Frank Sennett

A mother’s love and anguish drive Hamnet to stunning emotional heights at Chicago Shakes In the fall of 2024, the Royal Shakespeare Company brought Pericles to Chicago Shakespeare Theater, marking a triumphant return after a 30-year absence. Less than two years later, the RSC is back t…

The Royal Shakespeare Company's Hamnet at Chicago Shakes centers fierce maternal love and the indescribable anguish of losing a child. Kemi-Bo Jacobs's performance as Agnes Shakespeare packs such emotional punch that one worries about the toll it might take. This is acting with a capital everything.

Pro tip for Chicago visitors and residents alike: You cannot go wrong with a late-night steak sandwich and a mug of Billy Goat Dark off Lower Michigan Avenue.

The Outsiders delivers tuneful teen turmoil at the Cadillac Palace Like a lot of Gen Xers, I read The Outsiders in school when I was a kid. When I heard there was a musical in the works based on S.E. Hinton’s gritty 1967 YA novel a few years back, I was perp…

Best Musical Tony-winning The Outsiders opened at Broadway in Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Wednesday night for a brief visit. A slick combination of Grease and West Side Story, this saga pitting outcast teens against their affluent classmates in late-60s Tulsa proves a natural for the musical stage.

Jeff Perry gets his freak on in The Dance of Death at Steppenwolf No sooner did Ian Barford lay claim to most distinctive lead performance in Steppenwolf’s 50th season than Jeff Perry said, Hold my schnapps! Perry’s offbeat take on the mercurial Capta…

When I say that Jeff Perry’s singular portrayal of Edgar was like watching Mr. Furley-era Don Knotts wreaking havoc on this grotesquely comic spiritual precursor to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? please know that’s not a condemnation.

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Free Super Bowl ad concept: Kim DoorDashian.

Picture of a woman in Western garb, playing an acoustic guitar and singing onstage in a honky-tonk.

An agent's guide to NEVER THE BRIDE, a psychological thriller #agentsguide #agentguide #thriller

I’ve always been a Twizzlers guy, but Red Vines are the value option. I do wonder about the quality control. You get the big bag and there’s jaggedly broken off pieces like someone on the line was sneaking bites and dropping licorice back onto the belt.

Would you like to be my boss?

A New Year's Toast from Patricia Highsmith (and me) 🥂🥂

Publishers Marketplace, an incredibly useful resource for authors along with everyone else in publishing, is offering a rare free preview on its subscription. If you subscribe and cancel before Jan. 3, they will not charge the fee. Worth exploring.
www.publishersmarketplace.com/register/%EF...

And The Secret of the Old Clock! Look for the first in my series of Sam Spade-Nancy Drew mysteries next year…

Need some title help, though. Thoughts?

Threads user making an insensitive comment about watching TV with subtitles followed by an amusing clap-back from a Deaf educator.

Tell me you’re GenX without telling me you’re GenX.

Best laugh I’ve had all day, @aslpinnacle.bsky.social. Well done.

If you get any presents in the mail with no gift giver identified, those are from me.

Crackerjack reporting here.

Townes may be Steve Earle’s best album.

Archaeologists Found a Cube-Shaped Human Skull in Mexico Archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered a 1,400-year-old skull shaped like a cube, and it’s unlike anything they’ve seen in the region.

What a blockhead!

All Her Fault on Peacock features a marketing exec at a major publisher in Chicago (sure?) pitching a best-selling author on switching publishers because she believes she can open him up to a whole new audience if she can help him win… an Edgar Award! And he signs with her.

@bencollins.bsky.social Can’t wait to see the visual for your Gehry coverage.

New Stranger Things cast photo dropped.

Modern Romance…

Yes. And any such list with more Mike Myers than Albert Brooks entries, and that skips The Blues Brothers, is fatally deficient.

Ian Barford and Robert Falls rock Amadeus at Steppenwolf I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard an ovation as celebratory and raucous in Steppenwolf’s upstairs ensemble theater as the one at the curtain call of Sunday’s opening…

More than 200 years before the term “frenemy” was coined, Salieri & Mozart embodied it. Amadeus @steppenwolfthtr.bsky.social, directed w aplomb by @robertfalls.bsky.social, is smart, funny & assured. Ian Barford’s dynamic, empathetic Salieri is a triumph.
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Jesus Christ. This is monstrous. Absolutely sickening. The journalists in that room should walk out en masse.

It’a not a free market when bot armies ace regular fans out of the chance to purchase during the regular onsale period. Time for the U.S. to follow suit. Squeeze the parasites out of business.

“There are elements here of the ambiguous apocalypse of Lindelof’s ‘The Leftovers’ and the comic dystopia of ‘Mrs. Davis.’”

Thune was backed into a corner by refusing to negotiate ACA until government reopens. Ok, now he must negotiate in good faith and Ds have to insist on a full extension or no additional CR. Still a disaster.

This capitulation is going to cause a firestorm. The only way it possibly works out for the Democrats is if they a) put a marker down that they are giving Republicans a chance to do the right thing while easing the immediate crisis and b) absent an ACA extension by end of January, shutdown is back.

I want to play poker with the Senate Democratic caucus…

I've been on staff for ... 38 years, and I don't remember ever feeling the paper is as focused and consequential as I do now. I can't speak to the effect, but as T.S. Eliot said, "For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."