Hello! I'm Rory, an actor, playwright and general theatre maven. I was a reviewer for many years for publications like New City, and the late Centerstage Chicago. I've decided to launch this blog like it's 2005 or something so that I can review Chicago plays and say hopefully interesting things about them. Hope you enjoy!

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We Should Kill Him

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Corn Productions/Cornservatory is a favorite of mine. Best comedy theater in Chicago? Not a chance while Second City, IO and even Annoyance are around but they’ve always been a charming underdog capable of producing the occasional gem. They’re also a great, affordable venue for original works like Deana Velandra’s We Should Kill Him . The show centers on Candace (Kaleigh Stoller) whose heart has just been broken by philandering standup comic Chris (Shannon Burke) a rogueish, faithless cad and the archetypal artsy dirtbag every woman seems to have dated somewhere around 27. Burk does a fine job with the unenviable task of embodying a character designed to be loathed, with an endless stream of lame excuses and prevarications. Candace seeks comfort in a fine supporting cast as her circle of friends, Allison Ristaino as quintessential bestie Ellie, Lily Cox as her badass lesbian sister Jen, and Anna Dorian, her newfound friend who was also jerked around by the nefarious Chris. Despite ...
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House of Ideas

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If anyone has actually read more than one of these reviews they may note I have a pretty strong tendency to be positive. This doesn’t mean I love every show in the world or would if I saw them but rather the shows I see are entirely self selected. I see what I think I’m going to like and I have a pretty good sense of what I’m going to like. And I also make no pretence of objectivity. If I am familiar with the work of the playwright and cast and if I “go to a cocktail bar with them after the show” I make no apologies. I would occasionally throw in a “full disclosure” when I wrote for Centerstage but these days I’m my own master, ain’t nobody paying me, ain’t nobody I owe anything to. So that said believe me when I say I loved Mark Pracht’s House of Ideas , directed by Terry McCabe. If there’s one medium I love at least as much as theatre it’s comic books, and Pracht’s “Four Color trilogy” has been a compelling, well researched exploration of the history (and tragedy) behind the creative...
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Richard III Chicago Shakespeare Theater 2024

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  Richard III by William Shakespeare (William Shakespeare's Hellraiser, photo credit: Liz Lauren)   Ah Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, King by his own bloody hand…Whether he deserves it or not, (and a lot of historians say he doesn’t but who asked them?) he has become one of Anglo American culture’s most wicked, and most gleeful villains.   It’s a personal favorite of mine in Shakespeare’s canon, a play about a bad guy doing bad things and getting his comeuppance. Sure maybe Richard III is a profound meditation on the nature of power and evil and malicious ambition, on the other hand maybe that’s actually Macbeth and Richard III is just pure fun. What better play to launch the regime of the great Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s new Artistic Director, Edward Hall, taking over from the great Barbara Gaines by giving us a show with innovative, appropriate and absolutely magical staging and pacing.   All of this is seco...
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