Review: Officially, conductor Riccardo Muti holds the distinction of music director emeritus for life with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But after the 83-year-old maestro’s two-week season debut concerts at Orchestra Hall, it seems more apt to acknowledge him as the band’s artistic patriarch. When Muti’s on the podium, the CSO rises to its proper level. It glistens.
Read the full story »Role Playing: Baize Buzan hones the steel spirit of a brash Irish lass in ‘Cripple of Inishmaan’
Interview: Baize Buzan knew she had the right slant on the feisty, egg-smashing Helen in Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy “The Cripple of Inishmaan” when she heard, distinctly from the audience at tiny Redtwist Theatre: “That awful girl is here again.”
With a winning smile and no visible effort, violinist heats Glass like a modern Paganini
Review: No doubt the large crowd gathered June 23 at the Ravinia Festival’s Martin Recital Hall was drawn mainly by the prospect of seeing 75-year-old composer-pianist Philip Glass perform a program of his own music. And no doubt they came away delighted by the 90-minute sampler of Glass’ music through the decades and his affable flair for story-telling. But the brightest light on this evening was cast by the youthful, California-born violinist Tim Fain, who played – among other things — one prodigious movement from an unaccompanied suite that Glass has written for him. *****
With Muti again managing the house, CSO’s Bruckner Sixth becomes one splendid edifice
Review: One of the fascinations of this Chicago Symphony Orchestra season — which drew toward its close Sunday with the final performance of Bruckner’s Sixth in its sumptuous glory — has been to hear various conductors come into the same acoustical space of Orchestra Hall, stand in the same spot where music director Riccardo Muti stands, and ply their art with the same band of a hundred-plus that Muti conducts. ****
When comedy runs amok, ‘Much Ado’ is nearly undone at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival
Beatrice as a hysterical wit. 2 stars
Capping second CSO season with Bruckner, Muti pledges Austrian-accented 6th Symphony
Exclusive Interview: When conductor Riccardo Muti recorded Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6 in A Major with the Berlin Philharmonic 25 years ago, he came to the task steeped in the Bruckner tradition of the Vienna Philharmonic – a distinctively Austrian way of looking at this thoroughly Austrian Late-Romantic composer. Now, to close out his second season as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Muti says he will bring that perspective to the Bruckner Sixth on June 22-24.
Sir Andrew Davis, Lyric Opera music director, adds the Melbourne Symphony to duties
Will shuttle between continents.
Role Playing: Stephen Ouimette brews an Irish tippler with a glassful of illusions in ‘Iceman’
Interview: It is Harry Hope’s grumpy largesse that fuels the pipe dreams for the drunken inhabitants of Eugene O’Neill’s play “The Iceman Cometh.” And Harry, says actor Stephen Ouimette, who portrays the tragi-comic Irish saloon keeper in the Goodman Theatre’s production of “Iceman,” is one complicated lush.
Unveiling truth in ‘Blonde, Brunette, Redhead’ in more ways than meet the hoodwinked eye
Blood and wigs at Writers’. 4 stars!
Redtwist puts an intimate spin on dark humor of McDonagh’s rough and quirky ‘Inishmaan’
Cripple Billy’s adventure. 4 stars!
Stratford Festival’s Shakespeare tradition echoes in the well-told tale of ‘Cymbeline’
Young love put to the test. 4 stars!
Shaw Festival: Catching America’s cultural swing to the syncopated beat of ‘Ragtime’
Turn of the century saga. 4 stars!
Sophistication meets innuendo: Shaw Festival puts fine edge on Coward’s ‘Present Laughter’
Matinee idol preens, pouts. 4 stars!
‘My Kind of Town’ reconstructs police torture scandal as a complicated drama of real life
Cops under gun at TimeLine. 4 stars!
Role Playing: Ian Barford revels in the wiliness of an ambivalent rebel in Doctorow’s ‘March’
Interview: He’s just making it up as he goes along, the Confederate turncoat portrayed by Ian Barford in Steppenwolf Theatre’s current production of “The March.” That’s what Barford likes about his opportunistic character called Arley. And in a sense, the actor says, he’s doing much the same thing on stage from night to the next, trying to track the pitch and roll of a soldier who’s trying to find his own meaning.
In lightning-quick Beethoven 7th Symphony, van Zweden and CSO deliver a poetic thriller
Review: It’s one thing to hear a hair-raising orchestra performance on a CD, and quite another to experience it happening right in front of you, live, in the splendorous acoustics of a concert space. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s rocket-sled finale in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony on May 15 at Orchestra Hall, with conductor Jaap van Zweden, was one to send a writer combing his thesaurus for a higher form of wow. *****
Amid war to win vote for British women, flames of passion illuminate ‘Her Naked Skin’
Suffrage at Shattered Globe. 4 stars!
Chicago Symphony nabs key player from Detroit to helm bass
Alexander Hanna, 26, was groomed at Curtis, Tanglewood and Verbier.
On the Lyric Opera stage, pianist Lang Lang lends Schubert, Chopin a tenor of virtuosity
Review: Lang Lang’s debut at Chicago’s 3500-seat Civic Opera House was quietly elegant, cogently argued and intensely focused. That is, until the abundantly gifted pianist gave himself over to some astonishing fireworks. With a technique like that, who can blame him? ****
Vivid characters and some great singing carry the day for ‘A Little Night Music’ at Writers’
Sondheim’s paean to love. 4 stars!
‘Melancholy’ cometh, draped in dolorous fun, as Grey Ghost Theatre bows with Ruhl’s play
Review: When Tilly shows up, she elevates the common funk to dolorous heights so seductive, transporting and rarified — cue the cello — that only the Japanese have a word for it, or is it the Scandinavians? This is Sarah Ruhl’s 2001 “Melancholy Play,” a gentle misery-loves-company fable of high wit. ***
ATC and About Face hang fresh ‘Rent’ sign on a production of street-level intimacy, energy
Musical classic, new again. 4 stars!
Theater Wit chases depression into sharp bite of comedy with Rosenstock’s ‘Tigers Be Still’
Bittersweet therapy with beast. 2 stars.
Chicago Symphony plans Asian tour with Muti, and adds Mexico debut to fall Carnegie opener
Beijing, Mexico City, Seoul among stops.
Lang Lang, star pianist and global citizen, will bring Chopin, other friends to Chicago recital
Preview: When Chinese piano sensation Lang Lang steps onto the stage at the Civic Opera House for his recital Saturday night, it will be a special moment for everyone in the house – including the pianist.
Goodman’s well-honed ‘Iceman Cometh’ slices through a boozy, painful cloud of pipe-dreams
Brian Dennehy, Nathan Lane. 5 stars!
Chicago Shakespeare’s lean and brisk ‘Timon’ zooms in on crash-and-burn of a needy Midas
Mega-rich tycoon falls low. 4 stars!
‘Pride and Prejudice’ at Lifeline: Mirroring Austen’s vivacious novel in memorable faces
A stew of great characters. 4 stars!
Strawdog taps 17th century vein of blood lust with Webster’s murderous ‘Duchess of Malfi’
Lust, greed and mayhem. 3 stars
Ian McDiarmid, revving the engines of anger, ready to take on Shakespeare’s raging Timon
Preview: The Scottish actor, a Shakespeare veteran, talks with Chicago On the Aisle about the dark and turbulent mindscape of “Timon of Athens.” The play opens May 2 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Profiles explores psychological shadows as LaBute drops siblings in deep, dark woods
‘In a Forest, Dark and Deep.’ 4 stars!
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