Rachel Weinberg - Page 7

PARADISE SQUARE takes the theme of the proverbial American melting pot deeply to heart. The musical centers on the lower Manhattan neighborhood of Five Points in the 1860s, where many white Irish immigrants and free Black Americans lived together. Though the show's narrator, Paradise Square saloon owner Nelly O'Brien, tells audiences that Five Points was notorious for being a slum, she also makes clear that the neighborhood's inhabitants enjoyed deep friendships and romantic relationships.

Mercury Theater Chicago returns with SISTER ACT - and it's pure musical theater elation. This 'Joyful, Joyful' (SISTER ACT II reference intended) production, with direction from Reneisha Jenkins and choreography by Mercury's new Artistic Director Christopher Chase Carter, meets the goal of delighting audiences. This is musical theater that's designed to entertain and not make audiences think too deeply, and Mercury's production capitalizes on the show's capacity for fun. While the material is not at all serious, the talent in this company is stacked, and the actors take their responsibility to deliver this fun seriously.

Chicago native and recent Northwestern graduate Alexa Xioufaridou Moster reflects on making her national tour debut in PRETTY WOMAN: THE MUSICAL and why she’s excited to return to her hometown when the tour arrives here in December.

After the long pandemic hiatus, Porchlight Music Theatre returns to in-person productions with a feel-good staging of PUMP BOYS & DINETTES. It’s clear that Artistic Director Michael Weber knew that audiences would be craving some classic, lighthearted musical theater sentiment after such a long time away. He was wise to program director Daryl Brooks’s production of this 1983 show as a welcome back.

Sara Sheperd steps into the lead role of musician, songwriter, and singer Carole King in the BEAUTIFUL national tour. She chatted with BroadwayWorld Chicago about her long-standing connection with the show, and her excitement about returning to live performance and this iconic role.

E. Faye Butler gives a formidable performance as civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer in Cheryl L. West’s one-woman play.

Cloran’s production cleverly unites Shakespeare’s text and the Beatles’ music to come together (pun intended) in a lively and original version of AS YOU LIKE IT.

AMERICAN MARIACHI is an enchanting celebration of female empowerment and mariachi music.

While Chicago audiences have waited far more than 525,600 minutes for live theater to return to the city, it's now just a few weeks before the RENT 25th Anniversary Farewell Tour makes its way back. Javon King returns to the role of Angel for this latest tour engagement, and he reflected on how his relationship to RENT has changed since the pandemic and what he hopes audiences take away from Jonathan Larson's musical 25 years after it debuted.

It’s not just fitting that MR. BURNS is a play about a post-apocalyptic world, but also one that deeply underscores why art is so important to humanity. Indeed, this production demonstrates that art is what makes us human and empowers us to survive. After such a long time without live theater here in Chicago, I can think of few better ideas to ponder than that.

After such a long wait, it’s particularly magical to see this uproariously funny but also tender play that puts young Black women right at its center.

TEATRO ZINZANNI is unabashedly designed to entertain — and it’s at its best when it makes high-flying fun literal with the aerial acts on display. The entire evening exudes energy, and the buzz that comes from being reunited with live performance was palpable.

I didn't hate I HATE IT HERE. In fact, Chicago playwright Ike Holter's 'concept album' play was both uproariously funny and thought-provoking.

Director Tiffany Nichole Greene stages esteemed playwright Adrienne Kennedy’s OHIO STATE MURDERS with a cinematic twist in this second installment in Goodman Theatre’s Live Series. OHIO STATE MURDERS centers on Suzanne (a harrowing Jacqueline Williams), an accomplished writer who returns to Ohio State University’s campus for the first time since her freshman year in 1949. There, Suzanne gives a lecture on the violent imagery in her work — and the origins of that imagery are much closer to the university than audiences may initially suspect.

If you’re looking for something to help fill that show tunes void, look no further than Lyric Opera’s THE NEW CLASSICS streaming concert.

Gavin Creel chatted about making his Lyric debut, his hopes for the future of equity and access on Broadway, and how he handled self-care during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Broadcast live from Goodman Theatre’s intimate Owen Theatre, THE SOUND INSIDE intrigues because of the twists and turns in Adam Rapp’s script, but also because it combines cinematic-quality streaming with the thrill of live theater. It’s been over a year since I last stepped inside a theater, and now with the first limited run production in its LIVE series, the Goodman has come extremely close to capturing the exhilaration of being live and in the room with theater. Running only for four more performances through Sunday, May 16, THE SOUND INSIDE is indeed a unique and limited-edition experience. 

THE LAST MATCH derives its greatest level of poignancy from the fact that it lays bare Tim and Sergei’s interior lives for the audiences.

With NEW FACES SING BROADWAY 1961, Porchlight Music Theatre has put together a program that will satisfy the cravings of those who desperately miss live musical theater.

It seems most fitting that Goodman Theatre's current encore streaming production of SMOKEFALL exists both in and out of time. Noah Haidle's whimsical play, beloved by critics and audiences when it originally premiered at the Goodman in 2013 (and remounted in 2014), occupies an achronological space.