CHICAGO THEATER REVIEWS

'American Idiot' tour aims for the non-Broadway musical crowd and mostly succeeds....

Chelsea Packard (as Elle Woods) and the rest of the cast deliver a fast-paced, fresh and funny 'Legally Blonde' at Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire....

The newly-revised musical 'The Addams Family' finds new life and laughs on tour....

Christopher Sieber shines in the ground breaking classic 'La Cage aux Folles'...

Misha Davenport sits down with the creative team behind this holiday's biggest hit, 'A Christmas Story, The Musical!'...

The latest non-Equity tour of one of the crown jewels of the American musical theater, "Fiddler On The Roof," pulled its bus and truck into the equally landmark Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University this week for a one-week Chicago stay, giving its mostly young and talented cast a chance to do...

The national tour of Tony award-winning 'Memphis' loses some heat, but still thrills vocally....

The celebration of the opening of the new facility for Chicago's 34-year-old Black Ensemble Theater, coming on a lonesome stretch of commercial street in western Uptown during a dismal economy, was a remarkable thing last weekend. The $19 million Black Ensemble Theater Cultural Center, lovely... ...

No spoonful of sugar needed: 'Mary Poppins' delights in every way....

For the next four weekends (until November 13, 2011), this year's unofficial Chicagoland Stephen Schwartz festival continues at the Theater Wit multiplex facility on Belmont Avenue. That's where the Bohemian Theatre Ensemble, aka Boho Theatre, has mounted a thoroughly relevant and highly riveting pr...

Chicago Shakespeare's production of 'Follies' is second to none...

We'll drink to that: Carrie Fisher looks back on her life in Hollywood in 'Wishful Drinking.'...

The Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Illinois, north of Chicago, has an enormous subscription base, deep pockets, a talented and experienced in-house design team and a film property to adapt that touches on a number of important, stage-worthy themes (military patriotism, family, nostalgia, a timely...

Broadway World Chicago reviews 'Disney's Beauty and the Beast.'...

The Marriott Theatre in far north suburban Lincolnshire has long been a testing ground-- for newly-written musicals, or for musicals never before produced in the round. (When you have that many subscribers, you can take a few highly visible risks.) Now, through August 14, 2011, the theatre is trying...

Long-buried memories have the power to move and motivate in Lookingglass Theatre Company's 'The Last Act of Lilka Kadison'...

Touring production of the hit revival 'Chicago' is still heaven nowadays....

For anyone who's ever lived in Chicago, has a fond spot in their heart for any incarnation of 'Grease,' or eaten a Whoopercheesie, American Theater Company's 'The Original Grease' is the show to see this summer....

It's not a typo folks! This is not a review of anybody's production of "Sunset Boulevard," despite the vision mistakes of ALL of my friends when they asked me in writing where I was going. Instead, it's the seventh or eighth "Nunsense" musical (depending on whether or not you count one all-male show...

Last weekend was the official opening of a hardworking production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic musical play, "The King and I," at Stage 773 courtesy of Porchlight Music Theatre Chicago. Coming simultaneously with the royal wedding goings-on in London, the show rang fascinatingly resonant w...

With Robert Massicotte and Alexis Laurence's eye-popping 3D video projection design bringing Massicotte's blank urban landscape design to life, the urban dances and circus acts in 'iD' are resoundingly funky, fresh, and beautifully mesmerizing....

Two musicals which first firmly planted their roots in Chicago around 15 years ago achieved great acclaim on Broadway and elsewhere, and yet have never been far from our stages or our consciousness in Chicago. Both are about race relations in earlier times, and both continue to resonate with great s...

The revised version of the 1970s musical "Working," that montage of monologues with the Frankenstein score that is usually called "the blue collar 'A Chorus Line'" (though it isn't), opened on Wednesday night in the town that originally birthed it, full of life and emotion and enough Chicago grit, g...

Seriously, "Guys And Dolls" at the Marriott Theatre is great. It's just great. Great, great, great. No, it's not perfect. And it's definitely old school--there's definite dialogue sections, song sections, dance sections, just like the shows from the Golden Age were supposed to have. But what songs! ...

'9 to 5' is a campy evening of harmless fun and 15 original toe-tapping ditties supplied by Miss Parton herself. It's nowhere near a perfect show, but for a strong dose of women power, this tour is a sure bet....