Kerry Reid, author at Chicago Reader

A woman in a tan fringed jacket stands left. She is holding a gun under the chin of a woman in a black shirt and cowboy hat.

The Last Living Gun is a dystopic spaghetti western

by Kerry Reid October 4, 2023October 4, 2023

The Impostors have only been producing since 2018, and (like every other company) were on a hiatus from live production from March 2020 to fall of 2021. But they’ve already carved out a distinctive niche doing the kind of fabulistic and allegorical work that House Theatre of Chicago regularly cranked out. But while House seemed […]

A man in a white plastic raincoat stands left, bending over another man in a suit who is kneeling on the floor to the right.

Theater Review

Wall Street bloodbath

by Kerry Reid October 4, 2023November 14, 2023

Last year for the Halloween season, Kokandy Productions presented Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. Now they’re back with another slasher songfest: American Psycho: The Musical, adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel by book writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and with a score by Duncan Sheik, whose original songs are interspersed with pop hits like “Everybody Wants to […]

A young woman stands left, looking at a young man standing right. Another young man is in the background between them. There is a sofa and a small dining table with chairs.

Theater Review

Sanctuary City explores the plight of DREAMers

by Kerry Reid September 29, 2023September 29, 2023

Before Martyna Majok won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for her drama Cost of Living (which was planned for this season at Victory Gardens before the board decided to close up shop at the Tony Award-winning theater), her plays got airings with small companies around Chicago. (She graduated from University of Chicago in 2007.) Red […]

Charlique Rolle is pictured wearing black clothing and sitting on a stool.

Ghost Light

Charlique Rolle takes over at African American Arts Alliance of Chicago

by Kerry Reid September 28, 2023September 30, 2023

Charlique Rolle knows what it takes to keep a strong vision going in challenging times. The executive director of Congo Square Theatre Company came into that role in the summer of 2020, when nobody even knew when it would be safe to return to live performance. Rolle worked with artistic director Ericka Ratcliff and the […]

A group of four Black women stand in the foreground of an elegant living room set, while a fifth sits in a chair. Behind them we see a library with a portrait on the wall and two younger Black women and a young Black man.

Theater Review

Debutantes and debacles

by Kerry Reid September 28, 2023October 2, 2023

Pearl Cleage isn’t from Chicago, but she’s been produced enough here that she feels like an adopted playwright at least. Now-defunct Eclipse Theatre Company (dedicated to the one playwright, one season model) offered a season of Cleage plays back in 2007, and that same year, Court Theatre did a stunning revival of her 1992 frontier […]

Five actors stand onstage on a set that looks like an 18th-century drawing room. Ben Franklin is front left, and King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are back left and back right.

Theater Review

All about the Franklins

by Kerry Reid September 28, 2023October 5, 2023

There’s a great show onstage right now in Chicago about a Founding Father who is not named Alexander Hamilton. And while it doesn’t feature an award-winning score by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mesmerized: A Ben Franklin Science & History Mystery at Chicago Children’s Theatre boasts its own fine collection of talent onstage and off. Adapted by Suzanne […]

A Black woman in a red striped suit is jumping up off the floor at left. A Black man in suspenders and trousers sits at a sewing machine right, pointing a finger in her direction.

Theater Review

Harlem stories

by Kerry Reid September 21, 2023September 20, 2023

I don’t know who came up with the idea of a Pearl Cleage festival for Chicago theater, but based on Mikael Burke’s gorgeous production of the Atlanta poet laureate’s 1995 drama, Blues for an Alabama Sky, I’m glad they did. (Goodman Theatre’s staging of Cleage’s comedy The Nacirema Society is in previews now.) Blues for […]

An older white woman clutching a beer bottle stands left in the foreground. Behind her are two younger women, also holding beer bottles. The set looks like a service alley behind a mall.

Theater Review

Revolution offers small revelations

by Kerry Reid September 21, 2023October 10, 2023

Chicago playwright Brett Neveu is so good at writing about the darker side of life (as in his 2002 play Eric LaRue, now a film directed by Michael Shannon, his fellow ensemble member at A Red Orchid Theatre) that it’s hard to remember how flat-out hilarious he can be. If you need proof, look no […]

A Black man and woman stand left in front of a sofa, looking across the living room at another Black man and woman.

Theater Review

You won’t be my neighbor

by Kerry Reid September 21, 2023September 28, 2023

“Well, look who’s come to dinner!” bellows Gerald (Ronald L. Conner) to the neighbors he and wife Patricia (Sydney Charles) have invited to their home in Inda Craig-Galván’s WELCOME TO MATTESON! But the neighbors here aren’t white or interracial, and nobody’s trying to marry anyone else’s daughter. That aside, the parallels to Guess Who’s Coming […]

Three actors stand onstage in a triangular formation. Two of them are bloodied and fighting with swords. The third, dressed in a cardinal's red robes, stands watching in the background.

Theater Review

Never trust the tyrants

by Kerry Reid September 21, 2023September 20, 2023

Though it’s based loosely on a real story, John Webster’s Jacobean revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi plays like a cross between torture porn and Shakespeare, what with the piling up of butchered bodies, hints of incestuous longing, and even a touch of lycanthropy thrown in for good measure. The Duchess of MalfiThrough 10/21: Thu-Sat […]

Pierre Jean Gonzalez as Alexander Hamilton stands center stage. Around him is a circle of dancers, leaning in with their legs stretched behind them and arms to their sides.

Theater Review

The room where it happens, again

by Kerry Reid September 21, 2023September 20, 2023

At this point, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is beyond critic-proof. (Once you’ve had an entire episode of Drunk History dedicated to your recap of the events in your musical, what else is there to achieve?) But for the fanatics and newbies alike, I’m happy to report that the current Broadway in Chicago touring production of the […]

Two dancers are seen from above at a slightly distorted angle, with their arms stretching away from their bodies.

Arts & Culture

Season of plenty

by Kerry Reid, Deanna Isaacs and Irene Hsiao September 21, 2023October 2, 2023

Despite rumors of its demise, live performance is still happening in abundance on Chicago stages this season. Here are just a few suggestions in opera, dance, theater, and comedy to consider in the months ahead. And as always, be sure to check out our updated reviews and features every week for the latest comprehensive coverage. […]

Black-and-white image of a man and woman sittinmg and embracing, surrounded by sandbags like a World War I trench

Stages of Survival

‘We don’t want to get bigger. We want to get deeper.’

by Kerry Reid September 20, 2023November 22, 2023

This week, we’re kicking off a new occasional series, Stages of Survival, spotlighting theater companies that are, despite the pervasive gloom-and-doom narratives about the performing arts, still producing. The plan is to eventually encompass a broad range of companies: Equity and non-Equity, those that are itinerant and those that have their own spaces, and companies […]

A photo of a group of people of different genders, races, and ethnicities sitting at tables in a conference room. Some have their hands raised

Ghost Light

‘Don’t just say it—do it’

by Kerry Reid September 15, 2023September 15, 2023

On Tuesday, September 12, Enrich Chicago released the results for its first racial equity report for the arts sector in the city: “Work Remains To Be Done: A Baseline Survey of Chicago’s BIPOC Arts & Culture Workers.” Enrich Chicago, founded in 2014, is a collaborative composed of arts and culture organizations and funders (nearly 40 […]

A middle-aged woman in dark clothing stands left, looking at an older woman in a white cardigan sitting in a chair.

Theater Review

Petty lives of desperation

by Kerry Reid September 14, 2023September 14, 2023

When The Beauty Queen of Leenane first premiered with Galway’s Druid Theatre in 1996, it marked its author, Martin McDonagh (then just shy of age 26) as an exhilarating new voice in Celtic drama. The story of lonely 40-year-old spinster Maureen Folan and her hypochondriacal and controlling mother, Mag, cut like a chainsaw through any […]