Category: City Stories

  • Review: The Mousetrap

    Review: The Mousetrap

    Perhaps best known as the longest-running play ever (notching north of 28,000 performances and counting), Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap has been continuously on stage in London’s West End since 1952. Now, the reliably entertaining murder mystery set over a few snowed-in days at the remote (and fictional) Monkswell Manor finds its way to a stage much closer…

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  • Review: Once On This Island

    Review: Once On This Island

    Just a few blocks north of the heart of Times Square and next door to the massive Gershwin Theatre (capacity: 1,900) is a more intimate space, an 800-seat theater built for unique productions that immerse their audiences into the world created on stage eight times a week. The aptly named Circle in the Square Theatre…

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  • 2018 [on stage]

    2018 [on stage]

    I broke a personal record of sorts in 2018: thanks to exceptional access via Third Coast Review (hello, media tickets!), I saw a whopping 35 theatrical productions over the course of twelve months. From storefront productions to world-class opera and everything in between, there were weeks I saw several shows in a row. And of…

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  • ‘Tis the Season | Holiday Theater in Chicago

    ‘Tis the Season | Holiday Theater in Chicago

    For two years running now, I’ve made it my own little holiday tradition to see American Blues Theater’s annual production of It’s a Wonderful Life: Live in Chicago. The show is an absolute treat, a word-for-word performance of the film script…except as an old-timey radio play. Each year, the actors are wonderful, the spirit is…

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  • Summer Adventures

    Summer Adventures

    The radiators in my apartment kicked in for the first time this season just the other day, and as excited as I am for sweater weather, it got me nostalgic for all the adventures I managed to pack in over the summer. It’s no secret that Chicago loooves summer, those fleeting three months in the…

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  • For Anyone Who’s Ever Read a Book

    For Anyone Who’s Ever Read a Book

    I first discovered the American Writers Museum a year ago, when it received a write-up in the New York Times on the occasion of its opening. I clicked through to the article with a general curiosity about about this new space dedicated to the written word; I gave no thought to the actual location of…

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