Early on in Lisa D'Amour's New Orleans-set play, "Airline Highway," a character is asked whether he has ever been to Jazz Fest, a big-time tourist attraction for the city. After pondering for a…
Playwright Stephen Karam ("Sons of the Prophet," "Speech and Debate") infuses the traditional kitchen-sink family drama with qualities of horror in his portentous and penetrating work of…
It's been a while since a serious, period epic of redemption amid political turmoil formed the basis of a large-scale original musical, and for that reason alone this Broadway tryout in Chicago…
The title of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's fascinating, flawed play about massive social change in China, "The World of Extreme Happiness," is almost beyond ironic. Nobody in this work, premiering at the…
Pulitzer-winning playwright-provocateur Bruce Norris ("Clybourne Park," "The Pain and the Itch") has proven himself an expert at depicting American middle class hypocrisy, exposing characters' true…
"The Last Ship" sets sail in Chicago on its way to a Broadway launch in October, filled with all the hope and heartache and working class nobility of a lush, lovely original score from Sting. The…
Michael Cera and Kieran Culkin are the latest star actors to take a crack at Kenneth Lonergan's "This Is Our Youth,” the 1996 play that has always attracted notable talent thanks to the depth, pathos…
Playwright Rebecca Gilman is known for tackling the topical (racism in academia in "Spinning into Butter," stalking in "Boy Gets Girl") and for carefully, even over-bluntly, placing her characters…
So rare is a show that can run fundamentally unaltered for 26 years, bringing in global audiences galore, that this touring production of still-going Broadway megahit "The Phantom of the Opera," with…
Can't go home again? That old adage apparently doesn't apply to actors who started in Chicago theater before going on to Hollywood success.
