Theater Picks

From time to time, I’ll provide links to my recent favorite theater experiences.  Here are three that vary from Chicago storefront to Broadway.  My Gapers Block reviews focus on the storefront theaters because I want to give them as much visibility as possible.

Hamilton and more in New York. 

In which I join every other theater critic in going gaga over the play about our “ten-dollar Founding Father” and its creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Four plays with music themes

Music everywhere. Four plays with music threads or themes plus my report on a great event at the Old Town School of Folk Music. (But it wasn’t folk music. It’s always rock and roll.)

Four plays in four days, and more

My contributions to Gapers Block keep me busy seeing plays and then writing about them. But it’s so much fun that I’m not complaining about calendar overcapacity.

Three Chicago plays: tragedy, wit and some Hank Williams

A week in Chicago theater-going plus a National Theatre Live production featuring Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth and her audiences with the PMs over the years.

Inventing Van Gogh at Strange Bedfellows Theatre

My latest review on Gapers Block covers a play by Steven Dietz that addresses that timeless question:  Is that art? It’s an ambitious play for this small theater company and I had some minor quibbles with it.  But it’s overall an interesting and rewarding theater experience

Gibraltar and The Assembled Parties in New York 

My time in Manhattan was highlighted by two very good plays. Gibraltar at Irish Repertory in Chelsea, my regular favorite New York theater, and The Assembled Parties by Richard Greenberg on Broadway.

Mahal at Bailiwick, The Casuals at Jackalope and Rooms: A Rock Romance at Broken Nose

Three terrific shows at Chicago’s fabulous storefront theaters, home of some of the best theater in Chicago.

Homecoming 1972 at Chicago Dramatists

My passion for Bruce Springsteen’s music, brought to life in a fine play by Robert Koon at a theater that emphasizes new work by local playwrights.  Homecoming 1972 follows the story trajectory of Springsteen’s “Highway Patrolman” from his incomparable acoustic album, Nebraska, released in 1982.