Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Each and every year in Chicago, there is a moment when the problems of the city seem to fall away and everything seems doable and winnable again. It is a moment inextricably tied to the weather. Spring always comes later than even the worst-case scenario....

A plain-looking bus full of ticketed passengers pulled up to an ordinary Chicago street corner on Tuesday night and a couple of Nigerian women jumped on board. One was wary of the people on the bus and sat quietly, watching. The other, younger woman...

This summer's Chicago Shakespeare in the Parks program will feature "The Comedy of Errors" in a series of free, outdoor performances July 25 to Aug. 25 in various Chicago parks. Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Tuesday that the program, in its second year,...

African-American actress Patrese D. McClain showed up at auditions for "The Misanthrope" and "Tartuffe" at the Court Theatre a few weeks ago thinking she was reading for the maid. One can understand the assumption. If you took all the major...

William Shakespeare and his company were not the first artistic entity to suck up to their funders and protectors, and they surely weren't the last. Still, it's hard to watch the last scenes of “Henry VIII” without fantasizing that Wily Old...

Like several theater artists with connections to bonnie Scotland, David Greig seems to have the golden ticket of the moment. This thrilling scribe — perchance you saw his grand piece "The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart" last fall at the Chicago...

The inspiration for "Roadkill" came to its Scottish creator-director Cora Bissett when a young girl who had escaped her captors literally landed on Bissett's doorstep. "I volunteered with a charity in Glasgow, which seeks to help destitute women, many...

If ever a musical theater work deserved its exclamation point, it's “Oklahoma!” Breathes there a man or woman of a certain age who hasn't at one time or another succumbed to the nostalgic charms of this classic American show, whose spirit...

“It's not ‘rah, rah, rah,'” Gemze de Lappe says in explaining how you sing “Oklahoma!” The 91-year-old de Lappe hops up from her chair and stoops, bowing low and dusting the air with her hands as if foraging through...

The voice of Nelson Mandela crackles through much of "Cadre," the interesting new work-in-progress created, mostly in Chicago, by the South African writer-director Omphile Molusi, known internationally for his play "Itsoseng." Those of us of a certain age...

Even for fans for such prior endeavors as "The Bomb-itty of Errors" and "Funk it Up About Nothin'," a hip-hop version of "Othello" sounded like a stretch for the Q Brothers, that bizarre pair of theatrically inclined Caucasian rappers, born and raised...

Stephen Sondheim's "Road Show" is coming back to Chicago, where it once was "Bounce." And it'll share a season on Navy Pier with "Cyrano de Bergerac," "Henry V," "The Merry Wives of Windsor" and "Gypsy." Gary Griffin will direct both of the musicals...