Chicagoland Musical Theatre

A dynamic community for passionate participants and patrons of Chicagoland Musical Theatre.

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Stories
  • Reviews
  • Compositions
  • Onstage

An exquisite glimpse into grief, ‘Life After’ deserves a nice long hereafter

June 29, 2022

By Patrick O’Brien Grief is anything but orderly—the Kübler-Ross model belongs more to pop culture than actual psychology. In attempting to impose order anyway, in Life After, a newish musical now at the Goodman, librettist-composer Britta Johnson spins an arioso detective story. Hidden within the empty chatter of neighbors dropping off umpteen casseroles, the endless

Read

‘Skates’ won’t change your life, but it’s fine, ’nuff said

June 13, 2022

By Patrick O’Brien Admittedly, even when it was announced two years ago, Skates screamed “vanity project”: Ace Young and Diana DeGarmo–American Idol finalists, partners in both music and life–in a Grease/Xanadu hybrid. They belt high Js and make kissy-faces for two hours while everyone else is left to fall on their asses—in every sense of

Read

‘Moulin Rouge’ sure can can-can, but should it?

April 22, 2022

By Patrick O’Brien With his 2001 film Moulin Rouge!, maximalist auteur Baz Luhrmann didn’t so much capture lightning in a bottle so much as cask some old-school absinthe straight out of fin de sieclé Paris’s Latin Quarter: something zingy and not a little hallucinogenic. Luhrmann didn’t so much make a movie about a melodramatic love

Read

‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’ is an opera of radical listening

March 28, 2022

By Patrick O’Brien In the very white, very old-accustomed world of opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones is a radical new work for both its Black writers (score by Terence Blanchard; libretto by Kasi Lemmons) and its focus on the contemporary Black American experience. It may also be radical as an opera that feints toward a bloody

Read

Lyric Opera’s straightforward ‘Tosca’ belies its messy human story

March 18, 2022

By Patrick O’Brien For an opera concerning love and lust in a time of war and upheaval, Puccini‘s Tosca, the immortal “shabby little shocker”, is never less than straightforward. The physical production of Lyric Opera’s new-to-Chicago staging is certainly straightforward. There are faithful recreations of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, the Palazzo Farnese, and the

Read

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Next Page »

Our Partners


after party

marionette

PR

312

17 logo

ad-for-site

 

picture17

master class

mtinchi

BJR Talent

Cherry Lane Theatre

cmt-new-logo

A dynamic community for passionate participants
and patrons of musical theatre in Chicago and its suburbs.

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Stories
  • Reviews
  • Onstage
  • Partners
  • Backstage
  • Archives
  • Links

Copyright © 2022 Chicagoland Musical Theatre · All Rights Reserved · Website by AdeptPlus