Liz Lauren News

Victory Gardens Theater presents the first show of its 42st season, Hand To God by Robert Askins, directed by Gary Griffin, playing an extended run now through October 23, 2016, with the press performance tonight, September 23, 2016, at 7:30 pm at Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue. BroadwayWorld has a look at the cast in action below!

Victory Gardens Theater presents the first show of its 42st season, Hand To God by Robert Askins, directed by Gary Griffin, playing an extended run now through October 23, 2016, with the press performance this Friday, September 23, 2016, at 7:30 pm at Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

Did you know that there was an African Theater Company in 1821? We learn during American Players Theater production of 'THE AFRICAN THEATER COMPANY PRESENTS RICHARD III, that 6 years before New York abolished slavery and 20 years before the beginning of the Civil War, this company existed.

'It's Love!' Goodman Theatre adds eight performances of Mary Zimmerman's revival of Wonderful Town, extending the show through October 23.

The unquestioned immortality of Mamma Mia! took a hit last year when its Broadway run came to an end after playing fourteen years, two theatres and 5,773 performances. Now comes the question of its unavoidability. Somehow, I've managed to - okay, maybe not avoid it, which implies snobbishness on my part - but Mamma Mia! has just never been on my radar. It'll be around forever - or at least as long as Boomer nostalgia sells - so that leaves plenty of time to catch up on other things, my thought process went. But now begins what will presumably turn into a licensing blitz, and Aurora's Paramount Theatre leads the bell-bottomed charge into Chicagoland. So here we go again for the first time, I guess.

Opening its 29th Season, Lookingglass Theatre Company presents the Midwest Premiere of Life Sucks written by Aaron Posner and directed by Lookingglass Ensemble Member Andrew White. Life Sucks runs now through November 6, 2016 at Lookingglass Theatre Company, located inside Chicago's historic Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan Ave. at Pearson. The Press Opening is Today, September 17, 2016 at 7:30 p.m. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman's revival of WONDERFUL TOWN - Leonard Bernstein's classic musical that with lyrics by Betty Comdenand Adolph Green and book by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov, runs now through October 16 at Goodman Theatre's Albert Theatre (Opening Night is September 20). BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

Opening its 29th Season, Lookingglass Theatre Company presents the Midwest Premiere of Life Sucks written by Aaron Posner and directed by Lookingglass Ensemble Member Andrew White. Life Sucks runs now through November 6, 2016 at Lookingglass Theatre Company, located inside Chicago's historic Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan Ave. at Pearson. The Press Opening is Saturday, September 17, 2016 at 7:30 p.m. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

Willy Loman (Wonderfully portrayed by Brian Mani) is a phony, a faker. He may very well be aware of this fact, and yet...he may not. Who among us has not a time or two filled in the blank spaces of our memory?

More than 60 million people in 40 countries on six different continents have reveled in Mamma Mia!, the iconic musical about love and friendship, of lost dreams and that last chance to make it right, all set to the music of ABBA, one of the most popular bands in the world. 

American Players Theater's William Brown Brings King Lear into the contemporary world, but does that make this Shakespearean Tragedy Relevant? In a word, Yes! The good King has his retirement all mapped out when lo and behold, his family all of people just refuse to cooperate.

From the bustling streets of 1960's New York City comes the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning musical comedy, HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING, continuing The Marriott Theatre's acclaimed 2016 Season, running now through October 16 with a press opening today, August 31 at 8 p.m. at 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

From the bustling streets of 1960's New York City comes the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning musical comedy, HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING, continuing The Marriott Theatre's acclaimed 2016 Season, running now through October 16 with a press opening on Wednesday, August 31 at 8 p.m. at 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire. BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

The cast and creative team is set for Tony Award winner Mary Zimmerman's revival of WONDERFUL TOWN - Leonard Bernstein's classic musical that with lyrics by Betty Comdenand Adolph Green and book by Joseph Fieldsand Jerome Chodorov. BroadwayWorld brings you a first look at the rehearsal photos below!

In the upcoming revival of Leonard Bernstein's 1953 classic, Lauren Molina plays a young woman who dreams of making it big in New York City. In reality, she's swapped the Big Apple for the Windy City to star in Tony Award-winner Mary Zimmerman's production of Wonderful Town, premiering at the Goodman this September. Though portraying an aspiring actress, Molina has already belted Sondheim on the Broadway stage and tours as one-half of a popular musical duo. Between rehearsals, she took some time for an exclusive BroadwayWorld Q&A:

When the audience arrives at American Players (APT) Up the Hill Theatre for the opening of William Shakespeare's King Lear, they might believe a presidential press conference will be staged. Green lawn expands into the audience, actors place contemporary white chairs in a distinct pattern and a glass podium greets the audience--and plenty of paparazzi appear to capture the King, the Duke of Gloucester and Duchess of Kent, and Lear's three daughters entering the lawn party. At night under the stars, the royal staging opens when the King appears announcing his 'retirement,' dividing his kingdom to his three progeny. Two dutiful daughters ascend to the podium pronouncing their love, while Cordelia speaks from the back row of chairs, the front of the Up The Hill Theatre. Goneril, Regan and Cordelia were 'dressed to kill', so to speak in sophisticated, fashion worthy coats and the appropriate fascinators, for English royalty, as were the men.This beginning places the audience firmly in a King Lear crafted for the current day, up to the very minute audiences.

In a stellar setting at the Touchstone Theatre in Spring Green, a superb American Players Theatre (APT) cast plays out Samuel Beckett's Endgame. An uncomfortable production to watch on stage, Director Aaron Posner breathes humor and touching life into Beckett's classic one act tragicomedy, a treatise on the end of personal and possibly global life. The desolate, tiny room, which was noted by Beckett himself in the original stage directions to be completely empty, was designed void of any beauty except for a lone terrarium filled with sand and a few artifacts from the lost, viable earth along with loose pages and stacks of books, where Beckett's characters barely survive.

Could life be portrayed similar to a steaming cup of tea that eventually grows cool, and finally stone cold? That premise represents one possible physical property of energy, specifically heat, in Tom Stoppard's 1993 play titled Arcadia. At American Players Theatre (APT) Up the Hill stage, Stoppard's contemporary, complex and cunning production poses the duality to life and questions theoretical polar opposites such as order versus chaos. In this absorbing and provocative play where the heat of romantic love interferes with life's scientifically charted course, where the unpredictable and predetermined meet, this APT cast features excellent poetic form when playing what Stoppard also contemplated: 'It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.'

This past week I saw two different musicals that have taken their inspiration from classic Jane Austen novels and, while completely different in size and scale, both have considerable merits. The first is in San Diego where Paul Gordon's to-die-for new musical SENSE AND SENSIBILITY is gracing the stage at The Old Globe.

SENSE AND SENSABILITY brings the charming wit or Asutin to The Old Globe stage thorugh August 14th.