CHICAGO THEATER REVIEWS

FROZEN is a fun and sparkly production to ring in the holiday season, and this touring cast is first-rate. If all the little Annas and Elsas in the audience on opening night were any indication, it’s also a great show to introduce young theatergoers to musicals. And it’s enjoyable for the young ...

PARADISE SQUARE takes the theme of the proverbial American melting pot deeply to heart. The musical centers on the lower Manhattan neighborhood of Five Points in the 1860s, where many white Irish immigrants and free Black Americans lived together. Though the show's narrator, Paradise Square saloon o...

Mercury Theater Chicago returns with SISTER ACT - and it's pure musical theater elation. This 'Joyful, Joyful' (SISTER ACT II reference intended) production, with direction from Reneisha Jenkins and choreography by Mercury's new Artistic Director Christopher Chase Carter, meets the goal of delightin...

After the long pandemic hiatus, Porchlight Music Theatre returns to in-person productions with a feel-good staging of PUMP BOYS & DINETTES. It’s clear that Artistic Director Michael Weber knew that audiences would be craving some classic, lighthearted musical theater sentiment after such a long ti...

Is it a patchwork? Is it a cauldron? Is it a document that needs to abolish, essentially scrapped, and rewritten? It can be argued that The Constitution of the United States is any of these things. That's precisely what is discussed in the fascinatingly urgent WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME....

E. Faye Butler gives a formidable performance as civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer in Cheryl L. West’s one-woman play....

Cloran’s production cleverly unites Shakespeare’s text and the Beatles’ music to come together (pun intended) in a lively and original version of AS YOU LIKE IT....

AMERICAN MARIACHI is an enchanting celebration of female empowerment and mariachi music....

It’s not just fitting that MR. BURNS is a play about a post-apocalyptic world, but also one that deeply underscores why art is so important to humanity. Indeed, this production demonstrates that art is what makes us human and empowers us to survive. After such a long time without live theater her...

After such a long wait, it’s particularly magical to see this uproariously funny but also tender play that puts young Black women right at its center....

TEATRO ZINZANNI is unabashedly designed to entertain — and it’s at its best when it makes high-flying fun literal with the aerial acts on display. The entire evening exudes energy, and the buzz that comes from being reunited with live performance was palpable....

I didn't hate I HATE IT HERE. In fact, Chicago playwright Ike Holter's 'concept album' play was both uproariously funny and thought-provoking....

There's a lot of vulnerability that comes with creating art. In the theatre, it can be said that it's the playwright who is the most vulnerable player. It is their words, their ideas, and their voice that are the heart of a production. When entrusting a creative team to bring their work to life, the...

Director Tiffany Nichole Greene stages esteemed playwright Adrienne Kennedy’s OHIO STATE MURDERS with a cinematic twist in this second installment in Goodman Theatre’s Live Series. OHIO STATE MURDERS centers on Suzanne (a harrowing Jacqueline Williams), an accomplished writer who returns to Ohio...

In TITANIC (SCENES FROM THE BRITISH WRECK COMMISSIONER’S INQUIRY, 1912), playwright Owen McCafferty poignantly dramatizes eyewitness accounts of the Titanic’s sinking. Based on the British investigation into the shipwreck, the play allows the viewer to observe history unfold as if in real time....

If you’re looking for something to help fill that show tunes void, look no further than Lyric Opera’s THE NEW CLASSICS streaming concert....

Broadcast live from Goodman Theatre’s intimate Owen Theatre, THE SOUND INSIDE intrigues because of the twists and turns in Adam Rapp’s script, but also because it combines cinematic-quality streaming with the thrill of live theater. It’s been over a year since I last stepped inside a theater, ...

THE LAST MATCH derives its greatest level of poignancy from the fact that it lays bare Tim and Sergei’s interior lives for the audiences....

No talking about politics: this is the rule by which Marla and Sam abide. For them, it’s no mere nicety to ease their way through a holiday dinner with relatives. After 20 years of traveling through space together collecting trash, they’re genuinely trying not to drive each other mad....

With NEW FACES SING BROADWAY 1961, Porchlight Music Theatre has put together a program that will satisfy the cravings of those who desperately miss live musical theater....

It seems most fitting that Goodman Theatre's current encore streaming production of SMOKEFALL exists both in and out of time. Noah Haidle's whimsical play, beloved by critics and audiences when it originally premiered at the Goodman in 2013 (and remounted in 2014), occupies an achronological space....

Although I don’t often preface my reviews, I think this particular write-up deserves one. As I reflect on my viewing of Goodman Theatre’s current Encore showing of PEDRO PARÁMO, I find it important to note that I’m writing about a production that took place eight years ago. The Goodman presen...

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Porchlight's streaming program BROADWAY BY THE DECADE provides some much needed musical theater cheer in this unprecedented and challenging year for Chicago theater....

What does live theater look like during a pandemic? As Americans adjust to the new realities of social distancing and sheltering in place to slow the spread of COVID-19, many theaters across the nation and the world are dark. Though live performances have been canceled, Theater Wit offers an innova...