Don’t ask me how many times I’ve seen Billy Wilder’s Academy Award-winning 1960 film The Apartment. I honestly couldn’t tell you. I can tell you it’s my favorite movie, and it should certainly be on anyone’s list of great holiday films, as well. (If for no other reason, you should watch it for the glorious […]
Category: Theater Review
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The Other Cinderella still has soul and sparkle to spare
It’s been a minute since I’ve visited the Kingdom of Other: 13 years, to be precise. The last time I saw Jackie Taylor’s The Other Cinderella was in 2010, before Black Ensemble Theater moved to their spacious Clark Street home. (And it was certainly long before BET planned an expansion across the street that will […]
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Islander loops together a minimalist but enchanting Celtic tale
If Laurie Anderson had done a mash-up of Scott O’Dell’s young adult classic Island of the Blue Dolphins and the 1994 John Sayles Celtic magic realist film, The Secret of Roan Inish, the result might be very similar to Islander. This minimalist but enchanting musical, which started life in 2017 on the Isle of Mull […]
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The Buttcracker plays it naughty and nice
Fast becoming a staple of Chicago’s alternative holiday entertainment scene, The Buttcracker: A Nutcracker Burlesque is back for a seventh year of tinseled twerking and tasseled twirling. Dreamed up around a campfire by artistic producer and playwright Jaq Seifert, the queer-friendly, sex-positive show celebrates bodies of various sizes, shades, ages, and genders in an exuberant […]
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Even goblins can’t chase away Hershel‘s Hanukkah fun
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 […]
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The Golden Girls Save Xmas is festive, raunchy, and heartwarming
Hell in a Handbag Productions serves up a hefty helping of Christmas camp in this new episode of its “The Golden Girls: Lost Episodes” franchise, which purports to feature never-broadcast episodes of The Golden Girls, the 1985-1992 NBC sitcom about four over-60 women—three widows and a divorcee—sharing a home in Miami. In Handbag artistic director […]
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Caveman Play lets the audience decide the course of humanity
Clare Brennan directs Savannah Reich’s 2017 silly/smart comedy about the dawn of civilization—and the audience gets to decide how it works out in the end. Dandelion (Tess Galbiati) and Rocky (Jack Rodgers) are the world’s first farmers. They’ve moved indoors. They’ve even adopted a cat—albeit a talking, often aggravated tiger called Douglas (Evan Cullinan)—and are […]
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Paramount’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory adds a touch of bitter to the sweet
Whether you’re waiting anxiously to see Timothée Chalamet in Wonka (the musical prequel to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), or are rolling your eyes in anticipatory disgust (look, after the 2005 Johnny Depp cinematic debacle, I don’t blame you for being anxious!), Paramount Theatre’s current staging of the 2013 musical Charlie and the […]
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Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol returns to Writers Theatre
Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol (devised and directed by Drew Dir, Sarah Fornace, Ben Kauffman, Julia Miller, and Kyle Vegter) is a charming remix of an old classic, but with added layers for extra warmth this time of year. Imagine the timeless tale of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol with a modern upgrade, boasting a new […]
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Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas has charm and heart galore
If you want a charming and heartwarming family show for the holidays, look no further than Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas, now bringing all the sweet quiet magic of the Jim Henson 1977 television special to the stage. This isn’t a new show, exactly; it premiered at Connecticut’s Goodspeed Musicals in 2008, and had an off-Broadway […]
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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 […]
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POTUS is painfully funny
There’s a memorable moment in an episode of Mad Men between office manager Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) and copywriter Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss). The former, fed up with the constant stream of sexual harassment from clients and coworkers alike, snaps during an elevator ride and tells Peggy, “I want to burn this place down.” How […]
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The Lifespan of a Fact tackles truthiness
The complicated backstory of the play The Lifespan of a Fact, now in its local premiere at TimeLine, reads like a series of “begats” out of the book of Genesis. Ready? Here goes. John D’Agata wrote an essay (not an article, as he stridently insists in the play) for Harper’s in 2003 about the 2002 […]
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Wise Guys: The First Christmas Story turns the journey of the Magi into a buddy adventure
Leave it to Factory Theater to come up with a twist on the story of the Magi that’s smart-assed and sincere at the same time. In Chase Wheaton-Werle’s Wise Guys: The First Christmas Story, now in its world premiere under Becca Holloway’s direction, Melchior (Josh Razavi), Balthazar (Michael Jones), and Gaspar (Shail Modi) have to […]
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Court’s The Lion in Winter slices through the surface
The arch dialogue in James Goldman’s 1966 drama The Lion in Winter (turned into a 1968 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole) about the eventful Christmas of 1183 at the English court hasn’t aged well—it calls too much attention to its own cleverness while often failing to advance either the plot or our understanding […]