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MUST SEEREVIEWSREVIEWS BYTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

Cinderella -The National Tour

Cinderella is, by far, the finest National Touring Equity musical to grace a Chicago stage in years! It is a wonderful, beautifully staged and a gorgeously presented musical. It has all the elements of a fabulous family experience: a marvelous, lush score by Richard Rodgers with the smart lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It has eye-popping sets and costumes (set design by Anna Louizos, costumes by William Ivey Long). It has a new book by Douglas Carter Beane that updates and adds heart to Hammerstein’s fable.

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MUST SEEREVIEWS BYTheatre Reviews

Burning Bluebeard

How does theatre tastefully memorialize its losses? That question haunted author Jay Torrence when he was writing Burning Bluebeard, which is about the December 30, 1903 fire at the Iroquois Theatre on Randolph Street in Chicago in which over 600 people died. It’s an amazing story, but The Ruffians and The Neo-Futurists are clown troupes. However, since the fire occurred during a performance of a pantomime, a humorous fairy tale for children, it’s a better fit than it first appears. Burning Bluebeard is now in its third annual run, and it’s a sad, frightening, and yet often delightful piece.

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MUST SEEREVIEWS BYTheatre Reviews

Airline Highway

Upon entering the theatre, you’ll be amazed by the set designed by Scott Pask, a longtime collaborator of director Joe Mantello. Before you is the façade and parking lot of the Hummingbird, a faded New Orleans hotel. It looks like a nasty place; there’s a rotting Honda and beer bottles strewn around the lot, a gutter pipe is cracked, the vending machine’s lights are out. But on the upper level there is a hanging potted plant, a strand of mini lights, and wind chimes. People actually live here.

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REVIEWS BYTheatre Reviews

The Clean House

Her 2004 play, The Clean House, now produced by Remy Bumppo, is an excellent example of both her thematic interest and her playful, though not uproariously funny, imaginative style. It’s a work that resists logical analysis, instead making rhetorical gestures and sometimes heavy-handed emotional appeals. Audience members should go into it with patience to get the most out of it.

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MUST SEEREVIEWSREVIEWS BYTheatre ReviewsTom Williams

The Santaland Diaries 2014

For years The Santaland Diaries has been a staple of holidays shows. it is how Mitchell Fain both commands the stage and how he personalizes the story without making drastic changes to David Sedaris’ script. One only has to witness Fain’s opening to see a master comic and a terrific actor doing his craft. Fain’s skill at engaging and audience with his crude but very human honesty. There may be others who can play “Crumpet, the elf” but no one humanizes the cynical character as does the sharp-tongued Mitchell Fain. He is a major comic talent at the top of his craft.

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Music ReviewsMUST SEEOperaREVIEWSREVIEWS BYTom Williams

Anna Bolena

Not produced at the Lyric Opera since 1985 when Joan Sutherland soared in Anna Bolena, this new production reaches the heights of the bel canto style (beautiful singing) with matching register and tonal quality of the voice to the emotional content of the words. Led by the powerful and stylistic soprano Sondra Radvanovsky as Ann and the smooth mezzo-soprano from Jamie Barton as Anna’s rival for the affections of King Henry, this melodic production of Donizetti’s Tudor-inspired 1830 opera is a major triumph for the Lyric!

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Classical MusicMUST SEEREVIEWS BYTheatre Reviews

The Nutcracker (Joffrey)

The story is minimal but allows Joffrey to establish a tone of vaguely holiday related fancy. A family is hosting a Christmas party. The older child, Clara, is calm and well-behaved, while her hyperactive little brother Fritz is everywhere at once. A magician, Dr. Drosselmeyer, arrives and produces mechanical dolls to delight the guests. Gifts are exchanged; some genius gave Fritz a bugle. Dr. Drosselmeyer gives Clara a figurine nut cracker in the shape of a soldier, which Fritz breaks within two seconds. That night, the dolls come to life and battle against mice trying to eat them. Clara saves the nutcracker by bonking the mouse king with her slipper, and in gratitude nutcracker, now a handsome prince, takes her and Dr. Drosselmeyer to a magical kingdom to be entertained for the night.

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