Kerry Reid

Chicago

Writer at Freelance

Theater Critic and Editor at Chicago Reader

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Articles

Remembering Fred Anzevino and Shirley Mordine

5 days ago | chicagoreader.com | Kerry Reid

Even in a timeline where loss feels overwhelming, the last couple of weeks have been tough for the theater and dance community, with the deaths of Fred Anzevino on April 28 and Shirley Mordine on May 2. (For those of us in journalism, the May 1 death of Michael Miner, former longtime editor and media columnist for the Reader, was also a punch to the gut.)Anzevino, 67, was the founder and artistic director of the company now known as Theo, but founded in 1997 as Theo Ubique Theatre.
Male bonding and its discontents

1 week ago | chicagoreader.com | Kerry Reid

You can’t open an op-ed section lately, it seems, without seeing some serious chin-scratching about “what’s the matter with men?” They’re lonely, they’re angry, they’re resentful. (Worst of all, they’re falling behind women—truly the worst humiliation, I guess.) In her 1994 play, Art, Yasmina Reza identified at least one source of the problem: male friendships rooted in competition and alpha-dog gamesmanship rather than actual vulnerability.
The ice caves of her mind

1 week ago | chicagoreader.com | Kerry Reid

Not unlike Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s 1996 musical Floyd Collins (recently revived on Broadway), Melanie Coffey’s Time Is a Color and the Color Is Blue concerns someone trapped in a cave.
Hymn celebrates Black men's friendships amid family struggles

1 week ago | chicagoreader.com | Kerry Reid

Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet, based on the life of 19th-century classical African American actor Ira Aldridge, who spent most of his career onstage in England and the European continent, played at Chicago Shakespeare back in 2017 (Raven Theatre also produced the play in 2016).
Mother and child reunion

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Kerry Reid

If you’ve ever wondered what The Gilmore Girls might be like if Shirley Jackson were the showrunner, wonder no more. In Poor Queenie, now in its world premiere with Subtext Studio Theatre Company, playwright Eliana Theologides Rodriguez skillfully traces the suffocating, dysfunctional relationship between a mother and daughter who, not unlike the siblings in Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, create their own reality amid grief, guilt, and loss.
Recursive absurdity

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Kerry Reid

If history repeats, as Karl Marx said, first as tragedy and then as farce, what happens if the repetitions keep coming, while those who forget the past (or actively erase it) are doomed to repeat it? If that seems like a lot of abstract theorizing to keep in mind, we need only look at the news to see how apt and relevant it all is. The Infinity PlayThrough 5/18: Fri–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 5 PM; Jarvis Square Theater, 1439 W.
Blood clowns - Chicago Reader

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Kerry Reid

To the victors belong the glory, and to the servants belong the guts. In Taylor Mac’s Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, we’re in the banquet room of the deceased general of Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy (which was, not coincidentally, the last play produced by Redtwist).
Rage against the machine

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Kerry Reid

Rage as a tool for rebirth is a familiar trope in social justice circles, but what if rage literally gave you the ability to transcend and escape oppression into a different realm of your choosing? That’s the premise behind Zora Howard’s Bust, now in a world premiere at the Goodman as a coproduction with Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre (where it played this past winter), directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.
Hell No! invites Chicagoans to a night of protest songs

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Kerry Reid

Back in February, Jenny Magnus, cofounder of stalwart Chicago fringe theater company Curious Theatre Branch and cabaret band the Crooked Mouth, put out a call on Facebook to bring together artists and activists to discuss ideas for creative resistance. The folks who gathered at Labyrinth Arts ended up calling the informal group the WELP Collective, and as one of their first public acts, they’re presenting “Hell No!,” an evening of protest songs at the Hideout.
The suitcase or the coffin

2 weeks ago | chicagoreader.com | Kerry Reid

When Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic opened at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 2022 (reopening on Broadway a year later, also directed by onetime Chicagoan David Cromer), Trump hadn’t been reelected, the bombardment of Gaza hadn’t erupted, far-right French politician Marine Le Pen hadn’t been banned from running for office for five years, and a Jewish governor’s mansion in the United States hadn’t been firebombed on the first night of Passover.