CHICAGO THEATER REVIEWS

Court Theatre Artistic Director Charles Newell lends a deft hand to this stunning, newly searing production of Arthur Miller's ALL MY SONS. Though Miller's classic play takes place in 1946, the all-star ensemble makes the plight of the crumbling Keller family feel raw and altogether present....

Eric John Meyer's world premiere play THE ANTELOPE PARTY opens on a meeting in an apartment setting notable for its vast and bright collection of MY LITTLE PONY memorabilia (kudos to set designer Joe Schermoly and properties designer Jesse Gaffney for this delightful visual). In this moment, we meet...

Aziza Barnes's BLKS is often funny, often vulgar, and sometimes heartbreaking. Now in a world premiere staging at Steppenwolf, BLKS chronicles 24 hours in the lives of three young black women in their early 20s living in New York City. Barnes's playwriting is achingly real and naturalistic, while al...

It doesn't matter how many times you watch Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, fly to rafters at the end of Defying Gravity. You still get the chills during this classic moment in the musical, WICKED. It strikes a chord with you and has you cheering for 'the green girl.' You know, the villain fro...

BEAUTIFUL THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL, one of the most well-constructed and delightful jukebox musicals I've ever seen, has arrived back in Chicago just in time for the holiday season. This empowering musical about singer-songwriter Carole King has enough emotional impact to make your heart burst. This ...

With its mixture of darkness and light, Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL is a long-standing holiday tradition that takes audiences on a journey of misery, revelation, and redemption. Now in its 40th year on stage at The Goodman Theatre, this tale stands the test of time, with some fresh updates th...

Every year, a group of my friends and I go to The Music Box Theatre here in Chicago for our annual viewing of White Christmas. It's a perfect way to ring in the holidays with a mix of sentimentality and tradition....

Tracy Letts's world premiere THE MINUTES, now making its debut at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, unfolds in an unsuspecting manner. Both because the play has a smart structure that shifts over the course of the 100-minute runtime and also because the content left me contemplative for days after seeing...

On the page, Harmon so beautifully expresses the nuances of shifting friendships and the fear of being left behind by those one holds dear, and he also nails so completely the complex neuroses that come with dating, loneliness, and being lost in one's own head. Director Keira Fromm and an outstandin...

Under the direction of frequent company collaborator Brenda Didier, BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL electrifies the mainstage at the Ruth Page Performing Arts Center, Porchlight's new home. Based on the eponymous film about an adolescent boy from a working class British mining town who aspires to be a ball...

Under the deft direction of Audrey Francis, Steep Theatre Company treats audiences to an intimate, intense Chicago premiere of Ayad Akhtar's THE INVISIBLE HAND....

THE CALLBACK is an engaging evening of entertainment that's suitable for all ages. The shows plot involves several actors getting called back for a second or third time to tryout for a play without a script. In other words, they had no idea exactly what it was they were being called back for....

Mercury Theater's revival of the iconic rock musical HAIR infuses some peace, love, and sunshine into this Chicago summer. While Gerome Ragni and James Rado's lyrics still resonant today, this production stays firmly rooted in the late 1960s. Brenda Didier's direction, Robert Kuhn's costumes, and Je...

Christopher Wheeldon's visually stunning production of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS has come dancing into Broadway In Chicago's Oriental Theatre. Wheeldon's complex and extensive choreography is the most striking and entertaining element of this new musical, based upon the classic Gene Kelly film and with a...

"This music is magical. My writing is stilted." So proclaims Erik Jensen as famed rock critic Lester Bangs in HOW TO BE A ROCK CRITIC, now playing as part of Steppenwolf's Lookout Series. This thought has likely crossed the mind of all art critics out there (certainly it has crossed mine), and it em...

Taylor Mac's HIR, now in its Chicago premiere at Steppenwolf under the direction of Hallie Gordon, proves itself to be a complete whirlwind from the beginning. Collette Pollard's strikingly realistic living room/kitchen set is in a tornado-like state when the curtain comes up at the top of the play,...

In the McHenry County area, there's always such great theatre going on, and that's what I got when I went to see McHenry County College's hilarious production of Ken Ludwig's Moon Over Buffalo directed by the wonderful Regina Belt-Daniels....

Following a successful 2015 run, that great white whale MOBY DICK has returned to Lookingglass in a highly physical, inventive, and visually compelling production that's fully in keeping with the company's aesthetic. David Catlin's adaptation of Herman Meville's sprawling novel surrounds audiences i...

Bartlett Sher's 2015 Tony Award winning revival of THE KING AND I has sailed into Broadway In Chicago's Oriental Theatre in a triumphant touring production....

Picture it, an anniversary party with your dear friends, all dressed up with your spouse, and everything is not quite right. Town Square Players of Woodstock offers us a chance to escape our realities and join Neil Simon on the wildly hilarious ride known as 'Rumors'...

Both beautiful and necessarily brutal, Antoinette Nwandu's PASS OVER is a play that's entirely essential to this moment....

The world premiere of Karen Zacarias's NATIVE GARDENS at Victory Gardens Theater provides ample humor and wit-even if the playwright's neighborly metaphor sometimes feels too on the nose....

Just as Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens's 1999 musical RAGTIME traverses numerous locales on the East Coast and spans the years from 1906-1914, so too does director Scott Weinstein's dynamic staging make full use of The Den Theatre's Heath Mainstage. In Griffin Theatre Company's production, Weinste...

PARADE is now in a blistering and beautifully minimalist production from director Gary Griffin. Though it is based off the real-life 1913 trial of Jewish pencil factory worker Leo Frank and was written by Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry in 1998, this musical feels entirely of this moment. Set in ...

Audra McDonald, the reigning Queen of Broadway, is a woman who needs no introduction in the theatre community. This is probably why the seats at the Steppenwolf Theatre were packed Monday evening with audience members who clung silently to her every word, laughed heartily at every joke, and exploded...