Actor and playwright Sentell Harper feels trapped. As a gay black man, he's disinterested in "throwing shade," lip syncing for your life or being on the DL as a way to survive within this marginalized minority. He's searching for answers, but coming up with more questions about what it means...

Anything Goes is one of those shows that never takes itself too seriously. It isn't afraid to get a little bawdy and bend the rules -- but it always comes out on top, full of class, champagne bubbles and loads of style.

In describing the show, I'm also describing the...

"They just don't write 'em like that anymore!"

That classic turn of phrase kept running through my head watching Porchlight Music Theatre's seductively charming production of Pal Joey -- a classic yet rarely produced 1940 musical comedy. Set in late 1930s Chicago, the musical, written by John O'Hara...

Brutal honesty. That's playwright Samuel D. Hunter's razor-sharp focus in his deeply significant play, The Whale. And through Charlie, a 600-pound gentle giant played by the superbly understated Dale Calandra in Victory Gardens' uncompromising production, we see brutal honesty: in the flesh.

At Monday's press opening, there were audible...

Sometimes all you need is a star-making performance to make a show. The fresh-faced and ideally cast Stephen Anthony, who plays infamous con man Frank Abagnale Jr., offers such a performance in the first national tour of Catch Me If You Can which is playing through April 14...

I'm all for firsts. And Artistic Home's very solid production of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana presented a whole world of them. It was my first time seeing any iteration of this classic Williams play, my first time seeing this well-established, small-yet-mighty ensemble, and it was the ensemble's...

While I'm not sure how much it cost to produce the national tour of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, I'd wager that a sizable, of not primary, chunk of the change went into the show's outlandish costumes and towering wigs.

Costume designers Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner, who also...

Teddy Ferrara, a world premiere drama playing through March 3 at Goodman Theatre, takes a controversial view of victimhood. Using the tragedy surrounding Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, who killed himself after his roommate shared private footage of Clementi with another man, as a starting point, playwright

Before I begin to discuss Drury Lane's disappointingly dreary production of Sunset Boulevard, let me set the stage.

Sunset Boulevard, the Andrew Lloyd Webber megamusical based on the groundbreaking 1950 Billy Wilder film about a faded silent film star, Norma Desmond, who latches onto a struggling screenwriter to make...

In Porchlight's seductive and sobering production of Lanie Robertson's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, the moment Alexis J. Rogers makes her reluctant entrance, drink in hand, you know you're in for a turbulent ride. Rogers, channeling the singular jazz singer Billie Holiday, known by her fans as "Lady...

It's a very rare thing to come across a show that embraces its simplicity with virtually zero pretense. A Grand Night for Singing at Mercury Theater is such a show. This perfectly enjoyable musical revue celebrating the classic scores of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein isn't afraid to make the...

It's not hard to understand why Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities is such an effective play. This award-winning compact family drama addresses the notions of deception, trust, loyalty, privacy and integrity using a deliciously straightforward setup: a strong-willed novelist daughter returns home to declare to her well-bred and respected...

I remember my quarter-life crisis. Here I was, working long hours in a job I didn't have any real passion for, broke, gaining weight, listless. I was going through the motions and letting my self doubt rule my world.

Seven years later, and I'm in a completely different place. I'm...

The theatrical year in Chicago has ended in full gallop with two highly anticipated shows receiving full-scale, top-notch productions, playing through the new year.

War Horse, the breathtaking international hit that took London and Broadway by storm, and the Broadway blockbuster The Book of Mormon, which is now bursting...

When Jon Robin Baitz's searing family drama Other Desert Cities premiered at Lincoln Center in January 2011, it took the town by storm. Not since August: Osage County can I recall an American play that's had such buzz, with the New York Times calling it "the best new play on...

Ah, the impending threat of death. What a warm and cozy feeling it is to know that each day presents new opportunities to face our own uncertain demise.

Happy Holidays!

In the fantastically macabre Failure: A Love Story, playwright Philip Dawkins manages to find the quirky, heartwarming delight...

I'm sure we've all encountered a hellacious cab experience or three -- the driver who used the drive from Andersonville to Boystown as an opportunity to issue a sermon about how all gays are going to hell and then proceeded to creepily hit on me; the cabbie who literally fell...

Leonard Bernstein was a master genius. Composer, conductor, writer, author, pianist -- you name it. His accomplishments are fresh in my mind thanks to the crash course I received in Bernstein's brilliance via Hershey Felder's one man show, Maestro: The Art of Leonard Bernstein, which played at the Royal George...

Forget fancy names like Cyndi Lauper. If there's a single compelling reason to see Kinky Boots, a lively new musical based on a 2005 British comedic film that's currently making its pre-Broadway tryout at Chicago's Bank of America Theater, it's Billy Porter's bravura turn as sassy drag queen Lola.

It's difficult for me to get behind art that glorifies the illegal drug culture. It just seems like exploitative, easy fodder.

That's not to say I haven't been known to pour a nice, big glass of wine and settle in for an Intervention marathon. Because I'm classy like that.