Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Emily Schwartz. Elinor Cook’s impressive, poignant Out of Love belongs to an unfortunately rare genre: plays that, without pulling punches, highlight and explore the complexity of women’s relationships. Its two protagonists, daughters of friends, grow up together and remain connected all of their lives […]
Review by Ed Rubin, member of American Theatre Critics Association, NYC’s Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle; photo by Carol Rosegg There are probably greater painters than Noël. Greater novelists than Noël, greater librettists, greater composers of music, greater singers, greater dancers, greater comedians, greater tragedians, greater stage producers, greater film directors, greater cabaret artists, […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Austin Oie. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is probably the quintessential fictional account of WWI, a novel with German protagonists overwhelmed by the harsh realities of a war they had signed up for after being assured it would be […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Joe Mazza/Brave Lux. When Babes With Blades’ Women in 4G begins, it feels like a fairly normal murder mystery, albeit set in a spaceship orbiting Mars: the captain, who happens to be the only male aboard the small vessel, is killed, and the women […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Jhenai Mootz. It’s Shakespeare versus an army of cicadas at Oak Park Festival’s Much Ado About Nothing and, at least for the first half hour or so, the insects clearly have the upper hand. As the expositional scenes of the play set up the […]
Review by Ed Rubin, member of American Theatre Critics Association, NYC’s Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle; photo by Jeremy Daniel. While New York City recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising with much hoopla and an enormous, traffic-stopping Gay Pride parade that went on well into the night, New York’s Lincoln Center […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Scott Dray. A long time ago, so long it seems as if it were another lifetime, I was the coach of my high school’s forensics team. (Forensics, sometimes called speech team, is an extracurricular program in which young actors and speakers are able to […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Katie Reynolds. On the way home from seeing Come From Away at the Cadillac Palace Theatre on Wednesday night, my husband, knowing we were seeing an unknown play at a tiny northside venue the next day, asked (half-joking), “So what are our chances of […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Matthew Murphy. Every American knows what happened on September 11, 2001, but until the musical Come From Away premiered on Broadway in 2017, few knew one of the most incredible and uplifting stories connected with that devastating day. The musical, written by Canadians Irene […]
Review by Karen Topham, American Theatre Critics Association member; photo by Cody Jolly Photography. So here is the premise for Harry Wood’s Roast, now playing at Greenhouse Theater Center: a stand-up comic kills himself and leaves instructions that four of his friends and colleagues, along with his sister and estranged father, should (instead of a […]