Review: Eugene Morris Jerome, age 15, has two things on his mind: baseball and girls. He knows baseball. This summer – it’s 1937 in Brooklyn – Eugene is seriously committed to learning everything about his latest subject of interest. This is the famously irresistible setup of Neil Simon’s quasi-autobiographical comedy “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” a heart-warming delight in its current staging at Raven Theatre. ★★★★
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Lust, greed and mayhem. 3 stars
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.
‘In a Forest, Dark and Deep.’ 4 stars!
CD Reviews: The latest evidence of the Philharmonia Baroque’s mastery of 18th century fare is a CD release of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” – plus three more violin concertos by the Red Priest, as Vivaldi was known – featuring the orchestra’s wizardly concertmaster and all-world Baroque star Elizabeth Blumenstock. ****
‘Beyond the Score’ with Riccardo Muti
Medea’s very, very jealous. 4 stars!
Interview: As “the soul of the age” turns 448 on April 23, the celebrated actor talks with Chicago On the Aisle about his one-man play “Being Shakespeare,” presented by Chicago Shakespeare Theater at the Broadway Theatre through April 29.
Doctorow’s novel on stage. 4 stars!
‘Moscow, Cheryomushki.’ 4 stars!
Con game in the park. 3 stars.
Tony Kushner’s classic soars. 5 stars!
Preview: The stars are dream-catchers and story-tellers. Humans have always thought so, hence the mythic characters and lore written into the constellations. But, hey, if the ancient Greeks could puzzle out stories in the stars, why can’t we – and have a ball doing it? No wonder the community myth-making adventure on tap April 19 at the Adler Planetarium is called “Starball.”
Review: From the admixture of opulence and asceticism that constituted conductor Charles Dutoit’s program of French music with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra this weekend, one might have taken away good lessons offered in a perhaps subversively gleeful spirit. ****
Preview: It sounds like a perfect mix of guests for a dinner party, the composers queued up for the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s concert April 15 at Orchestra Hall. George Crumb and Anton Webern will be arriving together, so to speak, along with Schubert and Grieg – and a newcomer whose radical voice should give the affair a good jolt.
Dark comedy at A Red Orchid. 2 stars.
A stunner at Victory Gardens. 4 stars!
Shaggy dog revenge story. 3 stars.
Review: Sensational. That, in a word, was Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky’s debut April 5 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Charles Dutoit. The tall, assured pianist – one could only think of the young Van Cliburn – made epic poetry of Rachmaninoff’s formidable Third Piano Concerto in a performance that probed a deep vein of lyricism and simply transcended technical issues. ****
Interview: Chuck Spencer relishes poking through the piled clutter during his first long, solitary, silent minutes on stage at the beginning of Arthur Miller’s play “The Price,” at Raven Theatre.
