Entertainment

Endings are fiendish things. In the old days, fictional endings were clearly defined, wrapped up, tied with ribbon and fastened in a neat bow. Shakespeare’s endings were unambiguous: tragedies ended in mass death, comedies ended…

Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are at it again. Last year’s follow-up to the seven year run of Grace and Frankie was, 80 For Brady, a whimsical quest to meet and ogle superstar footballer, Tom Brady. Even with the addition of co-stars Sally Field…

The email subject line included a heart emoji – “♥Calling Taylor Swift Fans” – and offered presale access to The Eras Tour, scheduled in nearby Tampa for shortly before my 70th birthday. “Maybe this could be an early present to myself,” I thought. And was it ever…

All musical forms progress as new instruments, new technology, and new innovators come on the scene. Modern opera has bad rap because some of it contains music written using the 12-note scale, uncomfortable to most ears…

Last spring, I wrote about the explosion of black on the live stage. In 2022, all the new plays opening on Broadway were written by black playwrights and starred black performers. Locally, in Chicago, the explosion is sustained by the four-to-six-week schedule of new performances throughout the year. All Black Productions Most theater groups average […]

The gaunt, stricken faces on the characters of Director Sarah Polley’s Women Talking tell us a great deal about despair. Living within the confines of an isolated religious colony, they have, over the course of their lives, been repeatedly sprayed…

Living in Chicago, you automatically qualify as a Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) fan. Many of his famous commissions still stand, some owned by single families, or open to the public and owned by churches (Unitarians), communities…

If theater is about the suspension of disbelief, then puppetry is a double suspension of disbelief – the story is told not by an actor, but by a doll or costume controlled by a puppeteer. Done well, it works in a magical way. The creative skill…

Well, here we are in the early days of slushy, mushy March. We are crawling toward spring, but it’s slow. The holidays are behind us, winter has lost its charm, the tax deadline looms, and summer vacations are still months away. It’s no wonder that many…

As we crossed the well-named Blue River Bridge over the St. Clair River from Port Huron, MI to Sarnia, ON Canada, we breathed the clean gun-less air of our northern neighbor. Sister-in-law, Norah, and I were on a five-day jaunt from Chicago…