW’S YOU NEVER CAN TELL: Is a Father Necessary?
In an issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, Judith Stacey, a professor of sociology at New York University, and Timothy Biblarz, a demographer from the University of Southern California,...
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OTHELLO: THE REMIX: A Backyard Masterpiece
Commissioned for the Globe to Globe Festival by Shakespeare’s Globe, Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Richard Jordan Productions: premiered on May 5, 2013 as part of the London 2012 Cultural; toured...
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LYRIC OPERA’S THE KING AND I: AN OPULENT BEAUTY AND THE NICE GUY
At the heart of all of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s great musicals – Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, and The King and I – is the tale of Beauty and the Beast. Each Beauty – Laurey,...
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Chicago Opera and CITIZEN KANE
“Samuel Insull built the Civic Opera Building for his mistress, an opera singer.” “Samuel Insull built the Civic Opera Building for his mistress, Mary Garden, an opera singer.” These two similar tales...
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2016 EQUITY JEFF NOMINATIONS
The Jeff Awards has been honoring outstanding Chicago theatre artists annually since it was established in 1968. I was happy to have appreciated many of this year’s Equity nominations: “The Tempest”...
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Remy Bumppo’s PYGMALION: Run, Don’t Walk. Now.
If you think you might ever want to see Bernard Shaw’s famous comedy, Pygmalion, now is the time. Don’t wait. Head to the Remy Bumppo Theatre. You won’t find a better collection of actors finding every...
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The Irish Theatre of Chicago’s THE WEIR: “A strange [but wonderful] little...
When I lived on a five-acre farm in Maine, I found myself strangely fascinated with the behavior of male birds. It seemed that whenever a female swallow appeared the male swallows engaged in all sorts...
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Lyric Opera: Chicago’s Third Great NORMA
As late as 1920, American musicologists considered Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma “an improbably old-fashioned, almost hurdy-gurdy work.” But thanks to Chicago sopranos, that opera has become a standard of...
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Raven Theatre’s ASSEMBLED PARTIES: A Doubter’s Christmas Carol
Christmas has been the occasion for two classic plays, Hamlet and Ibsen’s Doll’s House. Ironically, as the Christian Feast of the Nativity has become secularized, the occasion has been used by more and...
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Lyric Opera’s CARMEN: Ashford and Calleja Make History
“Bullfighting is the only art form that both represents something and is that thing at the same time: the matador’s elegant immobility in the face of the bull not only represents man’s defiance of...
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ShawChicago’s HEARTBREAK HOUSE: Shaw’s Black Comedy
The Great War and its prelude flabbergasted Bernard Shaw more than any other event in his life. In addition, the end of his relationship with Stella Campbell left him as close to heartbroken...
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