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 […]
Author Archives: Kerry Reid
Posted inTheater Review
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 […]
Posted inTheater Review
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 […]
Posted inCity Life
Chicago Reader’s Nonprofit Guide for 2023
Around this time of the year you’ll begin to hear the phrase “the giving season.” It’s the moment when donation-dependent organizations ramp up their campaigns in the hopes of being included in the gifting air that comes in on a wind of mailers, calls, and fundraisers. For the Nonprofit Issue, we thought it would be […]
Posted inGhost Light
Remembering Marc Silvia, Debra Rodkin, and Ernest Perry Jr.
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions,” observes Claudius in Hamlet. And for Chicago theater artists, the last two weeks of November were particularly sorrowful, as three actors who helped shape and define the work that emerged here in the late 1970s and beyond—Marc Silvia, Debra Rodkin, and Ernest Perry Jr.—died […]
Posted inTheater Review
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 […]
Posted inFeature
The Reader’s 2023 Holiday Gift Guide
1 Chicago stepping lessons from award-winning south sider Shaun Ballentine of Effortless Stepping. —Salem Collo-Julin Open group lessons Wednesdays at 7 PM, Effortless Stepping Studio, 1850 E. 79th. $20 per person, 21+ only. For private lesson rates or information about having Ballentine do a stepping class at your event, message through Instagram or Facebook. 2 […]
Posted inTheater Preview
Noor Inayat Khan: The Forgotten Spy brings a footnote of World War II center stage
Princess. Musician. Writer. Spy. The short description of all of Noor Inayat Khan’s identities during her brief lifetime reads like the title of a John le Carré novel. Yet despite the fact that her work as an undercover radio operator and liaison between the French resistance and British intelligence during World War II was an […]
Posted inTheater Review
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 […]
Posted inTheater Review
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 […]
Posted inTheater Review
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 […]
Posted inStages of Survival
Definition Theatre makes plans for a new home while building community connections
Stages of Survival is an occasional series focusing on Chicago theater companies, highlighting their histories and how they’re surviving—and even thriving—in a landscape that’s become decidedly more challenging since the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown. Last month’s report from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE) and SMU DataArts, “Navigating Recovery: Arts and Culture Financial […]
Posted inTheater Review
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 […]
Posted inTheater Review
Commedia Divina: It’s Worse Than That is Dante for the age of MAGA
Editor’s Note: Due to illness in the cast, the remainder of performances for this show have been canceled. Please contact the company for information on refunds. Feel like you’ve been living in hell the past several years? The Conspirators understand. In their latest offering, Commedia Divina: It’s Worse Than That, writer Sid Feldman concocts a […]
Posted inGhost Light
Remembering Linsey Falls
You may not have known Linsey Falls’s name, but if you spent much time in the audience at Chicago non-Equity and storefront theaters over the years, you almost certainly knew his face and his voice. His expressive features, big eyes, and mischievous grin lit up the stage in comic roles, and his malleable voice and […]