Things get meta pretty quickly when you walk into the theater of Chicago Loop Synagogue to see Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. Cast members come out to schmooze with the audience members (especially young ones). During the first 15 minutes of the show, we’re treated to a wonderful performance by a band of roving Eastern […]
Author Archives: Matt Simonette
Posted inTheater Review
Cinderella emphasizes the magic of kindness
As a burgeoning, albeit un-self-aware, gay kid in the 70s, I developed an inexplicable fascination with TV and film scenes where women changed outfits quickly. When Cher had her own show, she’d always open each episode wrapped in a fur or cape, slowly singing a few smoky bars in close-up before the key changed, the […]
Posted inTheater Preview
Sleeping With Beauty brings an irreverent take to a British holiday tradition
There likely aren’t many Americans familiar with the UK’s pantomime (often shortened to panto) musical comedy tradition, but PrideArts in Uptown is aiming to change that—at least for Chicago audiences. Panto performances have traditionally been geared towards the whole family in the UK, but not so much at PrideArts. Last year the theater scored a […]
Posted inTheater Review
Chaos in the co-op
A stellar cast more than makes up for some of the inherent unevenness in Charles Busch’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, produced at Skokie Theatre as part of MadKap Productions’s 2023-24 season. Julie Stevens is terrific as Marjorie Taub, an Upper West Side housewife recovering from a nervous breakdown—triggered after the death of her […]
Posted inTheater Review
This Bitter Earth dives into the roots of political and personal commitment
At one point in Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre’s excellent production of Harrison David Rivers’s This Bitter Earth, the central character, Jesse (Matthew Lolar-Johnson), says to his activist boyfriend, Neil (Tiemen Godwaldt), that “all lives matter.” Neil, surprised and disgusted, replies, “Saying all lives matter is like running through an anti-cancer rally and saying, ‘You know, there are […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Setting the stage for queer stories
One of Chicago’s greatest treasures for its LGBTQ+ community and its allies is the city’s queer theater scene. As the 2023–24 season kicks in, there will be no shortage of queer stories playing out on Chicago’s stages. Uptown-based LGBTQ+ theater stalwart PrideArts got an early start, kicking off its fall season back in August with […]
Posted inTheater Review
Cooking With Soul
Near the end of Black Ensemble Theater’s (BET) superb new revue A Taste of Soul, co-emcee Qiana McNary mentions that the show’s creators hope to leave the audience both “full and hungry at the same time.” The show’s central framing device—a television cooking program veering into musical numbers, concurrently leading the audience through the history […]
Posted inTheater Review
Emotional landmines on the campaign trail
Obama campaign operatives stationed in East Cleveland at the height of the 2008 presidential run felt like they were at the center of the political world. An idealistic—and existentially lost—Black gay man’s entrance into this volatile world forms the center of Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre’s production of Aurin Squire’s Obama-ology, which entertainingly depicts what an emotional minefield […]
Posted inTheater Review
Showfolk follies
I’m generally not a huge fan of material wherein creative folk in any discipline—theater, film, publishing, music—turn to their own profession for inspiration. If a movie is about filmmaking, or a novel is about a tortured novelist, or a singer crows about how hard life is on the road, I check out pretty quickly. So […]
Posted inTheater Review
one in two provocatively reflects on a lingering epidemic
Even as the audience find their seats before the start of PrideArts’s new production one in two, they’ll get a sense that their relationship with the actors for the next 90 minutes will be an unusual one. The actors are already onstage, stretching and otherwise preparing, as the audience sits down. Following the performance, there […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Albert Herring balances indie aesthetic with traditional music
Benjamin Britten’s 1947 opera Albert Herring (set in 1900) has been a perennial production for Chicago Opera Theater. But the new mounting opening tonight at the Athenaeum, helmed by director Stephen Sposito, promises to infuse Britten’s story with what the company is calling an “indie-film vibe.” Sposito—who was associate director for The Book of Mormon, […]
Posted inTheater Review
The Chicken Ranch builds a nest in Evanston
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, first presented on Broadway in 1978 and memorably mounted as a film in 1982, is ironically one of the most prescient musicals for the 21st century. The story of the Chicken Ranch in fictional Gilbert, Texas, both portends contemporary cancel culture and brilliantly contrasts the ethics of prostitution, the […]
Posted inTheater Review
Have yourself a dirty little Christmas
I try not to lose myself in hyperbole, but I’m guessing Tom Whalley’s Jack Off the Beanstalk (a bawdy take on the classic British “panto”) is the only play this holiday season where the cow steals the show. Fist the Cow (Tyler Callahan), the bovine possession of the titular Jack Clapp (Joe Lewis)—whom Jack naively […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Buttcracker burlesque cracks traditional ballet wide open
Jaq Seifert admits that the title of the holiday show they created, The Buttcracker, came to them while sitting around a campfire in 2015. “I was hanging out with some burlesque dancers,” they recall. “I had been working at a burlesque theater for a little bit as a sort of company manager. We were just […]
Posted inTheater Review
Southern secrets and lies
Sarah Sapperstein’s Maggie the Cat commands your attention with her act one monologues in MadKap Productions’s mounting of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at Skokie Theatre, directed by Steve Scott. Sapperstein’s costars take her energy and roll with it for the entirety of this show, in which a southern family unravels (and […]