CHICAGO THEATER REVIEWS

In all, the detailed attention to all the Mario Bros. incarnations is what makes 'Boobs and Goombas' such a hoot. It isn't a highbrow or heady evening. It's a fun, video game throwback burlesque parody ... and how many of those can you say you've been to?...

This show has only been staged one other time in its entire existence, in Australia in 1986, and certainly deserves a wider viewing. It is "Boojum!: Nonsense, Truth and Lewis Carroll," and it is on the boards at the DCA Theater on Randolph Street (now through December 19), a co-production of Chicago...

This Chicagoan goes to New York over a winter's weekend to check out 'The Radio City Christmas Spectacular,' 'American Idiot,' 'The Phantom of the Opera,' and first preview of 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.'...

Playwright Paula Vogel has wrought a researched and resonant snapshot of our nation's capital at a moment of waiting, a fullness not yet fulfilled. And that, unfortunately, describes the play as well. ...

Chicago is home to any number of small, hard-working, barely-funded opera and operetta companies, some professional, some all-volunteer, and these for the most part fly entirely under the radar of traditional media and even of the internet itself. Some of these companies have been around in one form...

Now through January 9, 2011, a most miraculous thing is happening onstage at the Marriott Theatre in far north suburban Lincolnshire, Illinois. An entire town is coming to life. Its citizens sing, they dance, they hum, they can't tell where talking starts and singing begins.... It's 'The Music Man.'...

Last Sunday night, Bailiwick Chicago celebrated the first anniversary of its reincarnation by presenting the American debut of the musical "Departure Lounge," a very English rumination from the pen of author, lyricist and composer Dougal Irvine on what it means to bridge the gap between youth and ad...

There seem to be numerous works of fiction, particularly series of books or stories geared to the child in all of us, which emerged from late 19th and early 20th century England. These works permeated the American psyche then, have yielded many stage and film adaptations in the intervening years, f...

Amy Morton is neither bawdy or large in Edward Albee's 'WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?,' but I'll go out on a limb in saying she delivers the most reinvented interpretation of a classic character Chicago has ever seen....

The lovely and nostalgic production of a new stage version of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" that opened this week at the Drury Lane Theatre in west suburban Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, very nearly returns the audience to the Broadway of the 1940s and early '50s. ...

In the spring of 1939, two musical adaptations of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1885 music theater masterpiece "The Mikado" opened on Broadway. One, which had originated in Chicago, was called "The Swing Mikado." The other, which producer Mike Todd created when he was prevented from producing "The Swing Mi...

The increasingly popular and important playwright Sarah Ruhl, a Chicago native and finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for "In The Next Room: or the Vibrator Play," traces her theatrical origins, in part at least, to the Piven Theatre Workshop in Evanston, or, more exactly, to its Young People's Co...

Cromer's production of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize winning 'A Streetcar Named Desire' -now in its third and final extension at Writers' Theatre- is nothing short of spectacular. Catch this train while you still can....

Now and for just two more weeks, an extraordinary, stylish and heartfelt production of Elton John's and Tim Rice's "Aida" is running at the very, very warm American Theater Company space in Chicago's North Center neighborhood. Courtesy of the reconstituted Bailiwick Chicago,......

Steppenwolf's 'A Parallelogram' is a wonderfully-acted, well-designed, and smartly-written escape from the reality show marathons we've TiVo'd....

Just in time for the end of Pride Month, Tony-winning playwright Joe DiPietro ('Memphis') has worked with Bailiwick Chicago to produce the Midwest premiere (and only third production ever) of his 2008 play 'Fucking Men,' an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's 19th century play 'La Ronde' that is now s...

Without getting into the nitty gritties, you've never seen the Auditorium Theatre like this before. All you need to know is 'FUERZA BRUTA' is an interactive theatrical experience, the likes of which are few and far between here in Chicago....

The Marriott Theatre has done it again! This north suburban theater in the round (well, square, really) has a long history of producing the first Chicago area version of Broadway musicals newly released for licensing, usually soon after the end of a national tour. And so it is with the light-as-a-fe...

A very fine revival of the first two-person Broadway musical opened out in Munster, Indiana, on Sunday night. "I Do! I Do!," the show crafted by the "fanstastick" team of Tom Jomes (book and lyrics) and Harvey Schmidt (music).......

The Artistic Home, near the corner of Byron and Clark on the outskirts of Chicago's Wrigleyville neighborhood, is directly across the street from a cemetery. Well, three cemeteries, I think. And that is so appropriate, because, as you may know, that's where you end up at the end of this 1891 German ...

While its strong language and sometimes disturbing subject matter may not be for everyone, I cannot recommend this production enough. It's raw, it's edgy, and its sentiment towards the responsibility of art makes 'The Pillowman' an enthralling watch....

Playing each Thursday through Sunday from now until May 1, 2010, the 1993 off-Broadway musical "Hello Again" is on the boards at the Heartland Studio space on Glenwood Avenue, courtesy of the Bohemian Theatre Ensemble. With book, music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa..... ...

Last Saturday night, April 10, 2010, Chicago's Provision Theater Company presented the world premiere dramatic adaptation of the book 'The Hiding Place,' the real-life story of Corrie ten Boom, a Dutchwoman arrested by the Nazis who survived life in a concentration camp....

Now through April 25, 2010, on the mainstage of the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, is the premiere of "The Lost Boys of Sudan," the play by VG ensemble playwright Lonnie Carter that has "changed enormously" since its 2007 world premiere at the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis..... ...

Is "Ragtime" the Great American Musical? Certainly a grand argument in favor of that statement is now on display at the Drury Lane Theatre in Chicago's western suburb of Oakbrook Terrace, where one of the strongest home-grown musical productions in recent memory very nearly floored the opening night...