Articles by Leanne Star

A matinee at the Joffrey Ballet Chicago can be counted on to draw junior ballerinas in tutus to the grand 1889 Auditorium Theatre. But for The Times Are Racing, the name of the final work […]

The moment I spotted David Cerda’s name in the cast of The Mousetrap at Court Theatre, I knew something was up. Cerda, who is artistic director, resident playwright and co-founder of Chicago’s Hell in a […]

Confession: As a student of comparative literature at the University of Chicago, I couldn’t dive deep enough into a text to reach the bottom, nor was that my goal. My aim was to examine the […]

    When Stephen Sondheim’s and James Lapine’s Into the Woods debuted in San Diego in 1986, a women’s theater club gathered their things after the first half of the musical, ready to head home […]

It’s a challenge to summarize Saul Bellow’s epic, picaresque 1953 novel The Adventures of Augie March. With dozens of memorable characters and scenes that unfurl herky-jerky over decades and scattered locations, the book is held […]

The central feature of Regina Garcia’s puzzle box set design for Next to Normal at is a wooden staircase, the epitome of sleek suburban luxe and an apt metaphor for the workings of the human […]

A Number opens in medias res — “into the middle of things” — an ancient approach that jibes with today, when TV shows use nonlinear narratives for that extra edge. British playwright Caryl Churchill’s A […]

In Amor Towles’ 2016 novel A Gentleman in Moscow, a German visitor suggests that Russia’s only contribution to the world is vodka. A challenge ensues to name three more Russian strengths, and the title character takes up the […]

Even before the Trinity Irish Dance Company took to the stage of the Auditorium Theatre, the Auditorium’s jewel box of a lobby was popping with young dancers, students from Chicago’s half dozen or so Irish […]

        A dead squirrel makes an early exit from Will Eno’s affecting play The Realistic Joneses, now at Theater Wit in co-production with Shattered Globe Theatre. The squirrel corpse is swiftly transferred with a […]