The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada – Broadway in Chicago

Chicago has been home to several pre-Broadway runs all of which have done quite well once on the Great White Way. This current production of The Devil Wears Prada is no exception.

Based on the book by Lois Weinberger, it then became a hit movie starring Meryl Strep, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt. The musical has a score by Elton John and lyrics by Shania Taub, a book by Kate Wetherhead, under the excellent direction of Chicago’s own Anna D. Shapiro.

Madcap enchantment and revelry abound in Summer Stage’s production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Madcap enchantment and revelry abound in Summer Stage’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Director Dustin J. Martin’s spin on the tale plays with the narrative’s play-within-a-play technique to present a charmingly transportive production that is as much about the high-minded nature of dramatic potential as it is a nimble farce full of bewitched lovers, vengeful fairies, and donkey-headed amateur actors.

The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid – Music Theatre Works

Walking into the North Shore Theatre one feels as if they really are “under the sea”. The lobby has been transformed into an oceanic playground, complete with a mermaid posing for pictures.

Chicago Philharmonic, Maestro Scott Speck conducting, brings a creative collaboration of talent and artistry with Aretha Rising.

Aretha Rising – Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra

Capathia Jenkins and Darryl Williams, with back up singers Nick Trawick, DeShana Wooden, and Calli Graver amaze with their vocal talent along with this remarkable orchestra.  The acoustics of the Harris Theater create  a canopy of multilayered sound beauty. Darryl Williams singing A Change Is Gonna Come brings goosebumps and much needed hope after a heartbreaking week of violence in Texas.  And Aretha’s Gospel (What A Friend We Have In Jesus/Climbing Higher Mountains) simply lifts you up.

Art to Ponder and Enjoy

Nick Cave: Forothermore – The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Wow!  Dazzling. Thought-provoking. I was immediately immersed in this spectacular exhibit of beautiful colors and optical “illusions.” I say illusions because Nick Cave’s “Forothermore” is so much more than dazzling colorful eye candy. Upon closer inspection, you really see what he’s trying to tell us and it is often not pretty. It is moving and inspiring, beautiful and heartbreaking, showing us how life has a way of fooling us into believing there is equal opportunity for all, but that it’s a misconception.

Waukesha Civic Theatre’s Silent Sky offers a veritable constellation of delights 

Silent Sky – Waukesha Civic Theatre

Lauren Gunderson’s play Silent Sky is a dazzlingly lyrical dramatization of the life of early 20th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, chronicling her career-defining, gender-defying astronomical breakthroughs studying cephid pulses that created the standard by which distances are measured in space. Indeed, the play is necessarily obsessed by space, Gunderson’s script not only seizes on the scientific implications of exploring space and time, but uses the narrative fiber of her text to play with how space and time is perceived. Indeed, the play spans decades, charting Leavitt’s persistence in the face of institutional misogyny, familial setbacks, and even heartache. 

Sunset Playhouse’s Wait Until Dark is a vision of simmering noir mystery that makes nearly all the right choices. 

Wait Until Dark – Sunset Playhouse

Wait Until Dark follows Susan Hendrix, a blind woman who is unwittingly in possession of a doll three nefarious men are trying to very much to get a hold of. That’s it; the entire plot of the play revolves around these three nefarious men—Roat, the oily, maniacal brains of the operation; Carlino, the dirty ex-cop muscle; Mike, the likeable honey pot— and their increasingly nefarious ways of bullying an innocent blind woman into giving it up. It is a deceptively simple plot, but it’s the clever choices it makes that make it work.