More than enough words have been spent remarking on gay men’s fascination with Judy Garland. But though Garland herself left the world nearly a half century ago, enthusiasm for her among this particular demographic seems to be stubbornly alive—that i …Read more

“Life upon the wicked stage ain’t ever what a girl supposes,” Oscar Hammerstein II famously noted. Now French playwright Jean-Luc Lagarce concurs. Lagarce’s play Music Hall (mounted by TUTA Theatre Chicago at 59E59 Theaters in a version translated by …Read more

When Lauren Stanford was developing her portrayal of Helen Morgan for her cabaret show “More Than You Know,” she must have paid special attention to lyrics from Louis Alter and Arthur Swanstrom’s song “(I’ve Got) Sand in My Shoes.” The song’s verse b …Read more

In “Committed,” her new show at The Duplex, Stacie Koby ignores the old show-business warning about the dangers of being upstaged when working with animals or children. There are no critters in the act, but Koby is visibly pregnant with her second ch …Read more

Penned by the late Jovanka Bach and directed/produced by her widower, John Stark, O’Neill’s Ghosts is a portrait of playwright Eugene O’Neill at the time he wrote his acknowledged masterwork, the largely autobiographical Long Day’s Journey into Night …Read more

Irish actor and musician Brian Fleming — a heterosexual man — became an accidental activist for LGBT rights several years ago after a photograph of him at a gay gathering happened to be printed in the now-defunct News of the World. A Sacrilegious Les …Read more

A photo advertising “Other People’s Parties”—the recent solo cabaret debut of William TN Hall, at The Duplex—shows a hangdog Hall slumped at a bar, nursing a drink with one hand and propping up a cigarette with the other. His expression is that of a …Read more

In the stage directions for Big Love (at Signature Theatre) playwright Charles Mee remarks that the setting of the play is “more an installation than a set.” It may be right to view the entire play with that note in mind — to imagine the script as a …Read more

You may call what James Lecesne does in The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey (at Dixon Place) what you will — performance art, a one-man-show, a monodrama. What it is, decidedly, is an invigorating theatre experience, both moving and highly ente …Read more

Earlier this winter the Metropolitan Room generated much publicity for setting the Guinness record for longest variety show ever. With Tim Realbuto’s “Bookseller in the Rain: A Tribute to the Music of Maury Yeston,” the club may well have quietly att …Read more